School of Information Systems & Technology

Course Syllabus: [IS313, Information Technology]

Term: [Fall, 2010]

Campus: [Claremont]

Location: [ACB 108]

Day(s) & Time: [M 4pm - 6:50pm]

Instructor: [Zachary Dodds]

Core Faculty Liaison: [Brian Hilton]

Contact Information:

Office Location: [HMC Olin 1255]

Schedule of Office Hours: [F 2-4pm (in HMC Linde Computer Lab – or simply email me)]

Office Phone: [909-607-1813]

Email Address: [

Instructor’s Web site: [

Course Web site: [

Other contact info: [email is best!]

Course Description:

The automatic processing and distribution of information -- the efforts of computers -- lie at the heart of information science. As a result, understanding how computers do what they do and how programmers interact with them is fundamental to every role in technology's expanding sphere of influence. Marketers, managers, strategic planners, administrators, and CEOs benefit from concrete and hands-on experience with the raw material of information science -- the computer program.

In IS313 students gain experience with this raw material, computer programming, by actively designing and writing programs. Class sessions will start with a presentation on an aspect of computer programming. The ideas discussed will then be put into practice with supervised, hands-on experience in writing computer code to solve problems. Weekly assignments extend this classroom experience and offer a chance to reflect on the skills learned.

Prerequisites: [None]

Objectives for Student Learning (Course and Program):

Program Learning Outcomes
Course Learning Outcomes: / Graduates are prepared to be leaders in the IS field / Graduates have core IS knowledge / Graduates can integrate IS & business foundations / Graduates have perspective on business and real world / Graduates have communication, interpersonal, and team skills / Graduates are able to think analytically and creatively / Graduates have required career-specific skills
Upon completion of IS13, students will know:
How to write scripting software that meets external I/O and performance specifications / x / x / x
How to write programs in a scripting language that uses iteration as its fundamental control structure / x / x / x
How to write programs in a scripting language that uses recursion as its fundamental control structure / x / x / x
How to build a multi-person, medium-sized software system requiring separate design, implementation, and testing phases. / x / x / x / x / x
How to think like a computer scientist, the better to achieve higher-level, organizational goals. / x / x / x / x / x / x

Grading:

Your grade in the course will be based on a combination of your homework and exam performance. Here, "exam" refers to a multi-week final project. There are no traditional exams in this class. The basic intent is that the homeworks will act as learning tools while the exam (aka project) will act as diagnostic tool, as well as an opportunity to apply principles to a larger software system. Performance on both will contribute towards your final grade. The following tables roughly summarize the mapping from percentages to grades:

Books, Readings, and Materials:

The text for the IS313 course is freely available online.It is Allen B. Downey's

Python for Software Design: How to Think Like a Computer Scientist

The primary webpage is

The document itself is available in HTML and PDF. Both are available at

Course Requirements:

Homework and exam/project Requirement: As mentioned in the "grading" section, above, students in IS313 must successfully complete weekly homework assignments and a final project (which is what is meant by "exam").

E-Portfolio Requirement: In order to improve its courses, SISAT tries to assess student learning directly. As part of this, and in view of our emphasis on using information technologies, we require that every student in every course must document some aspect of their learning in the course using an e-portfolio. Eportfolios must be done with the Claremont Conversation Online.

To satisfy this requirement, an entry in the student’s e-portfolio must be created with the template page for this course, and it must address the learning objectives for the course and program. These are listed in the matrix above and in the CCO e-portfolio page template for this course.

The instructor will determine whether the entry suitably reflects course- and program-related learning. She/he may ask the student to revise and resubmit the entry. There are many possible suitable entries. Possible examples include the deliverables for a class project, a paper written as a result of the course, or a series of blog entries. Any entry is acceptable that demonstrates that the student knows more about the course content than she/he did at the beginning of the course. It is important that the entry be non-trivial, but it need not be a major new undertaking either. Entries are intended to bea representation of what was learned.

This is a special assignment. It is not used in calculation of your course grade; it is a requirement to get a grade. No final grade other than “Incomplete” (except “Unsatisfactory”) will be assigned for the course until you have posted a suitable entry to your e-portfolio. Any e-portfolio entry intended to be used to satisfy the requirement for the course must remain in the student’s CCO e-portfolio for at least one month following the course, to allow time for archival of pages to occur.

Because entries to an e-portfolio provide you with an opportunity to reflect on your learning, we encourage you to create more than the one required entry, to share your entries with your classmates, and to collect entries across your classes—in effect, creating a online collection of postings about what you have been learning. Such collections have value in expressing to yourself and others what you have learned in your degree program.

Policy on plagiarism: Plagiarism will not be tolerated. The minimum penalty for plagiarism is a zero for the assignment; more severe penalties can include failure in the course and expulsion from the program. To avoid plagiarism, do not take credit for the work of others. Obtain permission from the holders of rights to any intellectual property you use, including text, code, images, etc. Provide a full reference for each work used. See for additional information. [The instructor may add requirements regarding the originality of work. The instructor may add requirements concerning the use of plagiarism-avoidance software, such as Turnitin (]

Schedule for Course: Programming assignment details are listed on the course webpage.

  • Mon., 8/30/10 – Lecture 1: introduction to CS for IS
  • Mon., 9/6/10 – No lecture: Labor Day
  • Mon., 9/13/10 – Lecture 2: data, functions and recursion
  • Mon., 9/20/10 – Lecture 3: web technologies, part 1
  • Mon., 9/27/10 – Lecture 4: iterative programming and software design
  • Mon., 10/4/10 – Lecture 5: web technologies, part 2
  • Mon., 10/11/10 – Lecture 6: thinking inside the box: 2-d and n-d data strucutures
  • Mon., 10/18/10 – No lecture: HMC's fall break
  • Mon., 10/25/10 – Lecture 7: Designing with objects: dictionaries et al.
  • Mon., 11/1/10 – Lecture 8: Object-oriented design and implementation
  • Mon., 11/8/10 – Lecture 9: Applications of objects; project proposal suggestions
  • Mon., 11/15/10 – Lecture 10: Large Software projects: final project proposal due
  • Mon., 11/22/10 – Lecture 11: Next-generation APIs and technologies
  • Mon., 12/29/10 – No lecture: (at ISVC 2010) milestone for final projects are due
  • Mon., 12/6/10 – Lecture 12: Final project presentations by IS313 students
  • Mon., 12/13/10 – No lecture: Final project write-ups are due.

Date of Last Revision: [08/28/10]