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Athena Minicourses were discontinued in 2004. Previously they were offered on the following topics. Strikethrough topics are no longer relevant because the software is no longer available:

  • Introduction to Athena
  • Basic Word Processing & E-mail
  • Working on Athena
  • Advanced EZ
  • LaTeX
  • LaTeX Thesis
  • Frame
  • Frame Thesis
  • Information Resources on Athena
  • HTML - Making a home page
  • Math Software Overview
  • MATLAB
  • XESS
  • Maple
  • Serious Emacs
  • Dotfiles

As part of Orientation, we cover an introduction to Athena, which incorporates some the entire minicourse of the same name, as well as components from E-mail and Working on Athena.

That leaves the following:

  • LaTex, LaTeX Thesis
  • Basic Word Processing
  • Working on Athena
  • Math Software Overview
  • MATLAB
  • Maple
  • Emacs
  • Dotfiles
  • Xess
  • Making a home page
  • Information Resources on Athena

While Xess has a niche market, Excel has surpassed it in common usage. The average freshman arrives at MIT well-versed in basic office suite usage (Word, Excel, PowerPoint). As such, Xess and Basic Word Processing can be eliminated. It's possible that a basic orientation on OpenOffice should be offered, or integrated into the Introduction to Athena course. Information Resources on Athena should be condensed to a slide or two into Introduction to Athena.

Thesis-specific courses should be discontinued. The thesis templates should be updated and provided in OpenOffice format as well as LaTeX. Basic guidelines should be given in the form of stock answers, but students should be encouraged to consult with their departmental advisors.

Emacs should be discontinued. Emacs is no longer the defacto text editor, and the average user need not learn the intricacies of elisp.

Proposal

  • LaTeX: An introduction to LaTex and common uses of it.
  • The UNIX Shell and Dotfiles: Combine aspects of the Dotfiles course with shell operations from the Working on Athena course. Covers shell I/O, process control, command-line file system manipulation, etc. Break out into 2 smaller courses if material necessitates.
  • Making a Home Page: Possibly combined with an introduction to Scripts

These three courses should be offered during IAP student feedback suggests that in fact they should be offered in September and early October. That does not preclude additional IAP offerings. There's no time to offer them during September, and attendance throughout the term was historically fairly sporadic. Consultation with SIPB is suggested to ensure that such topics are perennially offered in the IAP course catalog, and will be taught by IS&T staff if no SIPB members are interested.

LaTeX on Athena
The Shell
Dotfiles
Web Publishing on Athena
Athena Technical Overview

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