Nationally, what would our DFW rates look like if every college calc course kept the same tempo, but ran 5x/wk with facilitated practice? Most, if not all, places are making their cadence decisions on physical resource limitations and expense. Not bc there is a pedagogical reason for it.

A ton. A metric ton. Like sometimes when I am standing there w the chalk, & I think about the first time I was exposed to all of these individual moves within a problem, it is staggering to think about how much we are drawing on across how many years of education.

In the broader (non Harvard) scheme of things, we have a nationwide problem of college-level calc 1 passing rates and we teach people what can only be described as Frankensteinian coverage of disjointed “precalc” ideas at least a year prior in high school …could possibly go wrong.

Small world! And I appreciate your take on the integration (lol) of precalc & calc - I had not seen it done before I first taught in Math M 12y ago. It was a big 💡 moment for me as an instructor & gave me the opportunity to make the connections bt precalc & calc explicit right w the content coverage

As the person whose course is at the center of this unfortunate situation, this gave me a good chuckle and I thank you 💛

As the person teaching said course, I appreciate this post! Thank you for contributing to the clarification. (Though I also want to voice my support for anyone in a remedial math course at their college or university!)

Can confirm! Thanks for posting about this.

Truly appreciate this post! The first time I taught Math M, I felt the same way. The way the material is presented would’ve helped directly address several of my missing connections and misconceptions within the material.