Grantee: Dr Jonathan Shock
Position: Senior Lecturer
Department: Mathematics and Applied Mathematics
Course: Mathematics and Applied Mathematics
Degree level: Undergraduate
Open textbook chapter: Introduction to Complex Numbers

Read about Jonathan's Open Textbook Journey

 

Motivated by the ambition to open people’s minds and expand their worldview

The “Mathematics Textbooks for South Africa” initiative, led by Prof Jonathan Shock and Dr Claire Blackman in the Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics at UCT, had two branches aimed at different levels of undergraduate mathematics.  

Prof Shock’s branch of the initiative was aimed was aimed at the “Mathematics 1000” (MAM1000W) first-year course.  

For well over a decade, the same textbook was used for this course. The textbook was expensive, the content was written for a North American audience and it only covered mathematics development in Western Europe. 

The aim of Jonathan’s open textbook project was to write a first chapter for a book developed purely within UCT, which would be openly licensed, culturally and linguistically inclusive and tailored for the South African school-leaver. 

Prof Jonathan Shock was a senior lecturer in the Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics in the Faculty of Science at UCT at the time of receiving the DOT4D grant in 2019.