Title: LINEAR ALGEBRA with Matlab Drills



Adaptive Book User Guide

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Linear Algebra – An Interactive

Approach

S.K. Jain

Ohio University

A.D. Gunawardena

Carnegie Mellon University

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Table of Content

1. What is an adaptive book?

2. System Requirements

3. Installing the Adaptive Book

4. Uninstalling the Adaptive Book

5. Running Adaptive Book from CD

6. Adaptive Book Features

7. Markups explained

8. Using markups for effective learning

9. Naming convention of markups

10. Exchanging markups with other users

11. Instructor markups

12. Using markups for teaching

13. How to recover in a program crash

14. Frequently Asked Questions

15. Where to get Technical Help

16. What you can do to make Adaptive Book work for you

17. Conclusion.

What is an Adaptive Book?

Adaptive book is a highly personalized version of a digital textbook. Users of Adaptive Book will be able to annotate and highlight content, link content to other web or file resources. Adaptive Book's tool set allows grouping of related annotations, highlights and web links to a semantically meaningful learning profile and share it with other users. Adaptive Book can also be used as a teaching tool as explained later.

This textbook comes with the full version of the Adaptive Book. In the following sections, we will try to describe how to use this digital book to its full potential. Adaptive Book allows user to create markups using highlights, annotations, bookmarks, notes or link to external files and URLs. User can customize the book to fit her learning needs. The appearance of the book can be changed by a click of a button. Markups can be turned on and off as needed. Markups can be exchanged, modified and redistributed among other students and instructors. It is possible that instructor can use textbook as a teaching tool in class. That is, during class discussions, instructor can highlight, annotate and bookmark content for students to later download and refer. Adaptive Book is a very powerful concept. It may change the way we use textbooks. We may begin to think about textbooks not as a document, but as an interactive platform where users can customize its content to fit the learning needs of the individual.

System Requirements

The Adaptive Book software is designed to run under Microsoft windows or UNIX operating systems at this time. We anticipate that a Macintosh version of the Adaptive Book will be available shortly. The software included in this CD runs under windows 98, 2000, NT and XP operating systems. The microsoft .net platform (provided with CD) needs to be installed before running the software. More information about Microsoft .net can be obtained from

Software must be installed before use. Required Hard drive space is 55MB. You must be connected to the web to use online supplements such as demos and tests. If you have trouble installing .Net, please refer to Microsoft web page:

Installing the Adaptive Book

Click on the setup file to install the .net and adaptive book. Follow the given instructions. The default directory for Adaptive Book is

c:\Program Files\TC\AdaptiveBook.

Uninstalling the Adaptive Book

You can uninstall Adaptive Book from start -> settings -> Control Panel -> Add/Remove Programs. This will uninstall all components associated with the Adaptive Book.

Running the Adaptive Book

A book icon named Linear Algebra will be placed on the desktop. Simply click on the icon to open the book. This is the complete digital book with all supplements.

Running the Adaptive Book directly from CD

Sometimes you may prefer to maintain all (or large) resource files on CD and run the book from the CD. This option is not available yet. It is expected that run from CD feature will be available in the next Adaptive Book version.

Features of the Adaptive Book

The adaptive book (AB) comes with many interesting features. Among some of the major features of AB is the ability to navigate by page, section, or chapter. The text can be highlighted, annotated, and book marked. It is also possible to add a web link or file directly into the text. A markup is defined as a collection of related highlights, annotations and external links. Markup tool of AB allow users to package the metadata that consists of a markup as an XML file and share that with other users. We will explain special features of AB and how they work in the following sections.

A Typical Page

The following diagram shows the features of a typical page of the book. Most buttons and drop down menus have titles that explain their functionality. We shall also describe how to use each button in the paragraph below.

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Figure 1 - A Typical Page

The left navigation panel allows access to chapters and sections of the book. TOC(Table of content) and index provide quick access to content. The lower panel contains a markup menu (explained later) and a single page navigation tool, a built in notepad (in yellow) and a print button for printing individual pages with or without markups. The upper panel provides quick access to bookmarks and book supplements, which we shall describe later.

Markup Feature Explained

A user can create a unique markup and share the markup using AB markup menu options. The markup button allows several features, that include view, new, edit, close, open and send as shown below.

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Figure 2 – Mark Up Menu

View – This feature allows users to view an existing markup.

Upon selecting view option, a dialog box is displayed as follows. Dialog box displays all of the existing markups.

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User then selects a markup from the list to view. Here we have shown a book with only one markup named Test Markup. The following screen shows what happens after we select the markup. All objects in the markup are shown. This includes highlights, annotations, and web and file links.

