Title:   Introduction to Mathematica - a College Course

Name:           Thomas A. Roman

Affiliation:    Dept. of Mathematical Sciences, Central Connecticut State University

Abstract

In the Fall of 2007, the Department of Mathematical Sciences at Central Connecticut State University introduced its new Symbolic Computation course. I was the first to teach the course, as an introduction to Mathematica.  The features of Version 6 were emphasized, especially the topics related to graphics and the Manipulate command. The course was graded on the basis of 60% homework, and 40% final project. The final project consisted of each student producing a viable demonstration which would be refereed and accepted for publication on the Wolfram Demonstration Projects website. The students had little or no previous experience with Mathematica. All of the students who finished the course (10 out of 13) had  their demonstrations published on WDP by the end of the course. In this talk I will describe some of the features of the course, show some lecture notebooks and homework assignments, and display some of the student demonstrations. This talk will hopefully provide some inspiration and a few ideas for people who are considering offering a similar course. I will also try to talk about what I would do differently and what I thought worked well. This talk will hopefully provide some inspiration and a few ideas for people who are considering offering a similar course for the first time. Comments and suggestions from other participants would be welocme.