Project Overview
The Expanding Students' Affect, Understandings, and Perceptions of Relevance Through Realistic Tasks in Calculus project developed tasks that aimed to support Calculus 1 students in seeing the relevance of calculus, both to their local community and future careers.
Tasks were aligned to the course topics and sequence and were integrated into the course assessments in the following ways: additional homework problems, with some embedded in WeBWorK; in-class tasks done collaboratively; and, larger-scale project-type tasks that were done either individually or collaboratively outside of class.
The tasks focus on reflection and connections across content and thus often included short response / writing components. Some tasks revisited essential precalculus concepts, served as an introduction to a concept, and others were focused on fostering connections within and across concepts.
Tasks were piloted across three semesters (2021-2022) and are publicly available at no cost on this site. Students in the pilot sections found the tasks and experience helped them to greater see the relevance for what they were learning, and their level of enjoyment far exceeded that of the non-pilot students.
See also: project page on California Education Learning Lab - Expanding Students' Affect, Understandings, and Perceptions of Relevance Through Realistic Tasks in Calculus.
