Greetings and Welcome to MA 366, Ordinary
Differential Equations!

Find my welcome video near the top of the MA 366
home page at

http://www.math.purdue.edu/~bell/MA366

which is the place to find ALL course info
about MA 366.

My Protect Purdue Pledge to you takes the form,

"Nobody is going to get COVID from taking MA 366."

This course will be delivered as a fully online course.
I know well how to do that because I have taught
courses in Purdue's Online ProEd masters programs.

Video lectures for the course can be found at

http://www.math.purdue.edu/~bell/MA366/Lectures

The video lectures are from Fall, 2019, so do not pay
attention to special instructions there about exams,
homework, or due dates. I will send you that kind of
information in weekly emails.

Because I won't be spending time preparing and
giving lectures this semester, I will have time to
give you lavish attention in online interactions,
making this semester's MA 366 potentially better
than the usual.

The assignment for the first week of class is:

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Watch lecture videos for Lessons 1,2,3 and
read sections 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3 of the book.
Homework 1 covers this material and consists
of the following problems from B & DiP:

p. 8: 3, 4, 10, 12, 14, 18, 19, 25(use dfield)
p. 15: 1a, 2b, 6, 7
p. 22: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 13, 14

Turn in a single document as a PDF or a
scanned PDF in Brightspace by 11:00 pm on
Wednesday, September 2.

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It is important to read the excellent textbook,

"Elementary Differential Equations and Boundary
Value Problems 11e", by Boyce and DiPrima,
11th Edition, Wiley,

and to view the lecture videos. I think watching
the video for each lesson before reading the
section from the book that it covers is the way
to go.

I will hold office hours in WebEx. Find instructions
on how to join my WebEx meeting room from a link on
the home page.

A MA 366 Piazza page will be another way to get
homework help. Find links to it on the home page.
You will get an email invitation to join the Piazza
page during the first week of class. Use your
Purdue email address as your login for Piazza.

You will turn in homework by uploading it to
Brightspace in the form of a PDF or a scanned PDF.
Graduate student graders will grade your homework
and you will find your scores and graded papers in
Brightspace too. Find grading policies on the home
page.

The two midterm exams and the final exam will be
take-home exams that you will upload to Brightspace
as PDF or scanned PDF files. These will be more
educational than the usual in-class exams, and this
is another reason the course might be better than
usual.

If I get COVID, the course should be able to run on
autopilot for awhile, with help from our TAs. If you
get COVID, let me know and we'll work out a way for
you to make up the work after you recover enough.
If you do not recover in time to finish the work by
the end of the semester, you will get an incomplete
and you can finish the course later.

I will send out a video pep-talk once a week with
course information and follow it up with an email
that summarizes the important points.

Welcome to MA 366!

-Steve Bell

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