Introducing Scholar

Scholar is a work-in-progress project to place lecture notes online. The goal is to build a network of nodes which each capture one concept at a particular level such at the description of polarisation by Jones’ vectors, or the representation of quantum operations by Krauss operators. Each nodes should have lots of diagrams, examples and interactive CDF programs, and at some point screen-casts or mini video-lectures of the same topic. Each node should also link to a bunch of problems which have full solutions available. The rough idea I have is that mastering the material in a node should be 20 minutes or less for a student at that level.

There are lots of ways I can see in organising the material, and I think it’s a case of trying it and seeing what works. To make the whole graph easier to maintain, the links between the nodes should be automatic rather than hard-linked, and any topic hierarchy should be fairly loose. Sort of. I can see big issues with assumed knowledge and notation. Threads could be defined which weave particular paths through the nodes and these would be courses in a particular topic. Regardless of what it becomes, it’s an interesting experiment.

Currently there is very little, both in material and structure but I wanted to kick start it early to get feed back and because it’s already useful.