Teaching Philosophy

Volume 27, Issue 4, December 2004

Using Short Animated Presentations (SAPs) in Teaching Elementary Logic

This paper describes existing and potential short animated presentations that may be helpful in introductory logic courses (particularly in conjunction with Virginia Klenk’s "Understanding Symbolic Logic"), e.g. the progression of a proof, the distinction between inference and replacement rules, propositional variables, the use of truth tables, etc. The author offers reasons why animated presentations of various concepts and derivation rules ought to be short and simple rather than long and complex, provides an overview of some of the technical limitations associated with such presentations, and discusses the prospects for developing future presentations.