CS 4261 - Mobile Applications and Services
CS 4261 - Mobile Applications and Services is a 3-credit Computer Science course which is an optional thread pick for the Information Internetworks thread that satisfies the Advanced Information Management requirement. It is a project-based course in which students develop a cross-platform mobile application in teams. The graduate section of the class is CS 8803 MAS. There is little difference (if any) between the undergraduate and graduate sections of the class.
Overview[edit | edit source]
In the course, you develop a project of your choice with a team of 4–5 people. What's important is not only the technical development of the project but also doing the customer research necessary to ensure that your project is working on a useful niche which is solving real user needs. Any development frameworks can be used, such as React Native, Ionic, or native Android. Your team is encouraged to submit it to the Convergence Innovation Competition at the end of the semester, where you could win a prize. At the start of the semester, you also develop a mini-project with a partner.
The project is developed over the course of five sprints, each of which is two weeks long. You are assessed on your team's presentations and written reflections at the end of each sprint.
Lectures focus on how to talk with potential users and iterate to create a useful product, and are largely optional. The course does not teach technical topics such as how to develop a mobile application (at least based on the few lectures that I attended).
The median student spent 8.2 hours per week on this course in Spring 2020, according to SmartEvals.
This description of the course is based on the Spring 2020 section with Russ Clark and Matt Sanders as professors.
