Richard G Baldwin (512) 223-4758, NRG Room 4238, Baldwin@DickBaldwin.com, http://www.austincc.edu/baldwin/

ITSE2321 Object-Oriented Programming

This material applies to classroom sections and Distance Learning sections including APT sections taught by Professor Baldwin.

Expanded Course Description

Spring 2014

Revised: 11/02/13

The official web page for this course is ITSE2321.htm

Two parallel tracks

Students enrolled in ITSE 2321 Object-Oriented Programming pursue two parallel tracks of study designed to teach and reinforce the concepts of and the application of Object-Oriented Programming (OOP).

One track is traditional

One track is the traditional track that has been used to teach computer programming for many years. This track is based primarily on the following modules of my online e-book titled Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) with Java.

This track is designed to teach students the fundamentals of Object-Oriented Programming and the Java Collections Framework.

Note that I didn't say fundamentals of programming. Students enrolled in this course should be well versed in the fundamentals of programming, and should have successfully completed COSC 1336 or an equivalent course.

(Students who are weak in that area should also study the section titled Programming Fundamentals in my e-book.)

The traditional track uses short, concise programs to illustrate the fundamentals of OOP and the Java Collections Framework without concern for the real-world applicability of those programs. The programs are designed to be as simple as possible while still illustrating the OOP concepts involved. This material is absolutely necessary for an understanding of OOP and the Java Collections Framework and is reflected heavily in the online testing requirements for the course.

A multimedia track

The second track is designed to teach students how to apply OOP in the real world. It is based largely on the section titled Multimedia in my e-book along with the textbook titled Introduction to Computing and Programming with Java, A Multimedia Approach. This material teaches the practical applications of Java OOP using image manipulation as the primary teaching vehicle. (The textbook also includes sound, text, and videos, but that material is beyond the scope of this course.)

For example, thumbnail versions of some of the images that you will learn to create in this course are shown below.

All of the images shown above were created by writing Java programs to manipulate digital photos or other image files.

For those enrolled in the classroom section of the course, the bulk of the lecture time will be spent on the multimedia track. However, I am very flexible and am willing to discuss whatever aspects of the course the students prefer.

Time in the lab will be dedicated to either the traditional track or the multimedia track, depending on which topics the students have questions about. Assignments and tests will have a mixture of programming projects and questions from both tracks. For example, a typical assignment question would be to ask the student to write a Java program that will:

Hopefully by the end of the semester students will have a good foundation for learning much of what they will need to know to create multimedia projects similar to the following. (The second one is quite long and may take a while to download, so you will need to be patient.):

*Copyright Georgia Institute of Technology 2004, author Barb Ericson

Please note, however, that learning to create multimedia projects of this complexity will require a significant study effort on the student's part beyond the material covered in this one-semester course. This course will simply lay the groundwork for students who desire to pursue the Java/multimedia path.

The first video listed above includes sound and demonstrates audio frequency shifting using a Java program.

There is no sound included in the second video. Instead, this video demonstrates the merging of two videos using a Java program. One of the two videos is an animation produced using the Alice software. The other video was produced with a video camera and includes a human actor performing in front of a blue screen (similar to the technique used to merge weather maps and human announcers on TV).

-end-

File: ITSE2321ExpandedCourseDescription.htm