Development of Educational Software for Cellular Biophysics

托马斯·F·韦斯将于9455337财年交付麻省理工学院$150,000马萨诸塞州坎布里奇市021394307课程和课程生命科学标题：细胞生物物理学软件本项目的目的是使教育软件和方法广泛应用于细胞生物物理学的教学。10年来，麻省理工学院工程和科学专业的大三学生一直在使用软件教授细胞生物物理学。该软件用于课堂演示、在电子教室举办的特别复习课程、作为家庭作业的基础，以及用于学生定义的更深入的研究项目。该软件的使用极大地提高了学生对细胞生物物理学主题的兴趣和理解。所有软件都是由学生程序员开发的，目前只能在麻省理工学院的Unix工作站上使用。软件是用C和XWindows编写的。在当前的项目中，本科生和研究生正在将该软件转换为在供应商分布式计算和可视化软件包(MAT实验室)下运行，该软件包可在所有常见的计算机平台上使用，包括Macintoshes、运行Microsoft Windows的PC和运行XWindows的Unix工作站。这种转换使学生和教师可以更容易地定制软件以供自己使用，并极大地方便了教师的软件维护。正在出版一本软件教科书，并分发该软件的软盘。该软件和软件教科书将与正在准备的细胞生物物理学新教科书相辅相成。这一组合将为工程和科学专业的学生提供一套新的细胞生物物理学教学材料。这种方法是提供严格、深入的数学处理，以及细胞生物物理的重要生物、化学和物理原理的电子基础。该软件与软件文本一起，允许学生和教职员工以新的方式探索这些原则。

Thomas F. Weiss DUE 9455337 Massachusetts Institute of Technology FY1995 $ 150,000 Cambridge , MA 021394307 Course and Curriculum Life Sciences Title: Cellular Biophysics Software The purpose of this project is to make educational software and methodologies for its use in teaching cellular biophysics widely available. Software has been used for 10 years to teach cellular biophysics to juniors majoring in engineering and science at MIT. The software is used in lecture demonstrations, special recitation classes held in electronic classrooms, as a basis of homework assignments, and for more intensive research projects defined by students. Use of the software has greatly enhanced students' interest in and comprehension of topics in cellular biophysics. All the software has been developed by student programmers and is currently available only on UNIX workstations at MIT. The software is written in C and XWindows. In the current project undergraduates and graduate students are converting this software to run under a vendor distributed computation and visualization software package (MAT LAB) which is available on all the common computer platforms including Macintoshes, PCs running Microsoft Windows, and UNIX workstations running XWindows. The conversion allows students and instructors to more readily customize the software for their own use, and greatly facilitates software maintenance for faculty. A software textbook is being published and distributed with floppy disks of the software. The software and software textbook will be companions to a new textbook on cellular biophysics that is in preparation. The combination should provide a new set of educational materials for teaching cellular biophysics to students in engineering and science. The approach is to provide rigorous, in-depth mathematical treatments as well as the e mpirical basis of important biological, chemical, and physical principles of cell biophysics. The software together with the software text allows students and faculty to explore these principles in new ways.