View the Public Abstract and Additional Details of NSF-2538031
We seek volunteers who are currently teaching calculus in high school or at a college or university would like to involve their students in this NSF-sponsored research. For more information, please contact our teacher liaison Jeneva Clark!
Each year, approximately 800,000 US students enroll in calculus as foundational preparation for careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)
Traditional calculus instruction and assessment continue to emphasize low-level calculations that are rarely performed by STEM professionals
The broader/commercial impact of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is to modernize how calculus is taught and learned by addressing a growing mismatch between instructional practice and real-world problem solving
This project develops immersive learning exercises that allow students to make real-time problem-solving decisions while the software manages routine calculations
The proposed research constructs internally developed decision frameworks for individual calculus problems that encode multiple valid and invalid reasoning pathways under conditions of uncertainty
Students interact with these exercises by making continuous decisions in response to contextual prompts, with all actions, omissions, and timing information recorded as high-resolution behavioral traces
These traces are used to iteratively validate and refine the decision frameworks through controlled student testing
As data volume increases, machine learning methods will be applied to model strategy selection, detect shifts in conceptual understanding, and adapt instructional responses at the individual level
This project will demonstrate that formally structured, data-driven decision environments can support individualized calculus learning while generating actionable diagnostic insight, establishing feasibility for a proprietary, technically scalable instructional system
By year three, the technology is projected to impact tens of thousands of students nationwide, with outcomes measured through adoption rates and demonstrated improvements in problem-solving performance
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
