Design

The following seven design criteria guide the development of all Project CLEAR Calculus materials:

Language, notation, and constructs used in the labs should be conceptually accessible to introductory calculus students.
The structure of students’ activity should reflect rigorous limit definitions and arguments without the language and symbolism of formal \(\epsilon\)-\(\delta\) and \(\epsilon\)-\(N\) notation that is a barrier to most calculus students’ understanding.
The labs should present a coherent approach across all concepts defined in terms of limits and effectively support students’ exploration into these concepts.
The central quantities and relationships developed in all labs should be coherent across representational systems (especially contextual, graphical, algebraic, and numerical representations).
All labs should foster quantitative reasoning and modeling skills required for STEM fields.
The sequence of labs should establish a strong conceptual foundation for subsequent rigorous development of real analysis.
All labs should be implemented following instructional techniques based on a constructivist theory of concept development.