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Figure 3 – Markup Display

As shown in Figure 3, user can immediately see pages where annotations, highlights and links related to test markups are stored. Users can also select which components of the markup to be viewed by checking the appropriate box (annotations, highlights or links).

New – This feature allows a new markup to be created using the standard tool set of the adaptive book. Mark up essentially groups highlights, annotations and links into a meaningful learning object. For example, an instructor can create an assessment markup by highlighting text, annotating, and linking supplements related to the assessment. Figure 4 shows highlighting, annotation and external link dialog boxes.

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Figure 4 – Highlighting, annotating and linking Tools

Edit – This feature allows users to edit an existing markup. Subsequent users can change a markup that is "editable". Author of the markup sets the editable feature. This feature allows shared markups to be enhanced or further clarified. Figure 5 shows the dialog box for markup edit feature.

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Figure 5 – Selecting Editable Markups

Open – This feature allows users to open an existing a markup that is saved as a .tml file. A markup can be saved as a compressed XML document (*.tml) to be shared with other users. Instructors can save markup files on a course management system such as BlackBoard, WebCT or eCollege to be downloaded by other users of the textbook. Figure 6 shows the dialog box.

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Figure 6 – Opening a new Markup

Send – This feature allows users to export a markup file that is saved as a compressed XML document (*.tml). The Adaptive Book provides tools to send a markup as an email attachment or save the markup to desktop so that it can be shared with many users. Figure 7 shows send feature options.

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Figure 7 – Email tools of AB

If one chooses Email option then user can select email addresses from AB's built in address book facility as shown in Figure 8.

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Figure 8 – Email tools of AB

Note Pad – clicking the yellow button on the lower panel will open a notepad. Each page has a notepad and as shown below, notepad notes can be formatted with many styles, fonts, superscripts, subscripts, alignments, etc. An example is shown below.

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Bookmarks – Each page can be book marked by clicking the clip icon in upper right corner. You must provide a title for the bookmark.

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Bookmarks are sorted by the page number and are easily accessible as shown below.

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Bookmarks can also be accessed by clicking the on the bookmark indicators on the right bar.

Book Supplements – This book comes with three supplements that are useful in learning linear algebra concepts. There are demos, drills and Tests associated with this book. Supplements can be chosen from the dropdown menu on upper right corner.

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Demos – The purpose of concept demos is to provide further explanations of the concepts discussed in the text. Demos are web based and are accessible only when you are connected to the web. Each chapter has its own demo menu as shown below.

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This is a demo discussing a graphical view of a solution to a system of linear equations. Related topics button provide access to key topics related to the demo. This helps student's find additional reading material in the text related to the demo. Each demo has a sound clip that provides an audio explanation of the concept. Sound can be controlled using the sound menu bar next to the start demo button. By clicking Start demo button, a student can start an animation of the concept. Continue button provide control to the speed of the animation. This book contains several demos in each chapter.

Drills – The purpose of drills is to provide hands on experience in applying concepts learned in the text to solve interesting problems. Students will be able to use a computer algebra system (CMS) such as Matlab, Mathematica or Maple to solve problems that may be difficult to solve maually. A typical drill screen looks as follows.

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A drill page is opened as a separate window from the main textbook window. The problem is listed and reference is given to the particular problem from the text. Each drill provides Supplement Help button with access to General Hints and Matlab solution.

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Each drill provides access to related Matlab commands, Matlab help desk and launching Matlab program as shown below.

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Each drill also has access to related topics from the text. This will allow students to read a section of the text related to the drill.

Tests – Each chapter provide access to a test created under Brooks Cole Assessment (BCA) system as shown below.

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This screen also provides access to BCA's main screen or Google search engine.

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Profiles/Markups

A profile is a collection of markups created under one specific topic. For example, an instructor may create a profile using many sections or chapters of the book and then create just in time markups to be shared with students. In the current version of the adaptive book, a profile-authoring tool is not available. Therefore all markups created falls under the scope of text. Use of profiles/Markups is the most effective way to learn from a textbook. Until now, there was no mechanism to use the textbook effectively in your learning. Adaptive book bridges the gap between textbook and all other course material. Your instructor may now use profile/markup mechanism in the adaptive book to send course material such as examples, projects and review questions. If you have any questions about the content of the text, simply highlight the section you wish to discuss, add an annotation if you like and send it to another user. You can share the markup object using email or by simply dragging the file to an Internet messenger program such as Yahoo messenger or AOL. We encourage you to use the profile/markup feature as much as possible. This is an effective way to learn since you communicate in the context of the core material. If you have any questions about profiles/markups send email to guna@cs.cmu.edu.

