Pre-Requisites

This course is designed for two kinds of graduates student:

• 1. Students with programming skills, typically from the Computer disciplines (ECE and CS), but possibly from the many other disciplines that make use of computers and that program them.  The key pre-requisite for these students is an ability to program, with Java-based programming skills an asset, but not essential.  The expectation is that programmers are quite skilled at programming; simply having one or two courses in software in your background will not be sufficient.  You should have had several larger-scale programming experiences in your background.
• 2. Students from non-programming backgrounds (called Specialists in this course) with a passion for the uses possible with these mobile devices and web-based software.  This can be any graduate-level discipline at all.  The key pre-requisite for these students is to bring a core expertise in your field (and be able to identify what that is), and interest in software/mobile applications applied to their discipline, and a willingness to learn new things, and to pitch in to make an interesting application. Since the project is the key part of this course, it must be in the area of expertise of the Specialist.

Also: If you are not a graduate student, but have strong expertise and would like to participate in this course as an external specialist, then please contact the instructor.  In past years there have been many external specialists, including doctors, speech pathologists, lawyers, musicians and more! External specialists are required to attend all lectures and to do all of the specialist assignments.  These assignments are all relevant to the project.

Undergraduates with strong computer programming capability may be allowed to take this course, with permission of the instructor.  Be aware, that this is an intensive course that will require more work than a typical undergraduate course.  Undergraduates from non-programming disciplines will not be allowed to take the course.

Note:  As this is a project course which requires a mixture of different kinds of students, the right number of each kind of student must be present in each project group.  It is possible that there are not the right number, and if so, not every student who registers will be able to continue in the course.  For this reason, it is important that you have a alternative course selection available until the project groups are determined.

Note to students who wish to audit this course:  since the purpose of the course is to produce a working application, every student taking this course must make a strong commitment to it.  That means taking the course for credit.  There have been many requests to audit the course, but please understand that the commitment to take the course for credit is essential.