Engineering teaching via MAPLE

When he retired my PhD supervisor did some A-level marking. One day he said to me , with a sigh, “the students are not as good as in your day” and then added “but of course you were not as good as in my day”! Those of us involved in teaching mathematics have always complained about our students and I suppose that we always will, but it is fairly well established that students are less well prepared on entry now and it is more than the perception of an ageing set of lecturers …The skill of elementary algebra is deficient in many students, but is vital in engineering maths, with real world applications. Introducing MAPLE into the course and assessing the work helps...linear systems and filters are used as an example...