Building Courseware
Calculus: Computing in the Real World
 Professor Keith Stroyan
should be no stranger to anyone who
has taught calculus during the past two decades. As one of the original
mathematics professors to be given a National Science Foundation grant
to launch the calculus reform movement, Professor Stroyan has never
wavered in his pursuit of improving the teaching and learning of
calculus in the undergraduate curriculum. He made Mathematica
part of his classroom in the early 1990s and has used it since in
every textbook and calculus course material he has written.
Success at All Levels
From those early seedlings at the University of Iowa, trees have
grown. Says Stroyan, "Our university has a site license
for Mathematica because it has become one of the main tools of
choice of many faculty and graduate students in a variety of math and
engineering courses from beginning calculus through advanced graduate
work. Now Mathematica is completely integrated into our new
beginning calculus course, Calculus and Modeling 1 and 2, which uses
the materials Calculus: The Language of Change [by Keith
Stroyan, Academic Press, 1998]. Basic computing is used both in
weekly electronic homework to support basic ideas, and twice a semester
in large projects to solve real-world problems."
So why does he use Mathematica for his mathematics courses?
Stroyan says, "Mathematica helps with visualization of
surfaces, analysis of contour graphs, and difficult computations like
surface integrals. It also shows flows actually moving in
animations. I plan to expand these materials into a complete interactive text that will have both a
print version and a live Mathematica version."
Gaining an Edge
"Mathematica has made calculus much more tangible and
relevant at the students' level. The real-world projects in calculus
and modeling and the vastly enhanced visualization in multivariable
calculus make our students more interested and involved. We followed
2,000 students in 7 subsequent completely traditional
courses and found that they did about 10% better on average." (See
the Outcomes Study.)
Cognizant of the fact that some of his colleagues still teach the
traditional calculus course, Professor Stroyan wrote Calculus
WIZ to help students with the homework in regular calculus,
even when their professors ignore computing.
Professor Stroyan has successfully used Mathematica in
calculus for 10 years now. There is no doubt that it helps elevate the
student interest and the conceptual level of the course. "But," says
Stroyan, "we have only scratched the surface. In time, tools like
Mathematica will make our students much more proficient users
of mathematics."
Contact Information
Keith Stroyan
The University of Iowa
web: http://www.math.uiowa.edu/~stroyan
Send email to Keith Stroyan
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