Invitation to participate in a study as a textbook tester

[Mathematics Education Researchers (MER) community]

FWD message: Vilma Mesa

Dear Colleagues,

The PreTeXt-Runestone: Open Textbooks Engaging Undergraduates in STEM (PROTEUS) study involves collaborators across multiple institutions to investigate how interactive questions in calculus and linear algebra textbooks are used by teachers and students. We are in the process of adding reading questions, Parsons problems, and matching exercises to four textbooks:Active Calculus, APEX Calculus, First Course in Linear Algebra, and Understanding Linear Algebra. These textbooks are hosted on the Runestone Academy platform. We are seeking instructor participants planning to or interested in teaching with A First Course in Linear Algebra (FCLA) in Spring 2026.

Year 2 participants will be asked to use the textbook via Runestone and to assign our newly developed interactive questions to their students. There will be an on-boarding meeting, an exit meeting, and a few surveys about how you used the questions and on how you perceive that students learn the material through the use of the questions. Your students are invited to answer additional questions and they will be invited to provide feedback on the questions (you do not need to recruit them). Instructors will be compensated $1,000. This study is funded by the National Science Foundation. More information can be found here.  

If you are already planning to use FCLA or are considering doing so and are interested in giving your feedback on the new questions, please contact Vilma Mesa, vm...@umich.edu and Rasha Abadir (rab...@umich.edu) at the University of Michigan. We are happy to answer any questions you may have. 

Sincerely,

Vilma Mesa

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Vilma Mesa
Professor, Marsal Family School of Education and Mathematics, College of Literature, Sciences, and the Arts

 Faculty Associate, Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education

.coEditor-in-Chief, Educational Studies in Mathematics610 East University, SEB 3119; Ann Arbor, MI, 48109-1259
Tel: (734) 647 0628 - Fax: (734) 936 1606 - Email:vm...@umich.edu. Visit my website.

The University of Michigan is located on the traditional territory of the Anishinaabe people.  In 1817, the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Bodewadami Nations made the largest single land transfer to the University of Michigan. This was offered ceremonially as a gift through the Treaty at the Foot of the Rapids so that their children could be educated. Through these words of acknowledgment, their contemporary and ancestral ties to the land and their contributions to the University are renewed and reaffirmed.