Naming convention of Markup

There is no naming convention of a markup. You may choose any name you wish. However, if you are encouraging students to use this feature, you may want to define some naming convention (eg: Last-First-Date-Topic). This will allow you to create a repository of profiles that can be shared among users of the text. The following screen shows how you save a markup.

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Creator of the markup can label any markup as editable or non-editable. For example, a markup created by instructor to support a lecture may not be editable while a markup created for on-line discussion must be editable.

Exchanging Markups with other users

There are three kinds of markups you can create, Public, Private and Protected. A Public markup is intended to be shared with all other users of the same book. A private markup is not shared with any other user, but will be used by you for your own studies. A protected markup is given only to authorized people. There is no need to label any markup as public, private or protected, rather they will be classified based on what you do with them. While some markup may be appropriate learning objects for "all", others may be intended for a specific individual or a group. Adaptive books markup exchange feature allows individualizing the textbook to fit the needs to a single student, a group of student or all.

Instructor Markups

Instructor markups are the most important in a linear algebra course. Instructor can keep sending useful markups to make your learning fun and effective. Instructor can create review questions, examples, and labs/projects and send them to you through the adaptive books markup exchange feature. You can share thoughts about a specific section of the book with another user or instructor. The markups your instructor may send or ask you to download may fall into four groups, content discussion markups, review markups, demo markups and assessment markups.

Content Discussion Markup – The purpose of this markup type is to create an online discussion based on the content of the textbook. Instructor will use annotation and highlight tools extensively to create this type of markup. Instructor may also add a link to a file or URL as part of the discussion.

Review Markup – The purpose of this type of a markup is to review what has been discussed in class. The specific content from book may be highlighted and tied to some review questions to test your understanding of the material.

Demo Markup- The purpose of this type of a markup is to demonstrate some examples related to what has been discussed in class. The specific content from book may be highlighted and tied to some examples (in Matlab, Mathematica or Maple notebooks) to further clarify your understanding of basic linear algebra concepts.

Assessment Markup – The purpose of this type of a markup is to assess your understanding of the basic concepts covered in the text. The specific content from book may be highlighted and tied to review and some matlab examples to help you complete the assignment. It is assumed that online discussion will occur in the context of the text, when students trying to complete the assignment. However, completed assessment will be submitted to instructor through standard assignment submission methods but not using Adaptive Book features.

All of the above are just suggestions and Adaptive Book is flexible enough to support other user models.

How to recover in a program crash

Adaptive Book technology has gone through some intense testing. However, as with any window-based software, Adaptive Book may experience some unexpected behavior. In the event of a "dead" adaptive book, click "Ctrl+Alt+Delete" keys at the same time to open windows task manager. Choose the application from the list and click End Task button. These steps are guaranteed to terminate the adaptive book program. Any works you may have performed in the adaptive book are automatically saved and you will see them when you restart Adaptive Book. Adaptive Book crashes DO NOT affect any other program in your system. If you have any questions or comments, please send email to: guna@cs.cmu.edu.

Frequently Asked Questions

We will be completing this section based on questions you send and will make it available on course web site. Please send as many questions as possible to: guna@cs.cmu.edu. We will be responding to your questions promptly.

Where to get Technical Help

The technical help can be obtained from Ananda Guna (guna@cs.cmu.edu , 412-268-1559) or from Brooks Cole help desk. Please notify promptly when you have trouble using any Adaptive Book features.

What you can do to make Adaptive Book work for you

Your instructor will use Adaptive Book for markup uploads/downloads. These markups are extremely useful for your success in the course. Although in the beginning, you may find somewhat uncomfortable using an online textbook, we can assure you that online books are lot more effective than printed books when using markup exchange mechanisms. Online books allow you to print a chapter or two if you must have a printed copy. However, we encourage you to learn how to use the Adaptive Book so that your learning can occur in a collaborative environment. In order to make this works for you, you must give your best effort to learn how to use adaptive book markup tools such as highlighters, annotations etc and learn to create and exchange markups with other users.

Conclusion.

Adaptive Book project is an on-going research project and is an effort to bridge the gap between course textbook and other course material. The research focuses on making adaptive book user friendly by using principles of Human Computer Interaction and techniques of Data Mining. Adaptive Book is marketed by TextCentric, Inc. We hope that the success of this project will increase the effectiveness of textbooks in courses. Recent studies have shown that students pay high prices for textbooks, yet most instructors do not use them effectively in their courses. We can attribute this trend to disconnection between printed textbook and mostly other electronic material. Adaptive book is expected to bridge this gap. Good luck in using Adaptive Book.

( Adaptive Book is a trademark of TextCentric, Inc.

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