How to use the Math 132 Materials and Instructor's Guide

You should be able to download a complete set of course materials (mostly problems that the students work on during class) and a sufficiently complete Instructor's Guide so as to be able to teach the course without reference to further materials. Completeness of the materials and Instructor's Guide does NOT, however, reduce the need for training in the pedagogies associated with this kind of course: use of small groups, use of the computer lab, socratic style discussion and problem-solving based lessons.

Most of the materials are in PostScript so that they may be downloaded in finished form, printed out and used. You can preview them, e.g., with Ghostview. If you need LaTeX source files, contact me. The Instructor's guide contains solutions which, for obvious reasons, are not available at this site. You can e-mail me for a copy. If you are unable to contact me, Dave Kung (dkung@math.wisc.edu) is the other curator of this archive.

The best way to see how to use the materials here is to start reading the Instructor's Guide, using Ghostview. It will tell you what the course is about, how to assemble a coursepack, how to plan the course, and how to learn the accompanying pedagogy.

There are two ways to create your coursepack. The easiest is to download the activities set as is, and add to it a course information page. The packet may then be taken to Bob's, Kinko's or the campus copying center (they're pretty slow) for duplication. Tell your students on the first day of class that they can buy coursepacks there. Also order a copy or two made for yourself (the cost will be spread among the students). You can use the activities in the order they appear in the coursepack; the instructor's guide will help you plan how much time to spend on each activity and what to expect. Make sure to bring copies of the activities sheets you'll need on the first day of class, since students won't have bought their coursepacks yet.

The second way to construct a coursepack is first to download all the course materials, then read through all the activities and decide which ones you want to use and in what order. Make a master copy of the activities in order, number the pages, and duplicate copies as before. The advantages of the second method are that you are forced to go through all the materials before the semester starts, that you will probably better internalize a sense of direction for the semester's curriculum, and that you will fee less bound to stick to someone else's ordering and topic selection. The disadvantages are that you have to renumber the pages, that you have to make a new table of contents, and that you might make errors in judgment about what to do in what order that will haunt you later. If you have previous experience with this sort of course, I recommend the second method; if not you should probably stick to the first method.