| | | About the course |
This course began life at Texas A&M University in 1995. The idea behind the course was to provide graduate students in the Department of Mathematics with skills for a successful career both in graduate school and beyond.
Traditionally, students (and faculty!) had been left on their own to develop computer knowledge, writing style, and pedagogical ability at happenstance. Several professors conspired to implement the then radical idea of teaching students the skills they are required to know. This course is the result.
The course content is determined in part by the computer facilities easily available to students in the Department of Mathematics at Texas A&M University. The department has standardized on the Unix operating system with the X-Windows graphical interface, but all of the tools needed in the course have analogues available on other platforms. As far as computerized mathematics goes, Maple gets primary attention, for Maple is used intensively in the first two years of undergraduate engineering mathematics classes at Texas A&M University, and many graduate students serve as teaching assistants for these classes.
During the regular semester, the course typically runs in a workshop format, meeting for one three-hour session each week in a computer laboratory equipped with high-resolution color monitors. The connection to the Internet is fast, and hard copy can be queued to a printer in a nearby room. Since the course is online, distance education students are welcome to enroll and to complete the course without being present on campus.
The mathematical prerequisite for the course is graduate classification in mathematics or in a related field; or permission of the instructor. While mathematics per se is not the focus of the course, it is assumed that students are conversant with calculus: successful communication requires that the parties involved have a common language.
On-campus students need have no prior computer experience, as the instructor can help them get started with the equipment available in the classroom. Distance education students need some basic computer literacy: they must be able to send the instructor e-mail, use a web browser to access the course material, and have a place to post a personal web page.
The Math 696 course
pages were last modified April 5, 2005. | | | About the course |