Workshop Precalculus™: Discovery with Graphing Calculators, Preliminary Edition

Nancy Baxter Hastings, Dickinson College

Workshop Precalculus provides students with a bridge to the study of calculus. It seeks to help students develop the confidence, understanding, and skills necessary for continuing their study of mathematics.

While the Table of Contents may look very similar to other precalculus texts, Workshop Precalculus reexamines how students learn and, therefore, how we should teach. Teaching using the Workshop approach involves instructors giving up some command and control of the classroom in favor of giving the students more control and responsibility for their own learning.

The Workshop approach involves eliminating the distinction between classroom and laboratory work. By systematizing and supporting a simple interactive teaching format, Workshop Precalculus helps us implement sound methods. The method alternates between three primary components: Summary Discussions, Introductory Remarks, and Collaborative Activities. When employed in conjunction with other simple but profound teaching suggestions, Workshop Precalculus can make your teaching experience a joy once again.

Supported by rich Instructor Resources, any motivated faculty member can make the transition, with minimal obstacles, from the course they've always taught to the course they've always wanted to teach.

If you are an instructor who has adopted this title for your class(es), please click here to apply for free online Instructor Resources.

An alternative approach to teaching precalculus is also being developed by Nancy Baxter Hastings and Allan J. Rossman. Click here for information on NSF-funded summer faculty development on Nancy and Allan's alternate project.

Workshop Precalculus is part of Dickinson College's Workshop Mathematics Project, which includes both Workshop Calculus (also by Nancy Baxter Hastings) and Workshop Statistics (by the author's Dickinson colleague, Allan Rossman). Based on their experiences and those of others who have taught workshop courses, the Workshop Mathematics team has developed the helpful list, which Allan calls A Dozen Suggestions (Plus or Minus Two), highlighted in the box below.