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Teaching Scientific Computing Through Projects *
Author(s) -
Turner Peter R.
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
journal of engineering education
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.896
H-Index - 108
eISSN - 2168-9830
pISSN - 1069-4730
DOI - 10.1002/j.2168-9830.2001.tb00571.x
Subject(s) - teamwork , variety (cybernetics) , computer science , point (geometry) , face (sociological concept) , ideal (ethics) , mathematics education , matlab , engineering management , engineering , psychology , artificial intelligence , management , sociology , mathematics , programming language , social science , philosophy , geometry , epistemology , economics
Abstract Traditional numerical methods courses face several difficulties. There is a performance problem for students who need to combine different skills. Students spend so much time mastering the details that they often miss the point as to why there is a need for scientific computing. Using projects drawn from practical situations, and a good high‐level package such as MATLAB**, can overcome much of this. The difficulty associated with learning scientific programming is greatly alleviated. This in turn frees time for studying more advanced methods. The need to combine ideas from different areas makes this an ideal candidate for both team‐teaching and student teamwork on the projects. In this paper, we discuss the use of this approach in a variety of scientific computing courses at different levels .