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Athena Minicourses were discontinued in 2004 when the group was re-org'd out of existence. Previously they were offered on the following topics. Strikethrough topics are no longer relevant as of 2010 because the software is no longer available:

  • Introduction to Athena
  • Basic Word Processing & E-mail
  • Working on Athena
  • Advanced EZ
  • LaTeX
  • LaTeX Thesis
  • Frame
  • Frame Thesis
  • Information Resources on Athena
  • HTML - Making a home page
  • Math Software Overview
  • MATLAB
  • XESS
  • Maple
  • Serious Emacs
  • Dotfiles

Existing Courses

There are no formal minicourses. As part of Orientation, we cover an introduction Introduction to Athena, which incorporates some the entire minicourse of the same name, as well as components from E-mail and Working on Athena.

That leaves the following:

  • LaTex, LaTeX Thesis
  • Basic Word Processing
  • Working on Athena
  • Math Software Overview
  • MATLAB
  • Maple
  • Emacs
  • Dotfiles
  • Xess
  • Making a home page
  • Information Resources on Athena

SIPB offers cluedumps, but these are often more techincally oriented than the average user wants.

SIPB and IS&T also offer IAP courses, but not all students are here over IAP.

Update: Discussion with the UA and other students suggests that September/October would be ideal times for these courses.

Proposed Offerings

Starting from the offerings listed above: While XESS While Xess has a niche market, Excel has surpassed it in common usage. The average freshman arrives at MIT well-versed in basic office suite usage (Word, Excel, PowerPoint). As such, Xess XESS and Basic Word Processing can be eliminated. It's possible that a basic orientation on A basic introduction to OpenOffice should be offered, or integrated into the Introduction to Athena courseconsidered. Information Resources on Athena should be condensed to a slide or two into Introduction to Athena.

...

Emacs should be discontinued. Emacs is no longer the defacto text editor, and the average user need not learn the intricacies of elisp.

Proposal

  • LaTeX: An introduction to LaTex and common uses of it.
  • The UNIX Shell and Dotfiles: Combine aspects of the Dotfiles course with shell operations from the Working on Athena course. Covers shell I/O, process control, command-line file system manipulation, etc. Break out into 2 smaller courses if material necessitates.
  • Making a Home Page: Possibly combined with an introduction to Scripts

These three courses should be offered during IAP student feedback suggests that in fact they should be offered in September and early October. That does not preclude additional IAP offerings. There's no time to offer them during September, and attendance throughout the term was historically fairly sporadic. Consultation with SIPB is suggested to ensure that such topics are perennially offered in the IAP course catalog, and will be taught by IS&T staff if no SIPB members are interested.

The topic is well suited for an IAP class or cluedump.

MATLAB is often learned as part of courseware. Math Software Overview should be considered when resources are available.

Proposed Classes for Fall 2011

Additions for '12-'13 Academic Year

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