I am tenure at the University and I teach several courses of Computer Science. In this talk of 10 minutes I will teach how I will my use of Julia as a useful resource for teaching. In this talk I will introduce how I have used Pluto/PlutoSliderServer to explain concept and to allow students to check some implementations. Also, I show an online web for creating easily online quiz for Moodle. Finally, I have used it to prototype some algorithms that later the students should implement.
I am tenure at the University and I teach several courses of Computer Science. Some time ago I started to use Julia in my research, and more recently I have started to use it as a teaboth ching resource. In this talk I do not refer Julia as the programming language for students (they are last courses in which students can use whatever programming language they want), but as a resource to create tools to help me in the teaching.
In this regards, I have used Julia in three different approach, that I will quickly cover:
For explaining concepts, I have used Pluto notebooks to visualize them. Also, recently I have used PlutoSliderServer (as Pluto but without editing option) to allow students to check some calculations they have to do during their exercises. An example is https://mh.danimolina.net/ (in Spanish).
Due to the pandemic period, the use of online tests in Moodle has increased a lot. There are several formats to create them, but they are not intuitive enough for non-technical people. In order to solve that, I have created an online web to create easily the online quiz for Moodle (https://pradofacil.danimolina.net/, in Spanish), with a simple syntax that people from different background can easily use it.
Finally, in some courses student must implement several algorithms. In order to identify the best parameter values, and to identify the best approaches to implements them, I previously solve them in Julia. Also, it has serve me to predict how much computational time they will require. In my experience, although some specific implementation in C++ is faster, the average implementations takes similar time than using Julia. Many implementations are slower than my Julia implementation, due to some developing decisions.
I consider this talk could be interesting for audience due to the following reasons:
It gives a very general view of the possibilities of Julia as a teaching resource.
It can be useful for other teachers giving ideas of integrating Julia in their portfolio.
It shows my personal experience, and the feedback obtained.
I will be able to prepare the talk both in English and in Spanish. If it is accepted I will create an English version of the shown resources.