Across 7 episodes, students are introduced to the mathematical ideas underlying a culminating problem like this one:
The idea of the module is to break this question up into bite-size pieces, and present each piece in an episode. Each episode should be slow-and-easy, and take about 10-30 minutes. Descriptions of each episode appear below, along with some notes from our development team intended for you, the faculty.
List of episodes:
- Pilot. Welcome and introduction for students
- Naughty Notty. Introduces the basics of logic gates including inputs and outputs, logic diagrams, truth tables, and Boolean expressions, as well as our first gate, the NOT gate.
- Certain interactive activities (such as the activity appearing in the Play section of this episode) can be challenging to use on mobile devices. In these cases, we have provided demonstration videos as an alternative (video links appear after the activity).
- The Progress section of the episode includes an embedded WeBWorK problem, asking students to identify Boolean expressions for various nodes in a logic diagram and complete a truth table. The short-answer portion of this problem is not graded (rather, students receive credit for this portion regardless of their response). Students must click “Submit Answers” to get credit for this activity.
- The Practice section of the episode consists of a flashcard activity. To get credit, students must answer each question correctly and then click on the “Results” button which appears in the lower right once all questions are complete. There is an option on the “Results” page to reset the activity in case a student made a mistake and wishes to try again.
- Andy and Ora. Introduces AND and OR gates.
- Nandy and Nora. Introduces NAND and NOR gates, and simple combinations of gates.
- Xora and Xnora. Introduces our final two logic gates, XOR and XNOR.
- Boolean Big Top. Further explores the idea of combining gates together.
- Ringmaster’s Routine. Pushes the boundaries of our previous knowledge by working with complex gates involving several inputs and outputs. Introduces duplicated inputs.
- Circuit Circus. Capstone episode reviews main ideas and pushes students to apply them by answering questions about a complicated logic diagram.
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