The Reuniting Families "unplugged" assignment is designed as a first day CS 1/CS 0 activity to both highlight the social relevance of computing and model what it really means to "do" computer science.

For this activity, the class is asked to consider a disaster, such as an earthquake, devastating a smallish city. Regardless of the specifics of the disaster, the local uncovered soccer stadium is left intact and aid workers have directed all survivors to congregate at this single undamaged stadium. Assume that the stadium is sufficient to hold all the survivors. After all the survivors of a nuclear family have been identified, that family can leave the stadium to their waiting Red Cross tent. Students, working in groups of three or four, devise a protocol, i.e. an algorithm, for the aid workers to use to reunite the survivors of each nuclear family unit.

This course is one version of Cal Poly's CPE123, an introductory course targeting incoming freshmen. All sections of CPE123 have the goal of engaging students in "demonstrating the relevance of computing to the world around them" by challenging "students with creative, constructivist challenges that are relevant to their own lives.” It assumes no prior experience in computer science.

In this version of CPE123, computational art is used as a means for exploring beginning computer programming, logic and math. The course uses Processing, an open source programming language and IDE built on the Java programming language.

“The hidden agenda of the class is to make you fall in love with the ability to translate thoughts into reality—also known as computer science.” - J. Clements

[Unlike other collection items, syllabi are not peer reviewed.]

This project is a series of 5 assignments which incrementally teach the students about Ray Casting. Ray casting is a simulation and approximation of light traveling from a virtual object (for this project, a sphere) to a virtual eye that can be used to generate a three-dimensional image.

The project emphasizes functional decomposition through the topics of data aggregation, loops, lists/arrays, conditional statements, and functions.

Imagine making a 1 billion dollar error by typing the incorrect information into a computer. That is what happened to a Japanese securities trader in December of 2005. The trader accidentally typed in the wrong amount when selling a share of stock and lost his investors millions upon millions of dollars. This module discusses the importance input validation and the risks involved if this is not considered in code.

In this laboratory, student are asked to examine integer values that are too large or too small and may fall outside the allowable range for their data type. This may lead to undefined behavior that can both reduce the robustness of the code and lead to security vulnerabilities.

This is the first introductory computer science course at the University of Northern Iowa. It is a semester-long course with three one-hour classroom lectures and a two-hour interactive lab per week. It is required for computer science majors but non-majors also take the course. No prior programming experience is expected, but the class is designed to be engaging to those with and without programming experience. While a major goal of the course is to provide a good start to the development of programming skills (using Python), the course is not solely about programming.  

Upon successful completion of the course students should have gained the following skills and proficiencies: general computer and operating system usage, computer operation, a mental model of how programs are executed, machine capabilities and functions, general program design, standard approaches to common (simple) programming tasks, abstraction (data , procedural, thinking), data and problem representation, and elementary data structures.

This is the eighth lab for computational art (CS1) using Processing where students practice creating an Andy Warhol silkscreen image filter. The goals for this lab are:

1. Practice creating an Andy Warhol silkscreen image filter
2. Practice using images in Processing
3. Practice manipulating pixels of an image
4. Practice using arrays and writing for loops
5. Practice indexing a 1D ray with 2D coordinates
6. Practice using boolean logic to control which parts of an image are modified (including implicit circles) 

This is lab for computational art (CS1) using Processing where students create a program that animates multiple characters in a scene using loops and arrays.

The goals for this lab are:

1. Practice writing methods
2. Practice writing loops
3. Practice using an array data structure
4. Practice using animation variables
5. Practice using arrays

This is the third project for computational art (CS1) using Processing where students create a self portrait using a digital image of themselves as the starting point. In this project, students learn about 2D to 1D array mapping and indexing as well as practice using loops via the plotting of a shape using a parametric equation. The objectives for this project are:

In this assignment students create an art nouveau style sketch using Processing which includes both animated curved elements and repeated ’tile’ like aspects. This is the second project for computational art (CS1) using Processing. The objectives for this project are:

1. Practice using a loop to control structure to generate patterns/scenes
2. Use functions to re-draw parts of a scene
3. Use random to produce desirable colors and design layout
4. Use structured layout
5. Use parametric curves to control curved patterns in a sketch
6. Apply repetition of drawing certain elements in a sketch