Ideas for a new Imager-wide second-year course.

(First or third year are also a possibility, but it should be "lower" than existing 314/344, and probably require things like cs110 as in a ministream if we want to have students writing meaningful programs in the course.)

There are two possible (but likely quite compatible) paradigms for the course:

• What every computer science student (and interested outsiders) should know about interaction, graphics, and visualization before going off to work in other areas.
• What any student interested in computation and digital media should know to get started.

Strategic points:

• The new course shouldn't cannibalize enrollment in the existing Imager courses, but instead recruit more possible students for them.
• The new course should attract enough students to make us look good in the context of bums-in-seats, and provide us more undergrad teaching that we like.

Current plan:

• Use this page to figure out what the course should be about and what sort of prereqs make sense, in general terms.
• Then Robert and/or interested other people start fleshing out a more concrete proposal.
• ?????
• Profit.

Topics

Please include your name in suggestions for later reference.

• What any programmer who draws something on a screen needs to know: 2d affine transformations, basic antialiasing (sans Fourier transforms), vector vs. bitmap, image compression. (Robert)
• Common patterns in GUI programming - MVC, undo stacks, etc. (Robert)

Projects and Platforms

Please include your name in suggestions for later reference.

• With 210 as a prereq we could assume Java, which could fit in with Processing, Swing toolkit, Android development, ... but I'd be worried it's too heavyweight of a language for a course that we want to be accessible to non-CS majors. Maybe? (Robert)
• Mobile platform development in general sounds like it could be a big draw, and exposes more "new media" ideas and concerns.

-- RobertBridson - 20 Oct 2011