The Connected Curriculum Project is the result of a happy meeting of a new medium -- the World Wide Web -- with some old ideas. Many of us who have been actively involved in the Calculus Reform movement have had three goals.

• To break down the barriers between disciplines. We believe that mathematics is best studied in the context of the real problems it was developed to study -- the same problems that most of our students eventually want to solve. By studying mathematics in context students learn more about doing mathematics; they learn more about our world; and they are better prepared to use mathematics effectively outside the mathematics classroom. We also believe that mathematics is an essential language for studying other subjects and that it should be routinely used across the curriculum. Our goal is Mathematics Across the Curriculum.

• To engage our students in active learning.

• To help our students and, equally importantly, ourselves to develop a sense of ownership in our classes.

The architecture of the World Wide Web is ideally suited to these long-standing goals.

• Browsers like NetScape are designed to encourage very active and interactive use. We use a browser as a conductor orchestrating the usual mix of text, graphics, movies, and sound with helper applications like Mathematica, Maple, and TI-Graph LINK. In a typical mathematics lab session, for example, students go back-and-forth between their browser window, their CAS window, and "hands-on" laboratory equipment, exploring real phenomena, mathematical models, and the mathematics underlying the models at the same time.

• The hypertext structure of material on the web emphasizes links and connections rather than compartmentalization. Students starting with material in one subject will find themselves following links to other subjects.

• The hypertext structure of material on the web emphasizes choice. By choosing applications and examples that interest them and by selecting background material that they need, students construct their own individualized course tailored to their own interests and background.

• The malleability of web-based material encourages multiple authorship and, most importantly, multiple ownership. Web-based courses are living courses, evolving as our world evolves.

The goal of the Connected Curriculum Project is a massive amount of highly interconnected Web-based material across the curriculum that will support learning with bridges rather than barriers.

We expect our material will be used in various ways.

• It can be used as supplementary material for existing courses, using currently available textbooks.

• It can be used to support new courses that draw material from several different fields.

• It can be used by students on their own to supplement and complement material in their individual classes and to help them see the connections between courses and fields that are often overlooked in a departmentalized university.

This material can also be used in different settings.

• In a regularly scheduled laboratory component for a traditionally structured class.

• In a self-scheduled laboratory component for a traditionally structured class. Because CCP is Web-based students can do their lab work at many sites on campus or even at home or in their dorms -- wherever they have Web access and the required helper applications and lab equipment.

• In a course where some traditional lecturing is replaced by group work wuth students working at workstations that include computers and lab equipment with an instructor circulating in the lab working with students in small groups.

• By students who choose to use CCP as an additional resource -- working individually or in groups at home, in their dorms, or in open labs.