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TUGboat, Volume 0 (9999), No. 0
1001
How to teach LATEX? Cognitive science
curriculum case study
Pawel Lupkowski
Abstract
In this paper I will present my experience in teaching
LATEX in an introductory Information Technology
module. I will present my syllabus for the module
and the idea of embedding LATEX skills into other
subjects in the cognitive science curriculum. I will
also compare the results of the LATEX course evaluation for its four editions (2010, 2011, 2012 and
2013).
Introduction
In this paper I want to share my experience in teaching LATEX as one of the elements of Information
Technology module. The module is a part of the
cognitive science curriculum at the Institute of Psychology (Adam Mickiewicz University in Pozna´
n).1
In my opinion embedding LATEX in this course brings
many benefits for the cognitive science students. As
E. Wessler [2] points out, learning LATEX is not only
learning how to typeset documents. Students also
learn troubleshooting (dealing with compilation errors, redefining commands etc.); they are gettig familiar with the command line environment; they
think more about the general document structure
and its content. For many of our students it is also
the first encounter with the WYSIWYM approach
(and terms like ‘a source file’ or ‘compilation’) —
which they will use extensively during various programming related modules later on.
The paper is structured as follows. First, I will
roughly present the Information Technology module syllabus. Afterwards I will focus on the LATEX
course outline. Then I will discuss elements of the
evaluation for the module (concerning LATEX).
1
The Module Contents
The Information Technology module is obligatory
for the first year students of cognitive science. Until
the last year it was offered in the second semester,
from now on it is taught in the first semester. The
aim of the module is to introduce information technology tools necessary to prepare documents mainly
for academic purposes. The module syllabus covers text processing as well as preparing and editing
raster and vector graphics. The criterion of choice
for the software used in the module is wide availability for students (free licences, no payments, versions
1
For IP AMU cognitive science curriculum see http://
kognitywistyka.amu.edu.pl/en/?page_id=10.
offered for different operating systems).2 During
the module (15 classes, 2 hours each) students are
getting familiar with the following programs: Open
Office Writer, LATEX, Open Office Impress, LATEX
Beamer, Open Office Draw, Inkscape, GIMP and
Scribus.
The module assessment is based on three projects
(text processing with Writer, text processing with
LATEX, and graphics) and ten assignments (in the
form of short practical tests and homework).
As for the text processing part of the module,
students are presented with two approaches WYSIWYG (Writer) and WYSIWYM (LATEX). The idea
is to give them an opportunity to compare and evaluate these options. Both, Writer and LATEX parts
of the module have similar structure. First students learn how to format text (text alignment, page
settings, non-breakable spaces, en-dash vs em-dash
etc.). Then more advanced features, which are necessary in the academia context, are introduced. Students learn how to typeset mathematical formulae,
build tables with proper captions, how to insert an
image and add a caption, how to add footnotes. Afterwards they learn about logical document structure (sections, subsections), managing bibliography,
generating table of contents, list of figures, list of
tables and alphabetical index.
2
The LATEX Course Outline
The LATEX part of the Information Technology module (usually) takes 3 classes for the issues connected
with preparing an article, one class for the multimedia presentation, and one class for the final assignment (the project).
The first class covers the following topics: (a) Introduction: short history, the idea behind WYSIWYM approach, LATEX standard document classes.
(b) How to compile a document? Standard errors
during the compilation. (c) The article class: a
preamble, basic text formatting (new line, new paragraph), font styles and sizes, non-breakable spaces,
en- and em-dash, comments, page break, enumerated and itemised lists, LATEX special symbols.
During the second and third class we write a
paper. This involves the following issues: sectioning the paper, abstract environment, tabular and
table environments, includegraphics and figure
environments, footnotes, mathematical mode, quotes,
list of tables, list of figures, table of contents, cross
references, bibliography with BibTeX and alphabetical index.
2 The syllabus along with the module materials (in Polish) are available at http://www.staff.amu.edu.pl/~p_lup/
(section ‘Teaching’).
