An Introductory Calculus Course for Management Majors

The purpose of this study was the development of
a one trimester calculus course to meet the special
needs of management majors at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical
University. A traditional calculus course was previously
required of these students and the traditional course
provided subjects for the control group in a pretestposttest
quasi-experimental design.
The experimental course that was developed was
different from the traditional course that it was designed
to replace in several major respects. The slope
of a tangent line and the area under a curve as motivation
for the derivative and definite integral, respectively,
in the traditional course were replaced with examples
that seem more relevant to management students. The
concept of a limit is nearly eliminated from the experimental course. Intuitive arguments are used instead of
formal proofs as are given or cited in a traditional
course.
The achievement of an experimental group who took
the experimental course was compared with the achievement
of a control group who took the traditional calculus
course offered for management majors. Achievement was
measured by final examination scores and course grades.
When these measures of achievement were statistically
adjusted for initial differences in the control and
experimental groups, using prerequisite course grades,
the experimental group was significantly above (p < .01)
the control group.