Course Description
This course provides students with a practical introduction to programming. Students will learn essential programming concepts including variables, loops, conditionals, functions, data structures, and regular expressions. Through hands-on exercises, they will use code to organize and analyze data, and work with files.
Syllabus
Student Learning Outcomes, Goals, Objectives:
Students successfully completing this course will be able to:
- Demonstrate an understanding of the fundamental concepts of programming, including algorithms, pseudocode, variables, operators, control flow, loops, and functions.
- Work with Python data structures, including lists, dictionaries, and strings, to store, organize, and manipulate data.
- Identify patterns in text with regular expressions to search, clean, and extract information.
- Perform file operations in Python to open, read, write, and organize text data.
Course Grading Information:
| Activity/Performance Measure | Percentage/Points |
|---|---|
| Quizzes & Knowledge Checks | 20% |
| In-Class Participation, Attendance & Hands-On Exercises | 20% |
| Mini Coding Assignments & Practice Tasks | 20% |
| Final Project & Practical Milestones | 40% |
Attendance/Participation:
Active involvement in guided coding exercises, debugging tasks, and collaborative pair programming (e.g., peer-reviewing regex scripts) is part of the grading components.
Course Materials Purchased by the Students:
- Think Python: How to Think Like a Computer Scientist — Allen B. Downey, 2nd Edition, Green Tea Press / O'Reilly Media, 2015, ISBN 9781491939369
- Problem Solving with Algorithms and Data Structures Using Python — Bradley N. Miller, David L. Ranum, Roman Yasinovskyy, 3rd Edition, Franklin, Beedle & Associates, 2023, ISBN 9781590282830
- Automate the Boring Stuff with Python — Al Sweigart, 2nd Edition, No Starch Press, 2019, ISBN 9781593279929
Scholarly Perspectives
This course engages diverse scholarly perspectives to develop critical thinking, analysis, and debate and inclusion of a reading does not imply endorsement.