Math anxiety negatively affects student learning and academic performance. Students with high math anxiety exhibit physical, mental, and emotional symptoms. As a result, they tend to avoid mathematics and mathematics-related situations, perform poorly, and exhibit deficiencies in working memory. Research studies have shown that inquiry-based…

College calculus plays an important role in STEM students' degree and career aspirations. One of the key factors considered in assessing a student's ability to be successful in calculus is their proficiency in topics from prior mathematics courses such as algebra and precalculus. This study set out to examine the impact of students' precalculus…

In this note, we describe a large-scale transition to an active learning format in first-semester calculus at the University of Florida. Student performance and attitudes are compared across traditional lecture and flipped sections.

We discuss an innovative course model used in first-year calculus courses at a large North American research university, which we refer to as the "Blended Model." We argue that our model takes the best features of lectures, flipped classrooms, and traditional recitations, and gathers them into a cohesive, robust structure that benefits…

As calculus instruction moves further from lecture-based instruction toward student-centered pedagogy, support services must align with the changing goals for the course. This paper describes the work of a department as they collectively design and redesign a co-requisite Calculus I course, in an effort to better promote students' academic and…

We discuss a decade of initiatives to improve the teaching and learning of calculus at The Ohio State University. Calculus at OSU is taught in lecture/recitation format with large lectures and is tightly coordinated, so all innovations had to occur within that framework. We show how many smaller projects built upon one another to create a larger…

The flipped classroom is becoming a popular course structure in many academic disciplines, but particularly in STEM disciplines, including mathematics. Considerable research has addressed potential advantages and challenges of teaching a flipped course, as well as examining students' attitudes towards the flipped classroom. Studies on students'…

This assessment study examined one potential instructional method for improving student learning in Calculus for majors, flipped learning, in comparison with traditional lecture-based instruction. Results suggest that participation in flipped learning substantially improved growth in achievement over the semester, final exam grades, and final…

Being part of a cohesive learning community supports retention and success in early mathematics courses. Yet, large, unwelcoming lectures stand in opposition to this goal, isolating students and pushing them away from STEM. This paper offers a comparative analysis of three efforts to build community amongst students, all situated within a single…

This study reports on an educational development initiative where peer instruction was used instead of traditional lectures in a calculus course for first-year engineering students. The aim of the study was to explore students' experiences of this method. Data were collected by means of an open-ended questionnaire on two occasions: early and late…

Colleges and universities remain attentive to developing and supporting ways to foster student academic success. These efforts have taken on more importance as student success, commonly measured by student learning achievement, has failed to meet expectations. For colleges and universities, the flipped classroom represents a student-centered…

The Department of Physics at EKU [Eastern Kentucky University] with support from the National Science Foundations Course Curriculum and Laboratory Improvement Program has successfully converted our entire introductory physics sequence, both algebra-based and calculus-based courses, to an activity-based format where laboratory activities,…