Math Education at a Crossroads : A project at LearningLab DTU

The proposed work is grouped roughly under 3 headings into a number of interrelated assets, all of which are derived from the main intension: To report from, to support, and to develop the first-year course Math1 (Advanced Enginee-ring Mathematics 1) at DTU. Since its formation 6 years ago a number of interes-ting valuable assets concerning undergraduate math education in general have emerged. Therefore, yet another intension with this project is to export these concrete findings and results as clearly as possible into the everlasting effort and discussion concerning the fundamental quest: How to teach what when – and why? However, the main workload in the project will, after due deliberation, be on the topics concerning support and development.
With an enrolment of 550 students once a year the course Math1 is one of the largest courses at university level in Denmark. Some parts of the project are concerned with course architecture, main goals, and competence developments in general, whereas other parts are concerned with quite specific and somewhat more technical topics of special interest to the present author. These latter topics include e.g. the integration of Computer Algebra (or Analysis) Systems into first year university courses, the rôle of proof, and the (somewhat miserable) state of the fine arts of teaching and learning as far as Gauss' divergence theorem and Stokes' theorem are concerned.