Clemson/ShodorBuilding SMET Laptop Courses

Steve Stevenson

Steve@cs.clemson.edu

Dan Warner

Warner@math.clemson.edu

Introduction

• Opening Remarks

• Powerpointlessness

• Simple, effective, web-accessible tools for teaching lower division

• Developing modules/classes

• Play time

Shodor Connection

• This class is the outgrowth of fourteen years of teaching workshops to college faculty.

• The subject is computational science and engineering.

• Our motto is “Simple problems, well done.”

• Shodor has a huge online repository.

Segue to Shodorhttp://www.shodor.org/talks/modelingSX

Interactivate

Interactivate available from anywhere and we’ll make it available for CU laptops.

Interactivate

Categories

Segue to Dan

Segue to Steve

Our Approach to Development

• Inquiry-based / problem-based learning.

• Evidence-based reasoning

• Performance-based assessment.

Inquiry/Problem – Based

• Keep it simple, s-----.

• Make it a seminal problem, historically interesting but still an attention grabber.

• Pose problem with some rough edges so the students must first pose the question.

• Hold off on software until problem posed.

Simple, Effective Exercises

• Use Rabbits and Wolves to generate data– Experimental design– Observations– Plop and Histogram

• Function Flyer as a qualitative exploration of quantitative model.

Simple, Effective Exercises

• Birthday Exploration– Birthday month distribution from class.– Plop– Keep asking questions by changing data:

E.g: What happens if we add data higher than mean?

Evidence-Based Reasoning

• The answer is not done until the paperwork is done. It’s not enough to say the answer is 43.

• Exploration!

• Observation!

Performance Based Assessment

• Students can work at a high level with partners.

• But detail work must be done individually.

Hints

• They’re smarter than we give them credit for, but they’re more unsophisticated in science than we realize.

• Guided exploration but there will be a few bloody noses along the way.

Some Interactivate Tools

Function Flyer Function FlyerData Flyer Data FlyerHistogram histogramPlop Plop Rabbits and WolvesRabbits and WolvesFire Fire!

Some CSERD Resources

CSERD

• Many tutorials, our java applets and GUI tutorials.

Resources - Activities - Colors of Stars

• The model is fairly simple for this, but it illustrates a key misconception about what is meant by "red hot", "white hot", etc.

Resources - Activities - Space Ship Pilot

A game-like immersive environment in which the user can pilot one of two crafts, a space shuttle in a dock in space, or a boat on water. The idea is to look at Newton's laws with and without dispersive forces.

Resources - Activities - Pendulum Motion

• Comparison of small angle approximation solution of simple pendulum to real solution. The results for a pendulum starting nearly vertical are very counterintuitive, and nothing like the small angle approximation.

Resources - Models - Newton-Rhapson calculator

Solve coupled nonlinear equations using Newton-Rhapson method.

Resources - Models - Superposition of Waves

• New model, being developed for Capital University. Untested, but if people are willing to look at something new and give feedback, that would be nice.

The End…of the Beginning