We introduce learning modules in cryptography that can be crafted to motivate many abstract mathematical ideas, and we illustrate with a sample module. These modules can be used in a variety of ways, such as the core for a cryptography course or as motivating topics in other courses such as abstract and linear algebra or number theory.

The integration of biology with mathematics and computer science mandates the training of students capable of comfortably navigating among these fields. We address this formidable pedagogical challenge with the creation of transdisciplinary modules that guide students toward solving realistic problems with methods from different disciplines.…

Finite Mathematics has become an enormously rich and productive area of contemporary mathematical biology. Fortunately, educators have developed educational modules based upon many of the models that have used Finite Mathematics in mathematical biology research. A sufficient variety of computer modules that employ graph theory (phylogenetic trees,…

This paper describes the development and implementation of course modules intended to encourage creative thinking in an undergraduate general education mathematics course. The modules were designed to address the characteristics of creativity outlined in the literature through explorations of mathematics relevant to non-mathematics majors. A…

Educational modules can play an important part in revitalizing the teaching and learning of complex analysis. At the Westmont College workshop on the subject in June 2014, time was spent generating ideas and creating structures for module proposals. Sharing some of those ideas and giving a few example modules is the main purpose of this paper. The…

Oulipo (Ouvroir de Littérature potentielle, or Workshop on potential literature), an over 50-year old movement that began in France, seeks to apply mathematical constraints to literature and the arts. In this article, I will give a brief survey of this movement and how I have built a learning module based on it for my mathematics for the liberal…

This project was designed to be used in a freshman calculus class whose students had already been introduced to logistic functions and basic data modeling techniques. It need not be limited to such an audience, however; it has also been implemented in a topics in mathematics class for college upperclassmen. Originally intended to be presented in…

As part of an integrative learning experience at the end of a sophomore Calculus II course at the United States Military Academy, this project served as a multidisciplinary problem-solving exercise that explored the connections among mathematics, biology, and other fields of study. During a seven-lesson block of instruction, this module was…