A common failing of these "for the people" guides is that they fail the most basic UX test: User observation.
When you build a UI, at some point you have to test it on actual people, observing them as they try to use it. Without fail, you'll discover a whole bunch of assumptions you'd made without even realizing it. It's only natural, since you've been working on this project for months and have intimate understanding that you've gained during your time of designs and rewrites and refactorings. But your user doesn't have that history, and you can't remember where common knowledge ends and your assumptions begin anymore. So you do observation tests to expose as many of these as you can.
If you want to make a "for the people" instructional site, it's imperative that you offer an easy feedback mechanism so that people can instantly tell you when something confuses them. Simply relying on success stories exposes you to survivorship bias. Understanding is a two-way street. Design your medium with that in mind, and do LOTS of iterations with real people.
Good point. I've put in a request with Geogebra for the feature.
In the meantime, I'm thinking of how I might hack it with what I have now by just using URLs attached to text like "Help me! I don't understand!" to out-of-book auxiliary resources to provide another perspective on some of the slipperiest topics (like "growth rate" vis-a-vis derivatives).
I really would like to know where people stumble with these activities... and then fix it. So that feature would be really helpful. Or if someone wants to copy this and change it themselves, go for it! I put this up on Geogebra because it is a fully open platform.
Which brings me to another reason for going with Geogebra: your point.
Geogebra books are a nice balance of free hosting, wide distribution, and a reasonably friendly UX format. That said, it's hardly perfect. But it offers me what I think is my best chance to fail fast, get feedback, and make changes with the approach to teaching calculus that I present in this book. But I want to fully acknowledge your point regarding UX. I absolutely agree. The "Geogebra Book" format has its limitations and introduced new assumptions along the way that make it harder for users. If nothing else, it's A BOOK. There is an inherent "one-way-ness" to it. I don't see that being as much of an issue as you, but I agree some of it needs to be broken down. How else will revisions make it into the book? That's the whole point of it being open.
As a sidenote: I also want to point out that I have tested these activities as best I can in a variety of LMSs and in a variety of classrooms from Ivy League students gunning for top marks to adult learners who "can't do math" and gave up on Calculus 20 years ago, but due to some reason or another now need to know it. This book is sort of the "least common denominator" of all these testings, and is itself a testing.
So... you're right! Thanks. Want to work together to test it more?
I've already changed it just from reading these comments, and I'd be really interested in continued revisions!
Actually I think that GeoGebra is by far the most intuitive and for-the-people that a math toolbox can be. When I picked it up in Highschool, I didn’t need to google a thing about it, contrary to the CAS Systems I use nowadays... (Maybe not a fair comparison)
Except that there's no "I don't understand" button where you can tell the author what you don't understand. So it's basically a one-way textbook with no feedback mechanism for the author to discover his assumptions and clarify them.
When you build a UI, at some point you have to test it on actual people, observing them as they try to use it. Without fail, you'll discover a whole bunch of assumptions you'd made without even realizing it. It's only natural, since you've been working on this project for months and have intimate understanding that you've gained during your time of designs and rewrites and refactorings. But your user doesn't have that history, and you can't remember where common knowledge ends and your assumptions begin anymore. So you do observation tests to expose as many of these as you can.
If you want to make a "for the people" instructional site, it's imperative that you offer an easy feedback mechanism so that people can instantly tell you when something confuses them. Simply relying on success stories exposes you to survivorship bias. Understanding is a two-way street. Design your medium with that in mind, and do LOTS of iterations with real people.