Resources to complement Active Calculus

I’ve recently had interactions with several different faculty who have been working on materials to support those of us who teach from Active Calculus.  This post is a summary of some different things that are (freely) available to users:

Clicker Questions

Eric Sullivan and his colleagues at Carroll College have a full set of clicker questions to go with the activities workbook, which you can find at

http://www.carroll.edu/academics/majors/math/textbooks.cc,

or directly from

http://www.carroll.edu/files/files/academics/math/mathtexts/Activities_and_Clickers.pdf.

Desmos Preview Activities

Serge Ballif of Nevada State College has recently developed Desmos versions of the preview activities in chapters 1-4.  You can access his work at https://github.com/sergeballif/sergeballif.github.io/blob/master/Desmos/DesmosActivities.md.  This is a great new addition that links activities in the text to excellent free technology.

WeBWorK versions of Preview Activities

David Hunter of Westmont College and Branden Stone of Adelphi University have been working on this project; the work for chapters 1-4 is complete, and 5-8 are in progress.  Basically their work allows you to assign each Preview Activity as a WeBWorK problem set, and thus avail students of both accountability and immediate feedback.

From David and Branden, I’ve learned that “in order to see them via webwork, your system administrator needs to update the library and make the `Contrib/` directory available.” You can then find them via this path: /opt/webwork/libraries/webwork-open-problem-library/Contrib/Westmont/ActiveCalculus/

Alternatively, I have a .tar.gz file from Branden that I’m willing to share upon request.  He writes, “you can upload it into your templates folder via the file manager in webwork. The file manager will unzip it during the upload. Once that is done you should be able to see them in the local problems of the library browser.”  I have done this successfully, and am impressed with the option this now presents for previews.

Finally, they note: “If you want to keep up with the progress, you can follow it here:

  https://github.com/djhunter/webwork-open-problem-library/tree/master/Contrib/Westmont“

Activities Workbooks

We have activities workbooks for chapters 1-4 (first-semester calculus), chapters 5-8 (second-semester calculus), and for the new multivariable text, chapters 9-11.

Marc Renault’s Geogebra Applets

These, of course, are present in the text itself in embedded links, but they are a great resource regardless: http://webspace.ship.edu/msrenault/GeoGebraCalculus/GeoGebraCalculusApplets.html

As you prepare for your fall semester courses, I hope that you’ll consider this wonderful collection of free resources, of course along with Active Calculus itself.  As I teach calculus myself in both semesters in the year ahead, I look forward to sharing more of my work and additional resources as they emerge.  I wish all of us a great start to a new term with our students.

WeBWorK exercises, Daily Prep assignments, and labs for Calculus I

From my own work in teaching first-semester calculus, I have collections of WeBWorK exercises, Daily Prep assignments that lead students to read the text and watch video in advance of class, and also several computer lab explorations that use Geogebra.  I’m happy to share any of these upon request; I also have a collection of WeBWorK exercises for Calculus II from another instructor that I can offer.

If you have materials that you’ve developed that you’re willing to publicly share in some way, I would welcome hearing from you so I can add to this list.