org-teach: a minor mode for writing course materials in Emacs

James Endres Howell (he/him) - james@endres-howell.org

Format: 20-min talk; Q&A: BigBlueButton conference room
Status: TO_CONFIRM

Description

I will demonstrate how I used Emacs to produce all the materials for teaching an undergraduate molecular and cell biology course at a very large university. My org-teach package (https://git.sr.ht/~jamesendreshowell/org-teach/) is a collection of Org macros that customize export to LaTeX and Beamer in order to produce (1) textbook-style handouts, (2) slides for classroom presentation, and (3) quiz and exam questions, all from a single Org source document. It also provides a simple minor mode that facilitates authoring such source documents. We will discuss the benefits of producing course materials as plain-text outlines, and of exploiting the power of Emacs and Org mode for writing and managing book-length teaching materials.

Last year at EmacsConf 2023, I presented some aspects of an earlier version of org-teach (https://git.sr.ht/~jamesendreshowell/org-teach-EmacsConf2023). This talk will provide more background, more details, and some exciting new features.

About the speaker:

James Endres Howell has taught Molecular and Cell Biology, Biochemistry, Microbiology, Immunology, Toxicology, and Molecular Medicine at Penn State since 2006. Recently Dr. Howell has developed popular courses for non-science majors in Genetics, Ecology and Evolution; Science in Literature; and Science in Media. He has used Emacs daily since 1988.

Questions or comments? Please e-mail james@endres-howell.org

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