Re: Teaching Using Octave

[A Scotte Hodel]

I suggest Octave to my students as an alternative to MATLAB in my  
courses.  Regardless of which of these tools you use, I think that you  
should expect to spend a total of one week (three 50 minute lectures)  
in a given course to either review or tutor your students in either  
tool.  I've written a short MATLAB tutorial (a work in progress) for  
one of our lab courses that  may be of some assistance.  See my course  
weblog at
	  
http://www.eng.auburn.edu/users/hodelas/classes/C315027937/E929813380/ 
index.html
The tutorial is in chapter 4.

Since most students are using Windows, I've also put up a copy of the  
instructions on how to install Octave on windows at another weblog  
entry:
	http://www.eng.auburn.edu/users/hodelas/classes/C294999662/ 
E1746439820/index.html
(This one probably needs to be cleaned up)

A few students have installed Octave on their machines and have not had  
any trouble adapting from MATLAB.  If they install octave-forge
(from octave.sourceforge.net) then printing (export of plots to .jpg,  
.eps, .fig, etc.) should be straightforward.

One course in which I used Octave is an undergraduate course in  
stochastic signals and systems: my lecture notes are at
	http://www.eng.auburn.edu/users/hodelas/classes/C1051586965/ 
E242544089/index.html
You will find several m-file examples listed in the index.

I hope that helps.

Yours,

Scotte Hodel

On Apr 13, 2005, at 6:04 PM, Burke, Dr. Richard wrote:

> I know a bit about the history of Octave, and if I’m not mistaken,  
> several faculty have taught courses using Octave. I will be teaching a  
> course called Engineering Analysis in the fall, and I am thinking  
> about basing the course on Octave. The course is for junior level  
> engineers from mechanical, electrical, and related disciplines.
>
>  A few questions:
>
> 1.      Is there anything published about your experience or the  
> experience of others in using Octave as the computational basis for a  
> course? There are countless books based upon MATLAB, MathCAD, etc.
>
> 2.      Is the Octave documentation adequate for undergraduate  
> engineers? I am concerned about having the course devolve into a  
> software tutorial, and like most small college programs, we do not  
> have teaching assistants.
>
> 3.      Any advice as to whether (or how) I should do this?
>
> Thanks for any help you can give me.
>
> _______________________
>
> Dr. Richard Burke, '72
> Chairman and Professor of Engineering
> Maritime College
> State University of New York
>  6 Pennyfield Avenue
> Throggs Neck, NY 10465
> Voice:  718.409.7411
> Fax:    718.409.7421



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