Developing "smart" Tutorial Tools to Assist Students Learn Calculus, Taking Account of Their Changing Preferred Approaches to Learning

We present the result of a small study where we investigate what types of resources current students of Mathematics and Mathematics for Engineering prefer for assisting them with their studies of those topics. We found that modern students seem to have a clear preference for on-line resources over traditional textbooks. However, there is currently a lack of good quality resources of that type which allow students to carry-out conventional mathematics exercises on-line and still get appropriate, meaningful and informative feedback on their answers. We then describe our efforts towards addressing this problem through the development of an “intelligent” tutorial system for Calculus which provides feedback tailored to the student’s responses, noting where and how they have made common errors.