CSCI-4176 Mobile Computing Course Syllabus 1 Instructor Information

Alex Brodsky prof4176@cs.dal.ca MWF 17:05-17:55 M 13:35-15:25 www.cs.dal.ca/~prof4176 all-cs4176@cs.dal.ca Oce: Oce Hours: Room No: Room No: Course TAs: 208 TBA Dunn 304 Teaching Lab 2 TBA

Instructor: E-mail: Class Meeting Time: Lab Meeting Time: Course Homepage: Course Mail List:

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Important Dates
Final Exam: TBA in the period of December 9 to 20 Final Withdrawal Date without academic penalty: October 8, 2010 Final Withdrawal Date with academic penalty: November 8, 2010 Assignment Deadlines: Three assignments due at 5pm on September 24, October 15, and October 29 Project Deadlines: Proposal (October 22), Updates 1 & 2 (November 6 & 19), Demo (December 6)

Course Descriptions

This course will introduce students to mobile computing and mobile application development. Mobile computing will be discussed from three perspectives: mobile technology, application development, and user interaction. The course will rst overview various mobile computing applications, technologies and wireless communication. Next, students will learn about common paradigms in mobile computing such as low power computing, computing in an environment with limited resources, fault tolerance, and persistence. Students will be introduced to and use mobile application frameworks and development environments to reinforce concepts covered in lectures. User interface and user experience will be discussed and application development guidelines from various vendors will be discussed and analyzed. Lastly, the the course will look at some current research in mobile computing. Students will be expected to learn at least one mobile application development framework and use it to implement their assignments and course project.

Evaluation Criteria
1. Assignments (15%) 2. Term Project (55%) (May be done in pairs.) Project Proposal (15%) Project Implementation (30%) Project Demo (10%)

3. Final Exam (30%) Photo ID is required. No dictionaries, notes, calculators, cell phones, PDAs, talking slide rulers, or other aids allowed. Note: The instructor reserves the right to adjust a students evaluation criteria, with the students consent, if the instructor deems than an adjustment is warranted. 1

Texts and Resources

Recommended Texts (one of): T. Mikkonen, Programming Mobile Devices: An Introduction for Practitioners, Wiley, 2007. S. Hashimi, S. Komatineni, Pro Android, Apress (2009). S. Hashimi, S. Komatineni, D. MacLean, Pro Android 2, Apress (2010). D. Mark and J. LaMarche, Beginning iPhone 3 Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK, Apress (2009). A. Rizk, Beginning BlackBerry Development, Apress, (2009). Online documentation will be provided for the various frameworks. 2 - 3 research papers for the latter part of the course will be made available online.

Course announcements will be posted to the course mail list, which comprises the instructors and students CS email accounts. It is the students responsibility to check their CS e-mail account on a regular basis. If you do not know how to access your CS e-mail account please contact the CS help desk or see http://www.cs.dal.ca/services/support/faq

Prerequisites

PREREQUISITES: CSCI-2121 and CSCI-3171

Tentative List of Topics to be Covered

1. Overview Mobile Technologies Anatomy of a Mobile Device Survey of Mobile Devices Applications of Mobile Computing Context Information Architecture Design Elements Mobile Web vs Native Applications Introduction to Objective-C The Model-View-Controller Model The Delegate Pattern The iPhone, Android, & Blackberry SDKs Limited Resource Computing Memory Management Low Power Computing Fault Tolerance and Persistence Security Issues 5. Wireless Communication Technologies Celluar networks Wireless (802.11) TCP/IP in the mobile setting Geolocation and Global Positioning System (GPS) The Small Screen Problem The Unied Look and Feel Paradigm The iPhone Human Interface Guidelines The Blackberry User Interface Guidelines Common User Interface Guidelines Consistency and Reliability Security Issues Ad hoc Networks Sensor Networks

2. Application Design

6. The User Experience

3. Development Environments

7. Distributed Computing

4. The Application Environment

8. The Future of Mobile Computing Upcoming Technologies Convergence of Media and Communication Devices

Academic Integrity1

At Dalhousie University, we respect the values of academic integrity: honesty, trust, fairness, responsibility and respect. As a student, adherence to the values of academic integrity and related policies is a requirement of being part of the academic community at Dalhousie University. What does academic integrity mean? Academic integrity means being honest in the fulllment of your academic responsibilities thus establishing mutual trust. Fairness is essential to the interactions of the academic community and is achieved through respect for the opinions and ideas of others. Violations of intellectual honesty are oensive to the entire academic community, not just to the individual faculty member and students in whose class an oence occurs. (see Intellectual Honesty section of University Calendar) How can you achieve academic integrity? Make sure you understand Dalhousies policies on academic integrity. Give appropriate credit to the sources used in your assignment such as written or oral work, computer codes/programs, artistic or architectural works, scientic projects, performances, web page designs, graphical representations, diagrams, videos, and images. Use RefWorks to keep track of your research and edit and format bibliographies in the citation style required by the instructor (http://www.library.dal.ca/How/RefWorks) Do not download the work of another from the Internet and submit it as your own. Do not submit work that has been completed through collaboration or previously submitted for another assignment without permission from your instructor. Do not write an examination or test for someone else. Do not falsify data or lab results. These examples should be considered only as a guide and not an exhaustive list. What will happen if an allegation of an academic oence is made against you? I am required to report a suspected oence. The full process is outlined in the Discipline ow chart, which can be found at: http://academicintegrity.dal.ca/Files/AcademicDisciplineProcess.pdf and includes the following: 1. 2. 3. 4. Each Faculty has an Academic Integrity Ocer (AIO) who receives allegations from instructors. The AIO decides whether to proceed with the allegation and you will be notied of the process. If the case proceeds, you will receive an INC (incomplete) grade until the matter is resolved. If you are found guilty of an academic oence, a penalty will be assigned ranging from a warning to a suspension or expulsion from the University and can include a notation on your transcript, failure of the assignment or failure of the course. All penalties are academic in nature.

Where can you turn for help? If you are ever unsure about ANYTHING, contact myself. The Academic Integrity website (http://academicintegrity.dal.ca) has links to policies, denitions, online tutorials, tips on citing and paraphrasing. The Writing Center provides assistance with proofreading, writing styles, citations. Dalhousie Libraries have workshops, tutorials, citation guides, Assignment Calculator, RefWorks, etc. The Dalhousie Student Advocacy Service assists students with academic appeals and student discipline procedures. The Senate Oce provides links to a list of Academic Integrity Ocers, discipline ow chart, and Senate Discipline Committee.
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on the sample statement provided at http://academicintegrity.dal.ca.