How to teach LATEX? Cognitive science curriculum case study
1002
The fourth class is devoted to LATEX Beamer
presentations. Students get acquainted with the class
options, structure of a presentation, presentation
themes, useful commands (pause, list’s displaying
options, hyperlinks between slides, blocks).
On the LATEX classes students use the Texmaker
editor.3 Earlier I tend to use only simple editor
with syntax highlighting (like gedit) and compiling
source files using the command line. However, it
appeared to be much more time consuming than using more advanced editor like Texmaker. The cost
is that using Texmaker some students ignore compilation error messages (which is less likely in the
command line case). My idea for these classes is
that students should have as much hands on experience with LATEX as it is possible, so I have decided to
use Texmaker and buy us some more time for more
exercises. I always pay attention to the compilation
logs (especially error messages) and try to convince
my students that it is important part of using LATEX.
The general schema for classes is that I prepare some sample source files and then we use them
during the classes. Usually we add some new commands and then students compile the source and try
to explain how the new commands work.
All the LATEX classes end or start with a simple
assignment, like e.g.
• Compile a given source file and using the compilation log find errors in the code (misspelled
commands, open environments etc.).
• Search for a BibTeX entry and add it to a given
*.bib file, then use it to generate a bibliography.
• Prepare an itemised and enumerated list using
a given template.
• Prepare a table using a given template.
• Format a given text according to a given template.
One of my aim in teaching LATEX during the information technology course is to convince students
that it is really useful tool, and that they will have
an opportunity of using it during their studies.4 To
obtain this effect I always try to offer at least one
assignment concerning LATEX which is at the same
time an assignment for some other module. This
needs some cooperation and synchronisation with
other teachers, but students really value these joint
tasks. Examples of such tasks are (in all cases detailed conditions were given for the content as well
as for the ‘technical’ side of the work):
3
http://www.xm1math.net/texmaker/
It is worth to mention that we offer our students a document class for typesetting M.A. theses.
4
Pawel Lupkowski
TUGboat, Volume 0 (9999), No. 0
• Preparing a presentation for the Introduction to
Cognitive Science course in LATEX Beamer.
• Solving tasks for the Introduction to Logic course
and typesetting the solution in LATEX article
class.
• Solving tasks for the Logic I course and typesetting the solution in LATEX article class.
Number of such joint homework assignments
changes from year to year (in this year edition two
of such assignments were offered to students).
The main assignment (the project that ends the
LATEX part of the module) is to typeset the paper
according to given requirements (the paper is offered
in a form of a rough text). The result is a camera
ready paper, with abstract, sections, figures, tables,
table of contents, list of figures, list of tables, alphabetical index and bibliography (generated with
BibTeX). Students have 1.5 hour to complete the
assignment.
In the next year edition of the course I am planning to use a very interesting assignment presented
in [1]. The idea is, that students should choose and
explore a LATEX package related to their personal
area of interests and then prepare a presentation
about the package and the scope of possibilities it
offers. This gives students an opportunity to see
wide range of possible LATEX applications and should
help to reach one of the course aims (namely to show
that LATEX might have a practical value during their
studies).
3
Evaluation
Since the first edition of the Information Technology
module I end it with an evaluation. I gather opinions about the course and the set of programs presented. Here I present the results concerning LATEX
in comparison to Open Office. As I have mentioned
earlier, the structure of classes for Open Office and
LATEX is very similar in order to allow students to
compare two different approaches to text processing. One question in the evaluation questionnaire
concerns programs which students perceive as useful. Table 1 contains comparison of the results for
LATEX and Open Office. It might be noticed that for
the editions from 2009/2010 to 2011/2012 LATEXwas
highly valued by the students (in the 2009/2010 edition the numbers for LATEX are even higher that the
ones for Writer). The same we can observe for LATEX
Beamer (in the 2009/2010 edition Impress was not
included in the set of programs for the course). The
significant change might be observed in the case of
the last course edition. One of the possible explanations for the tendency change is that the Information
Technology course was moved to the first semester.
