PROCEEDINGS OF THE 21ST ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION
2018
San Diego, California
Stepping Through the Proof Door: Undergraduates’ Experience One Year After an Introduction to Proof Course
Page: 492
Navigating the transition from computing to proof writing remains a key challenge for mathematics departments and undergraduate students. Numerous departments have developed courses to introduce students to the nature of proof and effective argument (David & Zazkis, 2017), but research assessing the impact of these courses has just begun. This paper reports the experience of four introduction to proof “graduates” after they completed a semester of real analysis. Each had participated in our prior study of students’ experience in the introduction to proof course. Results indicate that students’ success in real analysis was supported by their work in the introduction to proof course. Two students exploited the structure common to many proofs in real analysis; the other two relied on extensive practice with example problems. For both pairs, we see linkages between students’ work in real analysis and their prior procedurally-oriented work in mathematics.