Highlights of Calculus is a series of short videos that introduces the basic ideas of calculus — how it works and why it is important. The purpose of these videos is to help students understand several basic concepts of Calculus. In addition to the videos, there are summary slides and practice problems complete with an audio narration.
Type of Material:
Tutorials
Recommended Uses:
This site can be used for self-guided student explorations, as a refresher, or to accompany a standard Calculus course
Technical Requirements:
Java-enabled browser and a Flash player.
Identify Major Learning Goals:
To provide a better understanding for basic Calculus concepts.
Target Student Population:
Students in the first semester (quarter) of Calculus.
Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:
Pre-Calculus
Content Quality
Rating:
Strengths:
This site contains a collection of 5 overview (“big picture”) videos and another group of 12 videos focusing on the topics in differential calculus. The videos are matched with topics of most available Calculus textbooks, including an open source textbook written by the author of these videos. There is also a link on the side of each video which takes a student to a slide set containing summary slides and practice problems. The problems range in difficulty, but most of them are related to the material discussed in the videos. By design, these video lessons do not require much of prerequisite material. The videos are all closed captioned and the full transcripts are available for reading.
Concerns:
No major concerns.
Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool
Rating:
Strengths:
This site is a good supplement to any calculus textbook. The length of each video is long enough to develop a topic fully but not too long to discourage the viewer. It could also be easily used as a part of self-guided study of the Calculus I topics discussed or for a flipped course in calculus. The site should be really helpful to students who are visual learners.
Concerns:
The number of topics is limited. It would be nice to see more videos to appear.
Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty
Rating:
Strengths:
Provided that all the necessary plug-in are installed, the site is intuitive and very easy to use. The links are well thought out and the navigation of the site is simple. The instructions are clearly presented with video and speech. Text transcripts are available as well. Extra materials such as audio narrated slides are available from a side tab of each video.
Concerns:
It appears that playing audio narrated slides require an extra decoder to be downloaded in addition to a standard Adobe reader.
Creative Commons:
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