I’m pleased to share several news items related to Active Prelude to Calculus.
Changes for Fall 2026
Active Prelude, available at https://activecalculus.org/prelude/, has been updated to resolve any reported errors. In addition, some of the activities have been updated slightly in ways that make them differ from the print and PDF versions, usually involving fixing mistakes or improved images; for instance, see the graphics throughout Section 1.8, such as in Activity 1.8.2. These differences appear in HTML only.
For several years, we have offered activity solutions upon request due to work in LaTeX by Lindsay Rocks of Colorado Mountain College and South Routt School District, Julie Hoff of Colorado Northwestern Community College and South Routt School District, and Steve Schlicker of GVSU. Chrissy Safranski and David Austin leveraged that work to add answers to the activities that now appear in the backmatter of the HTML version of the text.
A new version with interactive previews
In addition to the new, additional version of the 2E single variable calculus text, Active Calculus with Doenet, that was recently announced in another post, I’m pleased to share that we now also have a version of Active Prelude with electronic, interactive preview activities. The only differences between this and the current version posted on activecalculus.org are found in the preview activities; all of the rest of the text is identical.
While Active Prelude has always had interactive WeBWorK exercises at the end of each section, until now the preview activities were static: there was not a straightforward way for students to get feedback on their thinking. Chrissy Safranski has written new previews in Doenet for the entire text. For example, see Preview Activity 2.1.1, in which a Doenet animation now helps the student interact with the ideas in the external animation linked to in the text as part of the original static preview activity.
Using the New Version
You can read and engage with Active Prelude with Doenet at the provided link. It is also possible to create a Runestone account and a course and then assign and track student work on the previews and exercises, all for free. One key advantage of the Runestone platform is that students see the text and the interactive (Doenet) previews and (WeBWorK) exercises as fully integrated: all of the students’ work is saved in the text itself. A forthcoming blog post will offer some additional information about using Runestone.
Chrissy Safranski is piloting this version of Prelude in her Fall 2026 precalculus course. If others are interested in joining her in using it, she welcomes hearing from you: csafranski@franciscan.edu. Put “APC, Doenet, and Runestone” in the subject line.
Note well: the Doenet version is still a work in progress. There will be some bugs; hopefully they’ll be minor, and we will be prompt and responsive to issues that arise. Also, as noted above, the Doenet version is only available in HTML: the preview activities in the Doenet version are different from the currently posted PDF and print versions of the text.
Thanks
Like with the Doenet version of Active Calculus Single, there are many people to thank for their contributions that made this new version of the text possible, including:
- Duane Nykamp, Doenet founder
- Virginia Mae, Doenet tech support
- Brad Miller, Runestone founder
- Rob Beezer, PreTeXt founder
- Oscar Levin, PreTeXt developer
- Chrissy Safranski, co-author
- GVSU, for sabbatical support
I’m excited for this additional resource to be available to instructors and their students and I look forward to continued development that will make APC an even better product.
More about Doenet
Founded by Duane Nykamp of the University of Minnesota, Doenet (the Distributed Open Education Network) is an NSF-supported free, open-source platform that enables authors and instructors to create, share, and deliver richly interactive mathematics activities and exercises that provide extensive feedback to students. Among its many strengths, Doenet supports easy answer-checking of mathematical expressions, text, and even interactive graphics. In addition, through drop-down menus it’s straightforward to create sentences with multiple fill-in-the blank options that help students provide structured reasons and explanations. Authors can provide content that’s responsive to what students enter, including conditional feedback. Doenet interactives can be embedded in any PreTeXt book, and student interactions with content can be tracked in the Runestone learning platform.
