Precalculus for Team-Based Inquiry Learning: PREVIEW Edition — Instructor Version

We’re excited to share with you our first edition of Precalculus for Team-Based Inquiry Learning! These activities, which mostly cover topics from College Algebra, are being used in a few classrooms for the first time in Fall 2024. More activities are being designed to be included in our 2025 editions, with a goal of fully supporting Precalculus courses in Fall 2025. Similarly, our exercise bank is a work-in-progress.

We’re providing this first edition for those who are eager to try out TBIL in their precalculus classrooms, with the understanding that this book will likely change a lot between now and our next edition, once we’ve tried it in our own classrooms! Are you interested in joining the community using these materials, and possibly contributing back to these free and open-source resources? Join the conversation at http://chat.tbil.org; we look forward to hearing from you, particularly if you have feedback from your students on these activities.

The book is organized into Modules. You can think of a module as a chapter in a textbook.

In a TBIL course, each module starts with a Readiness Assurance Process to check understanding of and and solidify prerequisite knowledge (from other courses or previous modules) that will be needed in the upcoming module. The front page for each module provides a list of these Readiness Assurance outcomes, along with study resources and exercise students can use to refresh themselve on this prerequisite knowledge. Readiness Assurance Tests that assess this knowledge are available as part of the TBIL Resource Libary (see TBIL Resource Library). Join the TBIL community (see Community and Support) to gain access to these.

Within each module there is a varying amount of sections, one per learning outcome. Each section is designed to guide students into being able to demonstrate their understanding of that specific outcome. The learning outcome can be tested with a CheckIt Exercise, which are linked at the end of each section.

Within each section, students engage in Activities, which are interpersed with definitions, theorems, remarks, examples, etc. as needed to guide the learning process. The activities start in an exploratory way then building the concepts on the results of this exploration. The concepts are then practiced with less scaffolding to build fluency. Finally, towards the end of the section we connect the concepts and extend them to new settings.

Each section/learning outcome is designed with an exercise, a specific set of tasks, that the students need to be able to solve to demonstrate their competency. Virtually limitless randomized versions of the exercise can be generated via CheckIt to build a problem bank and allow for reassessment.

If you are adopting this text in your class, please fill out this short form

⁵

forms.gle/Ktfbma6iBn2gN1W78

so we can track usage, let you know about updates, etc.

Implementation of these materials is supported by a TBIL community of practice which offers both formal and informal professional devlopment opportunities. The best way to connect with us is on our Slack workspace

⁶

chat.tbil.org/

.

These materials are a product of our TBIL community. Feedback and suggestions for improvements are most welcome, either through our GitHub Repository

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github.com/TeamBasedInquiryLearning/library

or the Slack workspace

⁸

chat.tbil.org/

.