[OS X TeX] Getting students to use LaTeX (and apa.cls)

[Robert Sekuler]

On Aug 17, 2006, at 2:46 PM, Themis Matsoukas wrote:

> On 8/17/06, Michael Kubovy <kubovy at virginia.edu> wrote:
>
>> Your write "I don't let my students use anything else". Do you impose
>> this on students working in your lab, or students in a course? If the
>> latter, are these grad students? How do you persuade them to do
>> what's best for them and abandon the deeply ingrained MSW habit?
>
> Last semester I taught two undergraduates in my lab to use latex.  
> They had to start from scratch with MikTeX (not much help from me  
> there), but they got it quite fast. In a dumb-down world of low  
> expectations where anything beyond MSW is too geeky and anything  
> beyond high-school algebra is too advanced, these kids made me feel  
> better about the future.
>
> Themis
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Hi. I insist that everyone in my lab (undergrad, grad or post-doc)  
learn and use LaTeX for any doc that I see or work over.   Harsh as  
that may sound, in practice the requirement has turned out to be not  
much of burden at all.  The reasonable hand-holding and support that  
are available in the lab makes this requirement relatively easy to  
fulfill, and (good) students quickly appreciate the utility of the  
requirement.

Of course, I do not expect students to become expert in all of  
LaTeX's  details, or all the .sty packages, etc., but then again I  
don't expect that of myself.  That's what the LaTeX Companion --and  
the internet-- are for.

Robert Sekuler
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