Examples and Results from a BSc-level Course on Domain Specific Languages of Mathematics

TL;DR

This paper reports on a BSc-level course teaching domain-specific languages of mathematics, highlighting student improvements and course outcomes over three years.

Contribution

It provides practical examples and evaluates student performance, demonstrating the educational effectiveness of the DSLsofMath course.

Findings

Improved pass rates in subsequent courses

Higher grades in later coursework

Positive student engagement and continuation

Abstract

At the workshop on Trends in Functional Programming in Education (TFPIE) in 2015 Ionescu and Jansson presented the approach underlying the "Domain Specific Languages of Mathematics" (DSLsofMath) course even before the first course instance. We were then encouraged to come back to present our experience and the student results. Now, three years later, we have seen three groups of learners attend the course, and the first two groups have also continued on to take challenging courses in the subsequent year. In this paper we present three examples from the course material to set the scene, and we present an evaluation of the student results showing improvements in the pass rates and grades in later courses.