Syllabus
Computer Science EN.601.290
User Interfaces & Mobile Applications
Spring, 2024
(3 credits, E)

Class Meetings

MWF 3-4:15pm
Hackerman B17
Mondays and Wednesdays will be instructor-led sections where course content is delivered. Students are expected to attend class in person, except when ill. Lecture materials for those days (including slides) will be available in some form(s) on the canvas course site, but they will not include active learning exercises and discussions that take place during class. Fridays will be used primarily for optional make-up or extra help sessions and team meetings. That said, students should plan to attend all class sessions as much as possible.

Instructor

Dr. Joanne Selinski, joanne-at-cs.jhu.edu, see her webpage for coordinates and hours.

Course Assistants

Information on course staff and office hours will be posted on Piazza.

Online Resources

We will use Canvas for homework submission and grades, Piazza for Q&A, and both for class materials. You will be enrolled in Canvas and Piazza automatically with your course registration. If you already have a Piazza account with a different email address, you can link your emails/accounts through the Piazza account settings. Once enrolled, you can access it at https://piazza.com/jhu/spring2024/en601290.
The primary resource for Android development will be the Android Developer's Website. You are welcome to scope out other resources as well. Content on user interfaces and design principles will be presented in class lectures.

Course Information

Course Outcomes:

Upon completion of this course students should be able to:

  1. Work effectively on teams.
  2. Use modern development techniques and tools.
  3. Design user interfaces for mobile apps.
  4. Implement mobile apps - frontend and backend - on the Android platform.
  5. Use outside resources to learn technical details needed for app implementations.
  6. Understand the impact of mobile applications and interface design on diverse users.
  7. Present concept, design and implementation stages of mobile app development to peers.

ABET Outcomes

Each student successfully completing this course will be strengthened in the following areas:

Course Topics

The topics will be heavily integrated with each other. However, the approximate number of class meeting weeks spent on each are provided in (). A full schedule will be posted on Piazza.

Course Approach & Attendance

Think of this course as a guided independent study with both individual deliverables and teamwork. The format will be more workshop style than lecture style, with a heavy emphasis on active learning. Each student is asked to take ownership of their own learning and commit to colloboration with not only your team, but the class as a whole. As such you are expected to attend and actively participate in class sessions (Mon/Wed). You are responsible for all material presented while you are absent. Students who miss class due to illness, timezone, religious holidays, etc. should inform Joanne as soon as possible if requesting any (extra) accommodations as a result.

In order to have adequate time for group presenatations, one-third of the groups will need to present during a Friday timeslot (3-4:15p) for each of the three presentation weeks. Team formation will be based partly on student preferences and partly on instructor discretion.

Because of the significant group project in this course, disruptions due to illness or other circumstances will impact multiple students and must be handled carefully. Similarly, decisions to drop this course well into the semester can be very disruptive to group compositions. Please let the staff know as early as possible, and explicitly, if you are considering or decide to drop/withdraw from the course, or if you are not able to keep up with coursework for reasons beyond your control. Incomplete grades are largely infeasible for this course.

Course Expectations & Grading

A significant component of this course is completing tutorials and assignments to gain proficiency in designing and implementing user interfaces, along with the necessary back-end support and data management. We will primarily use MW instructor led class sessions for case studies, hands-on exercises, design reviews, discussions, and presentations. As such, it is important for students to plan to attend as many of these class sessions as possible. In-person participation is required for this course except when illness/circumstances prevent it. Friday class sessions will be used for make-ups, extra help sessions, and team meetings.

The grading breakdown is provided here. Each graded component in the course will be given a point value, and your overall grade for each element will be computed as points earned divided by total points possible. This course is not curved.

Key Dates

A detailed schedule is posted on Piazza and will be updated as the semester progresses.

Assignments & Readings

Readings will be integrated into the assignments. Assignments will be posted and submitted on Canvas.

Assignment Logistics

The recommended platform for developing Android applications is Android Studio. Downloads for this and related tools are available on Piazza and should be completed as soon as possible. The installs can take some time and battery life, so plan to do this in a comfortable and powered location. If your laptop cannot support the software for the course, then unfortunately you will not be able to continue in the course.

Ethics

The strength of the university depends on academic and personal integrity. In this course, you must be honest and truthful, abiding by the Computer Science Academic Integrity Policy:

Cheating is wrong. Cheating hurts our community by undermining academic integrity, creating mistrust, and fostering unfair competition. The university will punish cheaters with failure on an assignment, failure in a course, permanent transcript notation, suspension, and/or expulsion. Offenses may be reported to medical, law or other professional or graduate schools when a cheater applies.

Violations can include cheating on exams, plagiarism, reuse of assignments without permission, improper use of the Internet and electronic devices, unauthorized collaboration, alteration of graded assignments, forgery and falsification, lying, facilitating academic dishonesty, and unfair competition. Ignorance of these rules is not an excuse.

Academic honesty is required in all work you submit to be graded. Except where the instructor specifies group work, you must solve all homework and programming assignments without the help of others. For example, you must not look at anyone else's solutions (including program code) to your homework problems. However, you may discuss assignment specifications (not solutions) with others to be sure you understand what is required by the assignment.

If your instructor permits using fragments of source code from outside sources, such as your textbook or on-line resources, you must properly cite the source. Not citing it constitutes plagiarism. Similarly, your group projects must list everyone who participated.

Falsifying program output or results is prohibited.

Your instructor is free to override parts of this policy for particular assignments. To protect yourself: (1) Ask the instructor if you are not sure what is permissible. (2) Seek help from the instructor, TA or CAs, as you are always encouraged to do, rather than from other students. (3) Cite any questionable sources of help you may have received, including Stack Overflow and ChatGPT.

On every exam, you will sign the following pledge: "I agree to complete this exam without unauthorized assistance from any person, materials or device. [Signed and dated]". Your course instructors will let you know where to find copies of old exams, if they are available.

Report any violations you witness to the instructor.
You can find more information about university misconduct policies on the web at this site: Undergraduate Conduct. You can also contact:
For undergraduates: the associate dean of student conduct (or designee) by calling the Office of the Dean of Student Life at 410-516-8208 or via email at studentconduct@jhu.edu
For KSAS Graduate Students: rseitz5@jh.edu
For WSE Graduate Students: christinekavanagh@jhu.edu

For this course specifically: use of ChatGPT to generate significant content for a homework solution is considered an ethics violation. Use of it as a reference tool (like StackOverflow) is permitted, but any resulting code must include a citation as a comment in the relevant code.