Abstract

The Workshop will be fairly short and informal, with just a brief introduction by the convener. Books will be displayed, useful URLs exchanged, Maple Worksheets on disks copied. (Some of these will be re-cycled from a similar event, organised by CTImath with the the convener as the main worker, at the `2nd IMA Conference on Teaching of Mathematics to Engineers' Apr 97, Loughborough, England, April 97. But, please, ATCM97 participants, bring your own Maple Worksheets too.) Most importantly, Maple-in-teaching participants at ATCM97 will have the opportunity to meet each other.

The rest of the abstract answers `why' and offers clues to the focus of the Workshop. Maple is one of the CAS widely used in teaching (partly because it is widely used outside it). Maple V release 4 Worksheets allow mathematical word processing, including sectioning (like the Notebook capabilities in Mathematica) and hyperlinks. This opens the way to increased use in teaching (as well as outside it), including `electronic books', or tidily-organised `electronic accompaniments to textbooks'.

The opportunities are greater, but the medium now demands increasing effort to produce polished materials. Working lecturers have other demands on their time, and sharing materials has never been more important. Shared materials can be `commercial', where accompaniments to text books are allowed for classes which use the text, or just free exchange. Both categories will be represented at the `Exchange and Mart'.

There are opportunities for all in the new facilities of Maple V release 4.

• Students will benefit from improved materials.
• The old-hands at CAS-in-teaching may find places in teams writing materials, and, in the process, because of the more formal publication, be able to count the effort in applications for promotion, and funding, etc.. It is hoped that the `Exchange and Mart' will prove to be a place where people, who might subsequently find themselves in a team producing materials for appropriate books, might meet.
• Lecturers who have not found the time to write their own CAS materials will be able to choose texts with accompanying CAS materials, and students using the CAS will thereby find it easier to keep up, and develop their skills.
• As the book publishers producing accompaniments frequently produce materials for several different CAS, lecturers, like the convener, who face engineering maths classes where students might use either Mathematica or Maple, have materials available in parallel in different CAS.

A 1995 paper of the convener of this `Exchange and Mart' on teaching of engineering mathematics gives some of the thoughts of the convener. At that stage, PWS Notebook disks accompanying textbooks had just been introduced. The actual textbook chosen in the convener's projct may well have been an unfortunate choice as a more widely selling book with an identical title (`Advanced Engineering Mathematics') is now sold by PWS. Also, the Web is now the favoured medium of distribution rather than disk, particularly in more advanced areas. However, the general thrust of the 1995 paper remains true: sharing materials, with sharing in the effort of their production being facilitated by arranging that the materials accompany text books, is a way forward. One point of caution, appropriate to participants at ATCM97, is that it may well be that the mass-market lower-level US textbooks will have the CAS-accompaniment teams coordinated from the US. Initiation of (English-language) projects from outside the US, might succeed more easily when targeted at more advanced, specialised books.

Workshops

© Asian Technology Conference in Mathematics, 1997.