Site tour
Hopefully, the site is fairly intuitive to navigate via the menu on the left hand side. On smaller screens (e.g. smartphones), the menu will collapse into a "hamburger" button (
) to save screen space and make things less cluttered.
The main menu is split into four areas.
The Admin section contains stuff that's worth reading at the beginning of the course, but probably won't contain much content that you'll need to refer to frequently.
Conversely, the Content section contains summaries of the main topics of the course, which I've split into four pages in the order we'll meet the corresponding topics: Characteristics, Wave Equation, Heat Equation, Fourier Transforms. Do note that these pages are intended to be summaries; they are by no means a replacement for notes you will take in lectures. My intention is that you'll find them useful short summaries when tackling assignments or revising.
The Assessment area contains assignments and past papers. A limited number of past paper solutions will be made available near the end of the course.
Last but not least, the Extras section contains some bonus goodies. One of these is a module outline which should be a useful checklist when revising or for keeping track of our progress. Another is something I call the Rescue Kit; this is a recap of things I hope people remember, predominantly from their first year courses, but from past experience find that people's memories of some concepts have accumulated a little rust. Use this to knock the rust off! A link to Lecture Recordings is also given here.
Why not Blackboard?
Blackboard is largely OK as a dumping ground for PDFs but I think electronic resources for a module can be much more. Things like summary notes, summary videos and various other interactive bits and pieces are hard to implement in Blackboard and the result isn't always as good as it could be if they sat outside of Blackboard.
There are a number of reasons why these resources are on their own webpages instead of sitting within Blackboard. Some of these are for my own (Adam's) convenience (I'm more likely to update and add resources if doing so is easier... Blackboard is a cumbersome system in which doing anything non-standard is difficult, so even these reasons should have positive side effects for you all!), but mostly I think the resources are better presented outside of Blackboard for a variety of reasons.
For instance, Blackboard is in my opinion absolutely horrid to use on a phone (unless you use the app and even then I don't find it all that friendly). This wasn't a problem ten years ago when we all only used the internet on PCs, but that just isn't the case any more. Consequently I've tried to design these pages in such a way that they look fine on any sized screen.
Also, the university imposes various constraints on Blackboard page design (we can't edit the left hand menu any more, for instance), which I think limits the possibilities of an easily navigated content-rich site.
TL;DR: Adam doesn't like some aspects of Blackboard and thinks this gives you a better experience.
Site tour
Hopefully, the site is fairly intuitive to navigate via the menu on the left hand side. On smaller screens (e.g. smartphones), the menu will collapse into a "hamburger" button () to save screen space and make things less cluttered.
The main menu is split into four areas.
The Admin section contains stuff that's worth reading at the beginning of the course, but probably won't contain much content that you'll need to refer to frequently.
Conversely, the Content section contains summaries of the main topics of the course, which I've split into four pages in the order we'll meet the corresponding topics: Characteristics, Wave Equation, Heat Equation, Fourier Transforms. Do note that these pages are intended to be summaries; they are by no means a replacement for notes you will take in lectures. My intention is that you'll find them useful short summaries when tackling assignments or revising.
The Assessment area contains assignments and past papers. A limited number of past paper solutions will be made available near the end of the course.
Last but not least, the Extras section contains some bonus goodies. One of these is a module outline which should be a useful checklist when revising or for keeping track of our progress. Another is something I call the Rescue Kit; this is a recap of things I hope people remember, predominantly from their first year courses, but from past experience find that people's memories of some concepts have accumulated a little rust. Use this to knock the rust off! A link to Lecture Recordings is also given here.
Why not Blackboard?
Blackboard is largely OK as a dumping ground for PDFs but I think electronic resources for a module can be much more. Things like summary notes, summary videos and various other interactive bits and pieces are hard to implement in Blackboard and the result isn't always as good as it could be if they sat outside of Blackboard.
There are a number of reasons why these resources are on their own webpages instead of sitting within Blackboard. Some of these are for my own (Adam's) convenience (I'm more likely to update and add resources if doing so is easier... Blackboard is a cumbersome system in which doing anything non-standard is difficult, so even these reasons should have positive side effects for you all!), but mostly I think the resources are better presented outside of Blackboard for a variety of reasons.
For instance, Blackboard is in my opinion absolutely horrid to use on a phone (unless you use the app and even then I don't find it all that friendly). This wasn't a problem ten years ago when we all only used the internet on PCs, but that just isn't the case any more. Consequently I've tried to design these pages in such a way that they look fine on any sized screen.
Also, the university imposes various constraints on Blackboard page design (we can't edit the left hand menu any more, for instance), which I think limits the possibilities of an easily navigated content-rich site.
TL;DR: Adam doesn't like some aspects of Blackboard and thinks this gives you a better experience.