Clemson/Shodor
Building 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 Shodor
http://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 Flyer
Data Flyer Data Flyer
Histogram histogram
Plop Plop
Rabbits and WolvesRabbits and Wolves
Fire 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 - NewtonRhapson 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