Our Intervention

Our original intent was to design an assessment that would identify gaps in knowledge students might have as they entered calculus. After reading the articles referenced above, we became interested in using the Calculus Concepts Readiness Test as our assessment. However, we ran into a few problems. The first being that the test had been sold to the Maplesoft and was part of a professional placement program. Furthermore, we felt the test needed to address a more specified concept with items addressing both procedural and conceptual knowledge.  We also wanted to keep the test short enough so that it could be done in one high school class period as high schools already have extensive testing pressure. Because of these issues we developed a shorter test using a combination of public domain calculus concepts readiness problems and skills problems. This is the calculus readiness test that is included as part of our toolkit. Each instructor gave this assessment to pre-calculus and calculus classes at their respective institutions. Based on the test results and our research we narrowed our focus to the concept of functions and developed classroom activities that could be used both in Pre-Calculus courses and as just-in-time activities in Calculus. These activities were tested in Pre-Calculus classes at both the high school and community college levels.