Teaching Undergraduate Calculus at an Urban HBCU through a Global Pandemic

Abstract

Over the last decade, there has been a national effort to prepare a more diverse student population for success in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) careers. While there are a variety of best teaching practices in undergraduate STEM education, student engagement has been widely used to improve student learning. Specifically, it is important for students to have opportunities to practice or apply the theory they have learned in courses to real-world problems. Implementing active learning is one model that can be used to achieve this objective. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, professors have had to offer courses in online formats and determine how to continue to implement effective teaching strategies during this unprecedented time. Professors are anticipating the possibility of the need to continue offering courses in fully online and hybrid formats even in the future. With an emphasis on a STEM gateway course sequence, the aim of this paper is to highlight pre-COVID-19 research studies in online STEM education at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), explore how COVID-19 impacted students, teaching, and learning in undergraduate calculus courses, and outline opportunities for continuing to implement teaching techniques that work effectively for in-person and online calculus instruction.