Demonstrations and Lab Assignments?

[beccyr]

I had a comment from a professor who's looking for creative ways to incorporate Mathematica into lab work. Her initial thought was to have a Demonstration Assignment, requiring all of her students to create a Demonstration on any of the semester topics in their Physics Course by the end of the semester. Have any of you tried anything like this? What tips do you have for her? Do you have any suggestions for other creative ways she can incorporate Mathematica into her students' lab assignments?

[Jose_Luis_Gomez]

One or two year ago I organized a "Manipulate contest". Only interested students signed in. I gave them two lectures on the use of Mathematica, then I helped each one of them to develop her/his Demonstration. Profesors voted for the best Manipulates, and we gave them I prize (books, Mathematica license, MathLink for Excel license) at the end of a conference by Ulises Cervantes (Kernel programmer of Mathematica) in our Campus. Here are their Manipulates, not all of them work as expected, but it was a great expirience:

http://homepage.cem.itesm.mx/lgomez/ingenia/menu.html

Hope that helps
Jose
Mexico

[telefunkenvf14]

Jose's approach sounds like a good idea. I had students using MMA for homeworks and they all created several kinds of manipulatable interfaces; the 'contest approach' seems like it would be a cool way to let students show off their creativity.

Just make sure students aren't swiping code from the Demonstrations Project (without citing and understanding the code)----To that effect, I'd also recommend asking them to submit a step-by-step explanation of how they put everything together, explaining what they're trying to do and how each step accomplishes something toward the final program.

-RG