CS 696 Syllabus

Instructor	Roger Whitney
Office	GMCS 561
Phone	594-3535
Email	whitney@cs.sdsu.edu
Office Hours	4:00-5:00 pm Tuesday, 6:30-8:00 pm Tuesday, Thursday

Course WWW Site : http://www.eli.sdsu.edu/courses/fall09/cs696/index.html . All course handouts will be delivered via WWW at the above URL.

Texts :

The Design of Everyday Things, Norman, Basic Books, 2002

User Interface Design for Programmers, Joel Spolsky, book form or online version ( http://www.joelonsoftware.com/uibook/fog0000000249.html )

Prototyping for Tiny Fingers, Rettig, http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=175288

Android References:

Google Android Documentation, http://developer.android.com/guide/index.html

Professional Android Application Development, Wrox, 2008. A highly rated book, but does not cover Android 1.5

The Busy Coder's Guide to Android Development, Murphy, CommonsWare, 2009. You can get this book and two other Android books in pdf form for a total of $35.00 at http://commonsware.com/AdvAndroid/ . These are the references I will be using as they cover Android 1.5.

Course mailing list : A list server is used to email important messages to students in the course. There is a link on the course web site.

Prerequisites : Java programming experience. You will be developing applications for Android phones. This involves designing and building GUIs, using SQL databases, using networks, dealing with audio and video, etc. You need to be able learn about these and deal with the problems that arise.

Grading : Your grade will be based on one exam (25% of your grade) homework (40% of your grade), a project (30%) and participation (5%). If needed there will quizzes. There is no extra credit work in this course. There will be about 4 programming assignments.

Crash Policy : As seats become available in the class they will be given to other students. University policy states that undergraduate students can not displace graduate students in a 600 level course. So graduate students have priority over undergraduate students. It is also university policy that open university students can not displace regular SDSU students, so all SDSU students have priority over open university students. Graduates students wishing to crash the class will be ranked by the number of graduate units currently on their SDSU transcript. Students with more units will be given priority over students with fewer units. Students need to turn in a copy of their SDSU transcript to demonstrate how many units they have. An unofficial transcript will be fine. You can either turn in a hardcopy of your transcript or email an electronic version. If you have not turned in a copy of your transcript when students are added to the course you will be treated as if you have 0 units, regardless of number of units you actually have.

Budget Cuts : Due to budget problems in the State of California SDSU's budget has been cut this year. Even though student fees and tuition have been increased SDSU's budget is still about 20% less than last year. As a result there are few courses being offered, faculty are teaching more classes and have nine furlough days each semester. So students are paying more for less and instructors are being asked to teach more but do it in less time. It is not clear how this will work out.

Late Policy : Late homework will be accepted, but with a penalty. An assignment turned in 1-7 days late, will lose 3% of the total value of the assignment per day late. The eight day late the penalty will be 40% of the assignment, the ninth day late the penalty will be 60%, after the ninth day late the penalty will be 90%. Once a solution to an assignment has been posted or discussed in class, the assignment will no longer be accepted. Late penalties are always rounded up to the next integer value.

Cheating : Any one caught cheating will receive an F in the course and they will be reported to the SDSU Judicial Procedures Office.

Outline : The course will be divided into three parts. The first part will cover Android details, which will take about half the semester. The second part with deal with GUI design and usability testing. The third part of the course will cover cell phone networks and issues coming from student projects.