Students Get Help at
maple4students.co.uk

Although Maple software was originally designed for researchers in mathematics and science, Maple’s largest user group is, in fact, students. Every year, thousands of undergraduate and high school courses are taught using Maple. Maple-enriched maths courses sometimes use Maple solely as a lecture aid but more typically require students to learn Maple as part of the course. Unfortunately, the stress of learning new course material and new software simultaneously leaves some students with a sour first impression of Maple. If the course instructor is learning Maple along with them, students may feel like rabbits in the headlights when the due date of their first Maple assignment bears down on them.

As of this June, students have a resource to turn to for help with Maple. Waterloo Maple and Adept Scientific have introduced the Maple Student Centre at www.maple4students.co.uk, a Web site designed to help students who are using Maple. Introductory and advanced tutorials, course-specific applications and great graphics form the core of the site’s offerings.

If, for instance, a student is stuck in the quagmire of Maple syntax, the Student Centre provides an online tutorial to jump start him or her on Maple basics. If a student on a calculus course wants to draw a 3-D solid of revolution using Maple, links to applications for Calculus II illuminate the path. Course-specific examples are provided for all levels of calculus, differential equations, linear algebra, engineering maths and more. The Student Centre will also hold a quarterly student contest in which students submitting the coolest Maple applications or graphics can win prizes such as palm-top computers.