In 1999, I obtained a contract to develop a distance education version of a Calculus I course (differential calculus). For various reasons (mainly unsupported or unworkable technologies, an obligatory move to an inappropriate text, and time conflicts), I eventually gave up the contract without completing the project beyond what is described here.

To enable the students to work with the mathematical content of the course, I planned for students in the course to use a computer algebra system called LiveMath . Unlike most computer algebra systems, LiveMath is designed for students: it performs some of the details of the calculations on its own, but for the most part, insists that the student decide which steps of those calculations to carry out – which steps to simplify and algebraic expression, for example. It can also graph functions in two and three variables, allow multiple graphs on the same axes and allow customization of the visual appearance of the graphs. My plan was to produce appropriate LiveMath files linked from the course pages via the icon , and to provide opportunities for LiveMath exploration of functions, graphs and other objects. This turned out to be the most workable part of the course.

An expected component of the project was some means of communicating online with the course tutors for questions and other help. For mathematical materials, this expectation raises major challenges, even now. The biggest problem is communicating mathematical text and diagrams between the course tutors and the students. There are (and were then) online versions of whiteboards; even so, it’s difficult to write mathematics with a mouse, or even with a graphics tablet and stylus (which, in any case, the students could not be required to buy).

The other telecommunication parts of the course (mailing list, discussion groups, etc.) were a bit more do-able, though at the time, we had no comprehensive course management system to work with. (WebCT arrived only later.) A mailing list, discussion groups and so on could be set up individually by the appropriate technical support people, however there still remained the issue of producing and transmitting mathematical text and diagrams in those contexts.

The major impediment to course development, however, was that, in addition to the online content (in the form of interactive downloadable PDF files), a print version of the course materials was required, and that print version had to be produced in Microsoft Word. I’d never used Word before, and soon found myself spending well over half my time either fixing the arbitrary changes that Word decided to make on its own or recovering un-openable files that it had corrupted. Word could not really handle files with many embedded graphics; it repeatedly and inexplicably moved all graphics to the top of the each page. Unfortunately, the graphics were essential: every piece of mathematical text had to be produced as a graphic in MathType and imported. Eventually the Word-only restriction was lifted (the plan was then to convert the files I produced in AppleWorks into Word), but by then, other factors intervened and killed the project altogether.

In retrospect, the project as envisioned was rather overly-ambitious and under-supported, given the restrictions imposed and the limited resources available. Eventually, the technical, workload and authoring support problems escalated well beyond what I could reasonably manage and I abandoned the contract. What remains is a demo I produced for the distance education people showing how such a course could work, in an ideal word with sufficient resources and support to develop it. (Note that only Lesson 3.1 of the demo has content.) There's also a full PDF of Chapter 3.