Bennett L. Rouse

Maple: how can we make it better?

Although classes such as E115 will gladly teach students how to use common engineering programs, gladly stay away from teaching students how to use programs such as Maple. There’s a common association with the disgust of an engineering student and whether there is a Maple due. Trust me, I know- I’ve seen tears shed before. Nonetheless, Maple is basically “a really big calculator,” calculating highly complex equations and producing powerful graphics. If used correctly, Maple could actually take down Chuck Norris in a fight. However, if used by an engineering student, Maple can be used in every way, shape, and form but the correct one. Students could have up to a dozen submissions for a Maple assignment and come out with merely a satisfactory grade.

Maple should consider a few options and address a few issues. First, as I have previously recommended, perhaps Maple should be taught in E115. Students are intimidated by the godly amount of tasks that Maple can perform, so a class would be great at bringing Maple down to the level of a mere student. It might be hard to integrate students taking different levels of math, but the college could definitely play around with the idea.

Furthermore, the command-line interface of the system is far from intuitive. Commands are addressed by the FAQ’s of the program and by forums online, but typically they are hard to understand because they are not stated in Layman’s terms. I would highly advise Maple to consider touch technology. The combination is feasible. In the 1970s, PLATO was highly successful at teaching students through terminals using touch technology. Perhaps software could be developed for tablet notebooks that already use touch technology so that students can physically write down what they are trying to solve in Maple. This would make the program more user-friendly. And as the effect user-friendliness typically has on technology, perhaps the amount of Maple users, much less, Maple endorsers, could spread to an audience greater than NC State engineering students and staff, which is a very small population.

Posted at 11:00PM Dec 06, 2008 by Bennett L. Rouse in General  |  Comments[0]