Spring 2007: Topics in Application Programming

Term Offered: Spring 2007

Faculty Instructor: Ralph Morelli

Course Description:

The study of a specific topic related to the application of principles of programming to real world problems. Topics will vary from year to year depending on current issues in programming or interests of the instructor. The topic for spring 2007 will be Open-Source Humanitarian Software Development. This course will be open to CS students from Connecticut College and Wesleyan University under the CTW Mellon grant and will be taught as a seminar/project course using the video conferencing technology for weekly class meetings. The course will involve analyzing, designing, and implementing open-source software. The focus of the project will be Sahana, an award-winning open-source disaster recovery information system that has been deployed internationally in several natural disasters, including the 2005 Asian Tsunami and the 2005 Pakistani earthquake. In terms of software tools, we will use the LAMP platform (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP). Students can expect to work in teams on real-world tasks. Class meetings will address standard software engineering practices and principles, such as refactoring, unit testing, design and documentation standards, and other related topics.

Materials
HFOSS Education and Development Wiki page for this course contains the following content:
 * Syllabus
 * Course Website
 * Schedule
 * Notes
 * Assignments
 * Final Projects
 * Class List