The COVID-19 pandemic has made mathematical epidemiology a topic of critical importance, providing mathematics educators with an unparalleled opportunity. This opportunity is accompanied by a challenge: how do mathematics educators, some of whom have little personal experience with mathematical modeling, teach mathematical epidemiology to their…

We describe our approach to incorporating a civic engagement component into a quantitative literacy (QL) course and the resulting gains in student learning, confidence, and awareness of local civic issues. We revised the existing QL course by including semester-long group projects involving local community issues that students could investigate…

The study documents the extent to which high school teachers reflect on their need to revise and extend their mathematical and practicing knowledge. In this context, teachers worked on a set of tasks as a part of an inquiring community that promoted the use of different computational tools in problem solving approaches. Results indicated that the…

Solving indeterminate algebraic equations in integers is a classic topic in the mathematics curricula across grades. At the undergraduate level, the study of solutions of non-linear equations of this kind can be motivated by the use of technology. This article shows how the unity of geometric contextualization and spreadsheet-based amplification…

We discuss the introduction and teaching of partial differential equations (heat and wave equations) via modeling physical phenomena, using a new approach that encompasses constructing difference equations and implementing these in a spreadsheet, numerically solving the partial differential equations using the numerical differential equation…

Recently we were presented with an interesting twist to the sliding ladder problem viewed in the related rates section of most calculus textbooks. Our problem concerning a sliding ladder that eventually hits the ground. At first, those attempting this problem fell into the calculus trap using only related rates. Previous work for this problem…

We describe two classes of sequences that give rise to accessible problems for undergraduate research. These problems may be understood with virtually no prerequisites and are well suited for computer-aided investigation. The first sequence is a variation of one introduced by Stephen Wolfram in connection with his study of cellular automata. The…