Jun 28

I use a flipped  classroom for Calc 2.  I am mostly using GVSU’s Active Calculus as the textbook (section numbers in my file names line up with that book too).
Its available for free on line at: https://activecalculus.org/single/frontmatter.html

Before class students are asked to:
1)  Read a (half page) document containing learning objectives (these are very heavily based on the learning objectives documents that people at GVSU gave me).  This is my folder of the learning objectives documents: https://udmercy0-my.sharepoint.com/:f:/g/personal/archeyde_udmercy_edu/EmkYd1ZEs0VMtVEEmM1sIQMBNXuB0PEbpqM0cF0lss7S8Q?e=txdNGp

2) Skim the section in the active calculus book.  If the active calculus book doesn’t have a section on a certain topic that my department covers, I assign readings from the OpenStax Calculus book instead

3) Watch a few videos  (I try to keep it to less than 30 minutes per week per credit hour.  So for my 4 credit class they are watching less than 2 hours of video, sometimes significantly less than that).  This is my video play list for the course:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwYL3PO-9SUF-Y8ZXE8aYyn6rtzIAR2YX
Its a little bit out of order at the moment, but I can try to straighten it back out, if that would help.  Grand Valley State has a play list too, but I cover some topics they don’t.

4) Do a preclass activity to check that they are ready for class (its a carrot to get them to do the readings and videos, generally graded on effort/completion rather than accuracy.
Most frequently the preclass activity is a two or three question quiz (that is very heavily based on the video lectures) or a Desmos activity.  I’m not sure I can easily share my whole list of Desmos preclass activities, but if there’s a specific topic you want to see, just let me know.  Also, the Active Calculus book has preview activities which people have already implemented in Webwork (https://github.com/djhunter/webwork-open-problem-library/tree/master/Contrib/Westmont) and in Desmos (https://sites.google.com/view/taylorshort/preview-activities) available for anyone to use.

During class I usually
1) Give a brief (10-15 minute lecture) focusing on the big picture, connections to other topics, or tricky points.  These are the slides for my brief in class lectures: https://udmercy0-my.sharepoint.com/:f:/g/personal/archeyde_udmercy_edu/EmOHoiobAfFPuUO1ZWtsNV4BfK8zBLPPRxSZ8i9sBZ-cTQ?e=iZ3XgQ

2) Ask the students to do a group activity such as a worksheet.  These are the ones I use.  https://udmercy0-my.sharepoint.com/:f:/g/personal/archeyde_udmercy_edu/EtGLNQv8cV9ArlGmc2-7proBEb-eiASksB6ayS6a7OJNWA?e=dfKQFt

Please feel free to use anything that helps you and to  email me with any questions.

Apr 13

The FoxTrot Strip from November 6, 2005 contained a “numerical word search”

You can find the strip here.

There are seven clues which are arithmetic problems, but there is also the derivative of 43981 x , the definite integral of x^3 from 0 to 16, and the sum from k equals 0 to 47 of k squared.    I asked my calculus students to perform all these calculations.

Dr. Dawn's blog