This project team is building on an earlier effort that prepared the groundwork for an "overhaul" of the traditional three-term calculus course to better serve the needs of all STEM students, beyond just those in the traditional engineering and physical sciences track. The central innovation is to move topics and conceptual coverage needed in upper-level STEM courses into the first two terms of the traditional three-semester sequence. The PIs hypothesize that such a tactic has several beneficial consequences: i) Calculus 2 becomes an attractive "jumping-off" point for students in biology and chemistry; ii) a natural progression of difficulty throughout the full three-course sequence results; and iii) there is room in Calculus 3 to complete vector calculus through Stokes Theorem and the Divergence Theorem. In practice re-sequencing the topics involves a number of changes, including: 1) an early introduction to multivariate calculus, vectors, and sequences; 2) a postponement of infinite series; 3) an early, although brief, treatment of matrices; and 4) the de-emphasis, deletion, or redistribution of a handful of other topics. Primary activities of this project include developing supporting course materials and assessments, large-scale beta-testing of the full three-term sequence and assessing its effectiveness and impact at a variety of partner institutions, engaging in further dissemination of project findings and results, and building support for wider implementation of these ideas.
