The technology committee of the Morehouse College Mathematics Department is committed to bringing truly useful technology to bear on mathematics teaching at the college. The committee is charged to seek software and develop hardware capability to enhance our teaching mission. Representing the technology committee I am proposing the development of a module to teach one of the major topics from our Analysis I (Math 251) course. This initial module will serve as a template from which other modules of the same type will be developed. All modules used in a course should be of the same basic type, perhaps beginning with a list of prerequisite skills and a reading list. It is my intention to spend at least a month during next summer (1998) to find appropriate software (freeware where possible because it is available to students and faculty without budgetary implications) to demonstrate the integral of a function approximated by a finite sum of rectangles. Working in the summer will make released time unnecessary.

With appropriate software, it is easy to demonstrate the effects of both varying the number of rectangles summed and varying (perhaps randomly) the place in each interval where the height is calculated. Once the appropriate software is available, students will have the opportunity to personally investigate the essential elements of the integral either in the classroom setting or by using the lab on their own.

To accomplish the above will require a comparison of various software packages not currently known to the faculty or our calculus students. Some of the software packages to be considered include: JK Graph, Winplot, University of Arizona Toolkits, and Visual Calculus (from University of Tennessee, Knoxville).

To be able to compare software packages, I must first become expert in their use myself, to be able to make judgments about what will most help the students. My credentials for this include five (5) years teaching analysis to Honors sections, but with limited computer availability. The department/college has provided 486 and Pentium computers and software such as Mathematica and MATHCAD. Previously, I have used MATHCAD, which has limited graphics and almost no capability to illustrate concepts. Any assistance I require to complete my project is available from other members of our technology committee who have already agreed to be available this summer.

The issue of assessment will be addressed by comparing the progress, including concept development, of students exposed to calculus software on the 5th class day of the week with the progress of the students taught using lecture only with a classroom problem-solving session on the 5th day. With regard to the initial interpretation of such a comparison, it is possible that a new system might not immediately show statistical advantage in a head-to-head test. For that reason, the results would initially be monitored to make sure that no decrease in effectiveness occurred using the software. A second comparison would be the tracking of students who have used the modules to see how they perform in later calculus courses.

Dr. Robert Bozeman, the Morehouse Mathematics Department Chair, is committed to moving toward the use of computerized teaching modules in our Calculus courses. He has urged the faculty to make a real effort to employ appropriate software. Rather than force reluctant faculty members to use technology, Dr. Bozeman will use his authority as department chair to assign teachers willing to use technology to calculus classes.

Materials found and/or software used will be made available to other ACS schools by using a Web site linked to the Morehouse College home page.

I will commit at least one month during the summer to the completion of the task. The $2,500 grant will be used to defray my salary for the month I will spend on developing the module.