Symbolic Algebra in the Engineering Classroom: The Coming Revolution

该项目开发了一种课程创新，有望提高学生的理解能力、生产力和课堂参与度，并将课堂的重点转移到更开放、更面向设计的问题上。所需要的设备是运行Mathematica的30台功能强大的工作站。本教室/实验室用于教授一年制高二年级的电气工程、电路与系统课程。最近nsf资助的项目（包括我们学校和其他学校）表明，在配备计算机代数的教室里学习微积分和微分方程的学生提高了生产力、理解力和参与度。在工程教室安装工作站可以让学生积极地参与讲课。强大的绘图程序使他们能够可视化电路中电压、电流等之间的关系。计算机代数系统处理符号方程的能力既提高了学生的生产力，又减少了课堂上重新教授操作数学技能的时间。这些额外的讲座时间用于解决以设计为导向的主题，如最坏情况研究和敏感性分析。最后，工程专业的学生保留率预计会增加，因为那些数学操作能力较弱的学生将处于较小的劣势，因此不太可能辍学。

This project develops a curriculum innovation that promises to increase student understanding, productivity, and participation in the classroom and shift the focus of the class to more open- ended and design-oriented problems. The equipment requested are 30 powerful workstations running Mathematica. This classroom/laboratory is used to teach a year long, Sophomore level, Electrical Engineering, Circuits & Systems class sequence.Recent NSF-funded projects (both on our campus and others) have shown that students learning calculus and differential equations in computer algebra equipped classrooms have increased productivity, understanding, and participation. Installing workstations in an engineering classroom allows students to participate actively in the lectures. The powerful plotting routines allows them to visualize the relationships between voltages, currents, etc in a circuit. The computer algebra system's ability to manipulate symbolic equations both increases the student's productivity and requires less time in the lecture for re-teaching manipulative mathematics skills. This extra lecture time is used to address design-oriented topics such as worst-case studies and sensitivity analysis. Finally, student retention in engineering is expected to increase since those students who have weaker manipulative mathematical skills will be at less of a disadvantage, and therefore less likely to drop out.