<p>There is no lecture or discussion and the class is not in a classroom; it’s just a reserved time slot in one of the public computer labs available to students. The learning part consists of reading through some Mathematica files and running their examples. Then you do some problems on the topic right in a Mathematica file and submit the file to be graded. A TA is available during class time to help you if you have trouble understanding something, so your MTWR meetings are really just office hours. You can, if you want, just do the entire course outside of class (plenty of labs have Mathematica and you can get your own copy if you want). Maybe some TAs will require attendance.</p>
<p>I took MATH 241 with Mathematica and finished junior year in EE (lots of vector calc in electromagnetics) with over a 3.9 GPA. So no, you will not fail to learn the material simply because you took this session instead of the regular section. You just need to be able to teach yourself. MATH 241 is especially suited for Mathematica because multi-variable means 2D and 3D, and Mathematica is probably the single best plotter there is. Unless you are some sort of math prodigy, you are not going to be able to visualize or draw multi-variable functions. But I’d say this advantage is probably diluted by the fact that you will have less experience than others at fast hand calculations when you actually apply it in engineering classes. Note that the tests in the class (or at least my class) were paper-and-pencil so the class is not missing that element entirely. But they had Mathematica code and plots on them, so they were still substantially different from regular tests.</p>
<p>My only gripe with the course was that the grading was based on 90 = A, 80 = B, 70 = C, etc. like high school instead of curving, so you really have to try and get every last point. But this might have been my TA’s policy rather than a general policy for Mathematica-based courses.</p>