ITEC 120
PRINCIPLES OF COMPUTER SCIENCE I

  1. Catalog Entry

ITEC 120. Principles of Computer Science I
Three hours lecture; two hours laboratory (4).

Pre-requisites: none

A rigorous, systematic approach to object oriented problem solving and programming.

  1. Detailed Description of Content of Course

Topics covered:

Programming Fundamentals

- Java: assignment, expressions, conditionals, loops
- Keyboard I/O
- File I/O (records)
- Arrays of primitive types
- Arrays of objects
- Applications
- Class libraries
- Methods
- Overloading

Objects and Classes

- Fields and Methods
- Instance v.s. Class Members
- Inheritance (*)
- Encapsulation
- Visibility modifiers
- New
- Reference types
- Primitive types

Language Topics

- Type conversion
- String manipulation
- Java Virtual Machine
- Java Applets and simple graphics

Software Engineering

- Problem solving
- Software Analysis and Design
- Testing and debugging
- Documentation and program structure
- UML
- Abstraction and Data Structures

Algorithms

- searching
- simple sort

Graphical User Interface

Recursion

Recurring Themes

- Ethics
- Analysis of Algorithms (sort)

These topics are consistent with the curriculum for CS1 as recommended by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).

  1. Detailed Description of Conduct of Course.

Class lecture and discussion sessions present and explain problem solving techniques and standard algorithms, illustrated by examples. In the laboratory students learn, with faculty guidance, to solve programming problems and to actually implement their solutions on the computer. Students are also required to solve, code, test and debug several problems without direct faculty guidance.

  1. Goals and Objectives of the Course:

To provide students with a basic understanding of computer systems, working knowledge of a higher level programming language and the problem solving skills that they will need to prepare them for further studies in information technology.

  1. Assessment Measures

Student achievement is measured by written tests and evaluation of programming assignments.

  1. Other Course Information

None.

  1. Review and Approval

DATE ACTION APPROVAL


April 15, 2009, Updated Arthur E. Carter, Chair

February, 2003 Updated John P. Helm, Chair