CS&E 203 introduces students to computing ideas (including programming) in a fun, interesting context. The context is the creation of interactive graphics and games. Three of the four classes per week meet in a computer laboratory setting, where students learn computing fundamentals hands-on while working with a student partner on a creative project involving moving images and playing sounds in response to interactions with the computer's user (the game player). The other weekly meeting will be spent discussing various topics related to moving images, playing sounds, and interacting with the computer's user, such as describing the image's position, speed, and direction, when to play which sound and for how long, and how to recognize when the user has tapped a certain key or moved the mouse.
Sample lab assignments include (writing a program) to create an interesting scene composed of a number of images, to create an interesting animation in which one or more images moves about the program's window, and to create an interesting interaction in which the movement of images and/or the playing of sounds responds to the user's actions at the keyboard and/or the mouse. The idea of this class is to allow and encourage students to be creative and to have fun with the assignments and let them learn computing ideas as a way to accomplish whatever task their imagination can come up with.
The official syllabus is available here.
A gallery of some of the image collages created by past students in CSE 203 is available here.
The current course advertisement is available here.