Object-oriented Programming thru Video Games, TIDE 184, Fall 2008

Day and time: T 5-6:15, ILC and Newcomb 442
Professor Harry Howard
Office hours: MW 11-12, T 4-5 & by appointment
322D Newcomb Hall

862-3417
www.tulane.edu/~howard/TIDE184/

Rationale

Today’s students have grown up in a multimedia world – and to motivate them, instructors must relate students’ classroom experience to that world. The Alice 3D programming environment is a teaching tool for such students. It uses 3D graphics and a drag-and-drop interface to teach introductory object-oriented computer programming with a more engaging, less frustrating experience. It makes it easy to create an animation for telling a story, playing an interactive game, or a video to share on the web. In Alice, 3D objects (e.g., people, animals, and vehicles) populate a virtual world, and the student's task it to create a program to animate the objects. With Alice's interactive interface, students can drag and drop graphic tiles to create a program, where the instructions correspond to standard statements in a production oriented programming language, such as Java, C++, and C#. Alice allows students to immediately see how their animation programs run, enabling them to easily understand the relationship between the programming statements and the behavior of objects in their animation. By manipulating the objects in their virtual world, students gain experience with all the programming constructs typically taught in an introductory programming course.

Goal

For the student to learn the basic principles of object-oriented computer programming using Alice.

Objectives

For you to demonstrate your attainment of the goal of the course, you will perform the following tasks:

Class discussion. Because the TIDE course meets only once a week, you are expected to attend every session and to come to class prepared to go over the readings assigned. (10%)
After the first day, you must turn in a short programming assignment every week. (8 x 10% = 80%)
Final project. On the last day of class you will present to the class a project that shows what you have learned during the course. (10%)

Code of Academic Integrity

“The integrity of Newcomb-Tulane College is based on the absolute honesty of the entire community in all academic endeavors. As part of the Tulane University community, students have certain responsibilities regarding work that forms the basis for the evaluation of their academic achievement. Students are expected to be familiar with these responsibilities at all times. No member of the university community should tolerate any form of academic dishonesty, because the scholarly community of the university depends on the willingness of both instructors and students to uphold the Code of Academic Conduct. When a violation of the Code of Academic Conduct is observed it is the duty of every member of the academic community who has evidence of the violation to take action. Students should take steps to uphold the code by reporting any suspected offense to the instructor or the associate dean of the college. Students should under no circumstances tolerate any form of academic dishonesty.” For further information, point your browser at http://college.tulane.edu/honorcode.htm.

Violations of the Academic Honor Code will not be tolerated in this class. I will rigorously investigate and pursue any such transgression.

Students with disabilities who need academic accommodation should:

Contact and register with the Office of Disability Services (ODS). For more information, visit the ODS website at http://erc.tulane.edu/disability/.
Bring official notice to me from the ODS indicating that you need academic accommodation. This should be done within the first week of class.

Fall 2008 Schedule

Text: Learning to Program with Alice, Brief Edition.
Wanda P Dann, Stephen Cooper, and Randy Pausch (2007) Prentice Hall

Date	Day	Topic
Sept 9	Day 1	Introduction to the course; §1.1 Introduction to Alice (Nwcb 442)
Sept 16	Day 2	§1.2 Alice Concepts; Tips & Techniques 1: Special Effects (Nwcb 442)
Sept 23	Day 3	§2.1 Scenarios and Storyboards
Sept 30	Day 4	§2.2 A First Program
Oct 7	Day 5	§3.1 Built-in Functions and Expressions
Oct 14	Day 6	§3.2 Simple Control Structures; Tips & Techniques 3: Engineering Look and Feel
Oct 21	Day 7	§4.3 Class-level Methods and Inheritance
Oct 28	Day 8	Tips & Techniques 4: Visible and Invisible Objects
Nov 4	Day 9	Tips & Techniques 5: Events
Nov 11	Day 10	Presentation of final project

Go back to Harry Howard's home page

Started 9-Sept-2008; last update 16-Sep-2008. HH