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Designing rich sets of tasks for undergraduate Calculus courses

Breen, Sinéad orcid logoORCID: 0000-0001-7215-0460 and O'Shea, Ann orcid logoORCID: 0000-0001-8504-2290 (2011) Designing rich sets of tasks for undergraduate Calculus courses. In: MEI 4, 22-23 September 2011, Dublin, Ireland.

Abstract
Research has shown that the types of tasks assigned to students affect their learning. Studies have found that many mathematical tasks created for second and third level students promote instrumental rather than relational understanding, and imitative rather than creative reasoning. In this paper, we describe some frameworks that aim to guide teachers when writing tasks. From these frameworks a set of task types that are deemed appropriate for undergraduate students, and that foster mathematical habits of mind, have been selected: these are evaluating mathematical statements; example generation; analysing reasoning; conjecturing; generalising; visualisation; and using definitions. We report on an effort to design a set of tasks for an introductory calculus course using these principles and give examples of exercises on the topic of continuity. The teacher’s role in the implementation of such tasks is also discussed.
Metadata
Item Type:Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Event Type:Conference
Refereed:Yes
Uncontrolled Keywords:Rich tasks, task design, calculus
Subjects:Social Sciences > Education
Mathematics
DCU Faculties and Centres:DCU Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Science and Health > School of Mathematical Sciences
Research Institutes and Centres > Research Centre in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Education (CASTel)
Published in: Proceedings of the Fourth Conference on Research in Mathematics Education (MEI4). . St Patrick's College, Dublin.
Publisher:St Patrick's College, Dublin
ID Code:30682
Deposited On:24 Jan 2025 09:17 by Sinead Breen . Last Modified 24 Jan 2025 09:17
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