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# org-teach: a minor mode for writing course materials in Emacs
James Endres Howell (he/him) - <mailto:james@endres-howell.org>

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I will demonstrate how I used Emacs to produce all the materials for teaching an undergraduate
molecular and cell biology course at a very large university. My org-teach package
(<https://git.sr.ht/~jamesendreshowell/org-teach/>) is a collection of Org macros that customize export
to LaTeX and Beamer in order to produce (1) textbook-style handouts, (2) slides for classroom
presentation, and (3) quiz and exam questions, all from a single Org source document. It also
provides a simple minor mode that facilitates authoring such source documents. We will discuss the
benefits of producing course materials as plain-text outlines, and of exploiting the power of Emacs
and Org mode for writing and managing book-length teaching materials.

Last year at EmacsConf 2023, I presented some aspects of an earlier version of org-teach
(<https://git.sr.ht/~jamesendreshowell/org-teach-EmacsConf2023>). This talk will provide more
background, more details, and some exciting new features.

About the speaker:

James Endres Howell has taught Molecular and Cell
Biology, Biochemistry, Microbiology, Immunology,
Toxicology, and Molecular Medicine at Penn State
since 2006. Recently Dr. Howell has developed
popular courses for non-science majors in
Genetics, Ecology and Evolution; Science in
Literature; and Science in Media. He has used
Emacs daily since 1988.



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