In teaching a course on differential equations, we the authors make extensive use of a computer algebra package, Maple^TM. In our course, students continue to learn, and employ, the classical solution techniques for differential equations, but are encouraged to use computer algebra for routine tasks, such as integration and differentiation and keeping track of coefficients, so that ours is essentially a traditional course but with the students getting a little help with the bookkeeping. The rationale for this approach is that we feel that knowledge of the solution techniques is requisite for students to understand the solutions, and using Maple for the bookkeeping allows the students to spend more time focusing on the big picture. As an illustration we present the outline of a sample class on boundary value problems in which we discuss the wave equation.

boundary value problems, wave equations.