Engineering Commons^™

What Is The Derivative Of Music?, Thad B. Welch, Cameron H.G. Wright, Michael G. Morrow

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

In our continuing effort to prove to students that Signals & Systems is not just another mathematics course taught by the ECE Department, we ask the question, “What is the Derivative of Music?”

The first-order difference (or first-difference) is an incredibly simple algorithm that very accurately approximates the numeric derivative operator, especially for oversampled signals. Its inverse also accurately approximates the numeric integration operator, but not without numeric difficulty.

Given a real-time demonstration using winDSK8, we can now show students that these mathematical operators provide powerful signal processing filtering tools for real-world signals.

During this ASEE session, we will include …

Calculus Reform: Increasing Stem Retention And Post-Requisite Course Success While Closing The Retention Gap For Women And Underrepresented Minority Students, Doug Bullock, Janet Callahan, Jocelyn B. S. Cullers

Mathematics Faculty Publications and Presentations

Boise State University (BSU) implemented an across-the-board reform of calculus instruction during the 2014 calendar year. The details of the reform, described elsewhere (Bullock, 2015), (Bullock 2016), involve both pedagogical and curricular reform. Gains from the project have included a jump in Calculus I pass rate, greater student engagement, greater instructor satisfaction, a shift toward active learning pedagogies, and the emergence of a strong collaborative teaching community. This paper examines the effects of the reform on student retention. Since the curricular reform involved pruning some content and altering course outcomes, which could conceivably have negative downstream impacts, we report on …

Longitudinal Success Of Calculus I Reform, Doug Bullock, Kathrine E. Johnson, Janet Callahan

Mathematics Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper describes the second year of an ongoing project to transform calculus instruction at Boise State University. Over the past several years, Calculus I has undergone a complete overhaul that has involved a movement from a collection of independent, uncoordinated, personalized, lecture-based sections, into a single coherent multi-section course with an activelearning pedagogical approach. The overhaul also significantly impacted the course content and learning objectives. The project is now in its fifth semester and has reached a steady state where the reformed practices are normative within the subset of instructors who might be called upon to teach Calculus I. …