Why Edith Cowan University Uses Wolfram Technology to Inject Computation across Education and Research

Why Edith Cowan University Uses Wolfram Technology to Inject Computation across Education and Research

Challenge

As a learning consultant, Ron Monson takes on many roles—professor, researcher, analyst—developing and supporting curricula across departments. Rather than having to learn and maintain dozens of domain-specific applications for every task and subject, he wanted a single, unified solution that would cover everything he needed. This meant finding a system with computation and knowledge in the full range of academic fields, broad support for a variety of workflows and flexible sharing options.

Solution

By using the Wolfram Language in his education workflow, Monson is able to include curated knowledge and cutting-edge algorithms from any domain in his course materials. "I can provide assistance in a whole smorgasbord of STEM areas," he says. Thanks to the language's consistent design, exploring new subjects is intuitive for both him and his students. And with highly automated interface construction, he can easily make interactive visual examples, encouraging students to explore their own ways of understanding and solving a problem.

In addition, the Wolfram Language includes a range of deployment options for desktop and cloud, making it easy to share notebooks across departments, schools or research groups, as well as providing a convenient platform for publishing and archiving work on the web. "It allows you to take ideas, innovations, and research findings and communicate them to the wider world in a very seamless way," Monson says. Over time, he and his colleagues also track the usage of published applications and computable documents to perform learning analytics and improve their effectiveness.

Benefits

For Monson, the biggest advantage of the Wolfram Language is its broad subject coverage. He refers to it as a "Jack of all trades" for education and research. From data collection to exploration to deployment—in any subject—the Wolfram Language covers it all.

The Wolfram Edge

• In his position, Monson makes constant use of the Wolfram Language's broad, built-in knowledge: "As a learning consultant, I have to work across many different schools, so I need that wide functionality."
• His job is made much easier by the high-level nature of the language: "There's many different paradigms, and the naming of functions is well chosen—it's an intuitive language."
• Monson praises the intuitiveness of notebook development and deployment: "It allows you to take ideas, innovations, and research findings and communicate them to the wider world in a very seamless way."

Who Can Benefit

• Instructional designers and technology integration specialists
• Professors and educators across a range of fields
• University department heads and administrators