Additional Information

Who is the coordinator?

Dr. Chamberlain Links to an external site. earned a Ph.D. in Mathematics and Statistics with a research focus in Undergraduate Mathematics Education. He oversees the development of the curriculum, homework questions, quizzes, and additional course resources (such as videos). Everything for this course has been designed based on current cognitive theories about how students learn.

Why a mastery-based course?

As the first course in the sequence to Calculus, this course is meant to build and solidify the foundation you need to succeed. Every topic we cover contributes to this foundation - there are no “unimportant” topics. Compared to a traditional course, we cover less material at a deeper depth.

In a traditional course, you are graded on your success with content. It is reasonable that students then focus on earning as many points as possible, and thus focus on the easiest concepts while avoiding the more difficult concepts. This leads to a foundation riddled with holes - one that eventually cannot support new concepts.

It is also important to accept that students learn at different paces. Links to an external site. This is difficult to achieve in traditional courses with lecture components as these courses continue to push forward with new material. Moreover, many students coming into this course may have taken Algebra 2, Precalc, or even AP/IB Calculus (and didn’t pass). Everyone has wildly different backgrounds, and so this course is built to allow you to move at your pace, whatever that pace is. The Progress Quizzes will thus be customized to your progress in the course. 

Why all multiple-choice quizzes?

To keep up with the tremendous number of quizzes that must be built for a mastery-based course, I only use multiple-choice quizzes. This does not mean the quizzes will be easy, however. A great deal of research was done to build multiple-choice quizzes that can identify errors and misconceptions just as well as a free-response quiz. The computer generates the correct answer as well as 3-4 of the most common student errors or misconceptions associated with that specific problem. I've also developed a method to prevent students from working backwards from the options to guessing the correct answer. This was done for the students’ good as it allows you to get customized feedback on each of your quizzes!

How can you provide feedback with multiple-choice quizzes?

Each Progress Quiz will give you feedback on what you got right, but more importantly will give you insights into why you got certain questions wrong. As mentioned, the quizzes generate the 3-4 most common student errors or misconceptions associated with the specific problem. So if you, say, did not distribute correctly, an option would be associated to that issue. When you got back your quiz, you’d see you choose this option and know what you need to do to improve for the next quiz. 

Where can I find more information about the course?

Your first source of information should be the Syllabus/Homepage, as it gives brief descriptions of the most important aspects of the course and provides links for more detailed descriptions. You can find other information in the following pages:

If you don't find the answer to your question in the Syllabus nor in any of the pages above, please contact the coordinator so they can add the answer to your question in the appropriate place.