A Computer-Based Calculus Curriculum

Abstract

For several years, there has been a great deal of discussion concerning the integration of computers into the mathematics curriculum, and, in par ticular, into the calculus curriculum (Tucker 1990). Recently, the Department of Mathematics at the University of Red lands made efforts to redesign its calculus syllabus in this direction and to study the impact such a change would have on stu dents' performance.1 We decided to alter our calculus instruction in two ways. We wanted to create computer programs for classroom demonstrations and to design homework assignments in which the com puter could play an effective part in help ing students understand concepts. We did not consider using the computer in any way for student computational drills. Classroom demonstrations were writ ten in True BASIC programming lan guage or used the True BASIC Calculus package, an easy-to-use software tool that graphs functions and performs many stan dard calculus operations. Although some computational work was done using the computer, most classroom demonstra tions used the plotting and graphing ca pabilities of the software packages. Typi