The Huntington News. September 21, 2009.
Some calculus texts go digital.
By Jenna Haines
Some students taking Calculus 1 do not have to lug around a traditional textbook this semester. Mathematics professor David Massey has published an e-textbook covering the material. Massey founded the Worldwide Center for Mathematics (WCM) in 2008 to provide a low-cost textbook option for students with a tight budget. “Worldwide Differential Calculus” contains a print text, an online version in PDF form, a DVD of prerecorded lectures about the material, and an additional study guide and solution manual. All of these features can be purchased independently, the textbook for between $40 and $50, and the DVD for $12.50, said Elgin Stallard, a 1999 Northeastern alumnus and business manager of WCM.
Students can buy only what they need and at prices almost 50 percent lower than conventional textbooks, Stallard said. “Our goal is to give a better learning platform and provide better pricing,” Stallard says. “We want to give students an option so they are not forced to buy what they don’t need.”
Professor Robert Case, who teaches Calculus 1 for Science and Engineering, has incorporated the textbook into his curriculum, using it as a supplementary text mostly for his honors section. While Case said that he sees benefits to this text, he said there are also some drawbacks of electronic texts. “The technology can be helpful in many ways, as was Gutenberg’s printing technology, especially in the form of creating access of many more people to knowledge,” Case wrote in an e-mail. “But we haven’t yet begun to understand how to use this in a truly wise way yet.”
Elgin Stallard said other universities in the area are also using this book as a reference for students.
The textbook is designed so professors can customize it to fit their teaching style and even record their own lectures to make available for students. This offers a new tool for professors.
The e-book is the company’s first publication. Three additional mathematics texts will be released in the future including multi-variable calculus, linear algebra, and differential equations. Stallard said that he thinks e-textbooks will be available for all subjects. But he said his company plans to stay in the science and mathematics field.
Students and professors are skeptical about relying on the Internet as the primary medium for textbooks.
“I think [electronic textbooks] provide a lot of opportunities for interactive learning that hard copy texts do not. On the other hand, faculty often distrust a new technology, so we may be slow in replacing our familiar hard copy textbooks,” math Professor Robert McOwen wrote in an e-mail to The News.
David Hoch, a freshman industrial engineering in Case’s class, said “it’s easier to have the book open” when studying.
Brandon Poulin, also a freshman mechanical engineering in Case’s class wrote in an e-mail that he had “mixed feelings” about the new e-textbooks.
“Most of its convenience comes from being able to paste information into word documents and the ability to print out specific pages,” he said. “At the same time, it is sometimes time consuming having to go on the computer every time I have to access the book. Overall, I would stick with the regular books. They should also be offered online so we can access them without taking our books everywhere or if we just want to print out one or two pages from the text.”
The Worldwide Center of Mathematics, LLC, announces the release of Worldwide Differential Calculus - the first in a series of revolutionary e-textbooks
Cambridge, MA- August 19, 2009- Announcing the immediate availability of the first free e-textbook from the Worldwide Center of Mathematics, LLC: Worldwide Differential Calculus. This full-color, extensively hyperlinked PDF, with pop-up margin comments, can be downloaded free from www.centerofmath.com . Students may also download free video files, in which the author lectures on each section of the textbook. The e-textbook is written in an expository style, but with fully rigorous mathematics. The more cumbersome technical details are relegated to the Technical Matters sections at the ends of chapters.
The textbook is available for purchase in a bound, full-color, printed version, with an accompanying DVD containing the video lectures; the price for this printed version, with videos, is less than half of the common price for a current Calculus textbook. Students may also purchase, on DVD's, a study guide, a solution manual, the PDF textbook and video lectures, or the PDF textbook with the videos embedded into the PDF. Faculty and/or departments may license the source files to produce their own customized versions of Worldwide Differential Calculus, which may then be distributed freely to students, or at a profit to the departments or schools.
About the author:
David B. Massey was born in Jacksonville, Florida in 1959. He attended Duke University as an undergraduate mathematics major from 1977 to 1981, graduating summa cum laude. He remained at Duke as a graduate student from 1981 to 1986. He received his Ph.D. in mathematics in 1986 for his results in the area of complex analytic singularities.
Professor Massey taught for two years at Duke as a graduate student, and then for two years, 1986-1988, as a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Notre Dame. In 1988, he was awarded a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, and went to conduct research on singularities at Northeastern University. In 1991, he assumed a regular faculty position in the Mathematics Department at Northeastern. He has remained at Northeastern University ever since, where he is now a Full Professor.
