IT206 005 Object Oriented Programming - GMU Spring 2012 (Friday, January 13, 2012)

(Updated 1/20/2012) It's that time of year again. GMU has finally put my name up on PatriotWeb, assigned to this class, and the Google queries are starting to roll in.

I will be teaching Section 005 of IT206, Object Oriented Techniques for IT Problem Solving, which meets at the Fairfax campus on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 7:20 PM to 8:35 PM in Innovation Hall Room 207. In order to take Section 005, you must also be enrolled in lab section 205, which meets in Innovation Hall 334 on Tuesday evenings immediately after the lecture. The lab instructor for this section is Kiran Thati, who will be assisted by Kruthika Kunduru. I will also be teaching an online section of IT206, Section DL3, for which you must also enroll in lab section 2D3. Kruthika will be the lab instructor for the online sections. The online section will be asynchronous, using recorded lectures that students will watch on their own time. Online students will be expected to attend the midterm exam and final exam in person. You must have earned a C or better in IT106 to enroll in this class, although I understand that some students are transfers and will have a different, but equivalent, course that meets this requirement.

I have found that students very rarely come to fixed, scheduled office hours, even when they really should. Because of that, I generally tell students that office hours are by appointment — if you need to meet with me, please let me know, and I will make myself available. The most convenient time for me would probably be after class on Thursday evenings. More details will follow.

This class will use Deitel's "Java, How to Program" text book, which you will hopefully already own from IT106. I think the department currently encourages the "Late Objects" version, with the red cover, but it has the same content as the blue cover version, with the chapters in a different order. Please remember that I did not choose this book.

IT206 is the middle course in the Applied IT Department's programming sequence, and the last course required for all AIT majors. The course will introduce Object Oriented Programming techniques, and builds heavily on the material from the first course. Programming courses are not like courses in other disciplines where the material is largely independent from one to the next. In this course, you have to understand each topic before you can successfully move on to the next one. The best way to become a good programmer is to write an awful lot of code. If the only time you ever write any code is during your lab section, you will probably find this course very challenging.

This course can be challenging for anyone, so I highly encourage you to ask questions as often as possible, and keep asking until you are sure you understand. Feel free to contact me by sending e-mail to bziman@gmu.edu. Any message not sent from your GMU account and with "IT206" in the subject line will probably be eaten by my spam filter.

All material for IT206 will be posted on the course section of the MyMason Portal.

—Brian (01/13/2012 10:24 AM)