The University of Michigan at Ann Arbor initiated some major curricular revisions in its precalculus and introductory calculus course in the early 1990s with which the author has been closely involved as a member of the Michigan mathematics faculty. A number of political and practical issues had to be addressed to help assure the success of the efforts. The purpose of this paper is to describe some of those issues and provide suggestions for dealing with them when they arise in other implementations.

Introduction

In the fall semester of 2001, about 3000 students enrolled in the three courses considered to be part of the University of Michigan's first-year mathematics program, namely, differential calculus, integral calculus, and Michigan's one precalculus course. About 700 of those students were in precalculus, most of whom were taking the course specifically to get ready for courses in calculus for which placement information indicated they were not yet fully prepared. All three of these introductory courses are taught by methods commonly called “reformed” featuring the appropriate use of technology, texts [1], [3] that support the pedagogical emphasis in the courses, and various forms of cooperative learning and other teaching methods not based exclusively on lecture to take advantage of different student learning styles.

These curricular reforms, in essentially their current shapes, have been in place since 1992 in the case of calculus and 1993 for precalculus, with the precalculus reform following hard on the heels of that for calculus so students would not experience a sudden change in the look and feel of the courses when passing from precalculus to the first calculus course.