François Blanchette's Teaching Page


I have thought several classes at the lower division, upper division, and graduate levels. I have also supervised several instructors.

I am a proponent of active learning with an instructor lecturing for short periods followed by periods where students solve problems.

In small classes I favor using oral examinations, which I believe provide valuable training for students and can be done without significantly increasing the stress associated to exams. Ask me how if you are interested.

I have developed lecture notes for a few classes that you may find below. These are intended to be incomplete in that most illustrations are missing. This is intentional and is meant to encourage students to actively figure out how to complete the illustrations themselves. As a result, these notes should be most useful to students taking a corresponding class, and especially to instructors putting together their own notes for similar classes. Please contact me if you would like to access the latex source files.

Notes for Vector Calculus (semester, hour-lectures).

Notes for Intermediate Differential Equations (semester, 75 minute-lectures).

Notes for Partial Differential Equations (semester, 75 minute-lectures).

Notes for Graduate Fluid Dynamics (semester, 75 minute-lectures)
and the corresponding Handouts .