Paradigms for Creating Activities that Integrate Mathematics and Science Topics

Research has shown that undergraduate students benefit from seeing examples of mathematics applied to real-world situations. This article describes three different paradigms for how math and discipline partner faculty worked together to create mathematical activities that illustrate applications of the topics being studied in precalculus and calculus. All three examples are discussed within the framework of PDSA cycles to describe the process by which the teams collaborated to plan, enact, study, and refine their lessons. Findings discuss both the difficulties of creating integrated activities (differences in terms and definitions between math and science faculty, different foregrounding of math versus science among faculty), and the value of the resultant lessons, such as increased level of student engagement, higher cognitive demand, and the role that relevant applications can play in piquing student interest in STEM.