TUGboat, Volume 0 (9999), No. 0
Year
2009/2010
2010/2011
2011/2012
2012/2013
N
32
13
13
10
LATEX
94%
80%
85%
40%
Writer
81%
80%
85%
90%
1003
Beamer
55%
80%
23%
50%
Impress
–
40%
23%
60%
Table 1: Evaluation results: ‘Mark the program that
you think will be useful for you’. Selecting more than
one checkbox was possible, so percentages may add up
to more than 100%.
2009/2010 too short
enough
48%
52%
2010/2011 too short
enough
2012/2013 too short
enough
0%
35%
65%
2010/2011 too short
enough
30%
2011/2012 too short
enough
too long
7%
31%
2012/2013 too short 20%
enough
0%
70%
62%
80%
100%
Figure 2: Evaluation results: assess the amount of
time for a program — LATEX Beamer.
40%
60%
2011/2012 too short
enough
2009/2010 too short
enough
46%
54%
30%
70%
100%
Figure 1: Evaluation results: assess the amount of
time for a program — LATEX.
(This also might indicate the need for changing the
course profile, because the first semester of the curriculum is probably too early for referring to academic experience of students and the high-school
background is too diverse.) Other part of the explanation might be also the low number of people
who actually filled out the evaluation questionnaire.
It is worth to mention that the evaluation is carried
out on-line and taking part is voluntary and it is not
the part of the assessment process.
In the evaluation questionnaires student may
also give their opinion about the amount of time
spent on working with a given program. Results
are presented in Figures 1 and 2. Generally speaking the amount of time spent on LATEX is rated as
‘enough’ (with a significant number of voices that
the time spent on LATEX should be longer). Again
the numbers for the last edition are larger than for
the previous ones. This might be explained by the
low number of students who took part in the evaluation, but I personally hope that this is the effect of a
greater number of LATEX related assignments offered
in this edition.
Summary
When I think about the Information Technology
course I see that the LATEX part is the most challenging for students. However, it might be noticed
that this part gives them a lot of satisfaction and
joy (successful compilation usually ends up with a
big smile). Undoubtedly this part is also the most
enjoyable part of the module from my perspective.
At the end, let us take a short look on the main
problems that students report while learning LATEX
on my course:
• Writing in Polish in LATEX is difficult at the begning. The reason for this is Polish diacritic signs
encoding. It seems that the existence of three
possible ways in which they might be encoded
(utf-8, ISO 8859-2, cp-1250) is still a rather surprise for the students.
• Students are a little bit confused by the number of auxliary files produced by a source file
compilation.
• The installation process of a LATEX distribution
under MS Windows is unintuitive for an average user of this operating system. Especially
the part when you need to install LATEX editor
separately.
• Despite the fact that much attention is paid
to this issue, many students ignore compilation
errors. Often this leads to many frustrations
(especially during the final project).
• I find it hard to convince my students that the
formatting of the source file also matters, that
the code should be clear and tidy. Perhaps this
comes later, on the programming courses.
And for the balance let me also list the items
that students value most in LATEX:
• The need of thinking about the logical structure
of a document (sectioning) which is natural in
LATEX in comparison to e.g. Writer.
• Using BibTeX (especially the fact that bib entries for most texts are already available on-line,
so building bibliographies is really easy).
• Texmaker’s ease of use, especially easy compilation; auto-completion of commands, labels and
bibliography entries; and also available wizards.
How to teach LATEX? Cognitive science curriculum case study
1004
TUGboat, Volume 0 (9999), No. 0
References
[1] Ryan S. Higginbottom. Teaching LATEX at a Liberal Arts College. The PracTEX Journal, (1),
2011.
[2] Evan J. Wessler. An Argument for Learning LATEX: Benefits Beyond Typesetting. The
PracTEX Journal, (1), 2010.
Pawel Lupkowski
Institute of Psychology
Department of Logic and Cognitive
Science
Adam Mickiewicz University
Pozna´
n, Poland
pawel.lupkowski@gmail.com
http://amu.edu.pl/~p_lup/
Pawel Lupkowski