Boxes at various points in the text labeled ``MATLAB'' pose a question or suggest an activity that uses MATLAB or the graphical user interface DELab (see section 5 below) to illuminate the ideas under consideration.
These are positioned to be unobtrusive but in the right place at the right time. Ideally, a student is reading next to a computer, visualizing, exploring, discovering, making notes and thinking deeply about each new idea as it is encountered. Since the reality is often a bit different, these computational and visual references are structured so that not completing them won't stop the student. Ultimately, students will give these MATLAB activities the same importance as you do through using them as homework, as laboratory exercises, as demonstrations in class, and so on.
Many of the homework exercises specifically ask for comparison with or exercise of a specific tool built into DELab; e.g., part of an exercise might ask whether the analytic solution tool in DELab produces the same solution formula as undetermined coefficients, say, or whether it produces a general solution. Or students might be asked to use DELab to verify their graphical or analytic study of a given equation and to comment on the differences. These kinds of questions are meant to nurture a skeptical understanding of these computational tools while nurturing good judgment and flexibility in their use.