Professor Massey has won awards for his teaching, both as a graduate student and as a faculty member at Northeastern. He has published 32 research papers, and two research-level books. In addition, he was a chapter author of the national award-winning book on teaching: ``Dear Jonas: What can I say?, Chalk Talk: E-advice from Jonas Chalk, Legendary College Teacher'', edited by D. Qualters and M. Diamond, New Forums Press, (2004).
Future e-textbooks:
Worldwide Integral Calculus, the second e-textbook from the Worldwide Center of Mathematics, LLC, will be available in the winter of 2010. This will be followed by a series of undergraduate e-textbooks on multi-variable Calculus, linear algebra, differential equations, etc., as well as test-preparation e-books, aimed at prospective undergraduate, graduate, and professional school students.
The Worldwide Center of Mathematics, LLC, launches the
Journal of Singularities
Cambridge, MA- May 1, 2009- Today, the Worldwide Center of Mathematics, LLC, launched their first online journal: the Journal of Singularities. The Journal of Singularities is a refereed, online-only, journal of research articles on all aspects of the theory of singularities of spaces and maps. Our Editorial Board consists of world-renowned research mathematicians from this field and can be accessed at www.journalofsing.org and will be offered to the mathematics community at no-charge.
About the founding editor:
David B. Massey was born in Jacksonville, Florida in 1959. He attended Duke University as an undergraduate mathematics major from 1977 to 1981, graduating summa cum laude. He remained at Duke as a graduate student from 1981 to 1986. He received his Ph.D. in mathematics in 1986 for his results in the area of complex analytic singularities.
Professor Massey taught for two years at Duke as a graduate student, and then for two years, 1986-1988, as a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Notre Dame. In 1988, he was awarded a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, and went to conduct research on singularities at Northeastern University. In 1991, he assumed a regular faculty position in the Mathematics Department at Northeastern. He has remained at Northeastern University ever since, where he is now a Full Professor.
Professor Massey has won awards for his teaching, both as a graduate student and as a faculty member at Northeastern. He has published 32 research papers, and two research-level books. In addition, he was a chapter author of the national award-winning book on teaching: ``Dear Jonas: What can I say?, Chalk Talk: E-advice from Jonas Chalk, Legendary College Teacher'', edited by D. Qualters and M. Diamond, New Forums Press, (2004).
The Worldwide Center of Mathematics, LLC, moves into new headquarters in Cambridge, MA
Cambridge, MA- December 18, 2009- The Worldwide Center of Mathematics, LLC, moves into its new headquarters and studio seminar room: 929 Massachusetts Avenue, Suite 102, Cambridge, MA 02139. Securing this location in-between Harvard and MIT, as well as being central to other area Colleges and Universities, is core to the mission of working with and fostering relationships with these organizations.
About the Worldwide Center of Mathematics, LLC:
The Worldwide Center of Mathematics, LLC was founded in the fall of 2008 by David B. Massey, an award-winning professor, with 26 years of college teaching experience, and a leading research mathematician in the area of singularities.
In addition to producing and publishing multimedia textbooks, the Center performs other free services for the mathematical community, such as a providing a freely-accessible mathematics journal, and recording and freely-distributing, via the Web, research lectures which are given before live audiences in our studio classroom. In the future, we hope to provide other services, such as walk-in tutoring for students in the greater-Boston area, and 24/7 online mathematics help.
About the founder:
David B. Massey was born in Jacksonville, Florida in 1959. He attended Duke University as an undergraduate mathematics major from 1977 to 1981, graduating summa cum laude. He remained at Duke as a graduate student from 1981 to 1986. He received his Ph.D. in mathematics in 1986 for his results in the area of complex analytic singularities.
Professor Massey taught for two years at Duke as a graduate student, and then for two years, 1986-1988, as a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Notre Dame. In 1988, he was awarded a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, and went to conduct research on singularities at Northeastern University. In 1991, he assumed a regular faculty position in the Mathematics Department at Northeastern. He has remained at Northeastern University ever since, where he is now a Full Professor.
Professor Massey has won awards for his teaching, both as a graduate student and as a faculty member at Northeastern. He has published 32 research papers, and two research-level books. In addition, he was a chapter author of the national award-winning book on teaching: ``Dear Jonas: What can I say?, Chalk Talk: E-advice from Jonas Chalk, Legendary College Teacher'', edited by D. Qualters and M. Diamond, New Forums Press, (2004).
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