About COP 4910

This page provides general information about COP 4910 (Frontiers of IT) at the University of Central Florida. The course's home page is www.cs.ucf.edu/~leavens/COP4910/.

This page is organized as follows:

  1. Meetings
  2. Remote Instruction is Synchronous
  3. Course Textbooks
  4. Accessibility
  5. Deployed Active Duty Military Students
  6. Make-Up Assignments for Authorized University Events or Co-curricular Activities
  7. Religious Observances
  8. Course Description and Credit Hours
  9. Course Learning Objectives
  10. Course Learning Outcomes
  11. Prerequisites
  12. Acknowledgments

The course grading policy and syllabus are on separate web pages. Also on a separate page is our contact information.

Meetings

For class meetings, the time is as follows: Mondays and Wednesdays from 9:00 AM to 10:15 AM.

Due to the COVID-19 virus changes at UCF, we will be meeting via Zoom. See Webcourses@UCF for details on how to join the zoom meetings. These meetings will occur at the same times as above.

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Remote Instruction is Synchronous

(The following is mostly quoted from the faculty center for teaching and learning's web site.)

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, this course will use Zoom for synchronous ("real time") class meetings. Meeting dates and times are as in the class schedule and should appear on your calendar in Webcourses@UCF.

Please take the time to familiarize yourself with Zoom by visiting the UCF Zoom Guides at the webcourses support site for Zoom. You may choose to use Zoom on your mobile device (phone or tablet).

Things to Know About Zoom

You must sign in to my Zoom session using your UCF NID and password. The Zoom sessions are recorded. Improper classroom behavior is not tolerated within Zoom sessions and may result in a referral to the Office of Student Conduct. You can contact Webcourses@UCF Support at if you have any technical issues accessing Zoom.

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Course Textbooks

There are no required textbooks for this course. However...

Recommended Texts

The following books are recommended.

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Accessibility

We are happy to help with accessibility issues. The procedure is outlined in the following statement (modified from the faculty center for teaching and learning's web site):

The University of Central Florida is committed to providing access and inclusion for all persons. Students who have accessibility issues "due to course design limitations should contact the professor as soon as possible. Students should also connect with Student Accessibility Services (SAS) (Ferrell Commons 185, sas@ucf.edu, phone 407-823-2371). For students connected with SAS, a Course Accessibility Letter may be created and sent to professors, which informs faculty of potential course access and accommodations that might be necessary and reasonable. Determining reasonable access and accommodations requires consideration of the course design, course learning objectives and the individual academic and course barriers experienced by the student. Further conversation with SAS, faculty and the student may be warranted to ensure an accessible course experience."

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Deployed Active Duty Military Students

Quoting from the faculty center for teaching and learning's web site:

"Students who are deployed active duty military and/or National Guard personnel and require accommodation should contact their instructors as soon as possible after the semester begins and/or after they receive notification of deployment to make related arrangements."

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Make-Up Assignments for Authorized University Events or Co-curricular Activities

Quoting from the faculty center for teaching and learning's web site:

"Students who represent the university in an authorized event or activity (for example, student-athletes) and who are unable to meet a course deadline due to a conflict with that event must provide the instructor with documentation in advance to arrange a make-up. No penalty will be applied. For more information, see UCF policy 4-401."

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Religious Observances

Quoting from the faculty center for teaching and learning's web site:

"Students must notify their instructor in advance if they intend to miss class for a religious observance. For more information, see UCF policy 5.020."

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Course Description and Credit Hours

COP 4910 is a 3 credit course is titled "Frontiers in Information Technology."

From the University of Central Florida Catalog: "PR: CNT 4603 with a grade of "C" (2.0) or better; CR: CNT 4703C and CIS 4991. Research into leading edge information technologies that have a high likelihood of affecting the work place in the two to five year time frame. Fall,Spring."

Explanation

Information Technology (IT) is a field that strives to use computers, peripheral devices, and knowledge from computing to provide better service and value to enterprises, including businesses, non-profit organizations, and governmental agencies. These enterprises rely on information technologists to drive efficiency and productivity by improving business processes and discovering innovative ways to use an enterprise's information resources to serve its customers.

Motivation for the Course Objectives

IT is a fast changing field in which enterprises can gain either business advantages or the ability to better achieve their mission by making innovative use of new technology and computing resources. Several companies, such as IBM, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Apple have used IT innovations to make billions of dollars, and countless other companies have made lesser but still substantial fortunes. However, new IT systems and processes can also cause various harms, which can be multiplied by the speed of automated information processing. Recall the old saying: "to err is human but to really foul things up requires a computer."

Since technology is changing very rapidly in IT, it is important for your career to know how to stay up to date and how to inform other leaders in an enterprise about such innovations, so that they can change the direction of the enterprise and allocate resources appropriately.

Motivation for the Course Plan

Because IT professionals will need to both understand and communicate innovations in technology to others, presentations and reports are important skills.

Furthermore, an important skill for an IT professional is to listen to, understand, and help improve presentations by other IT professionals. The other person making the presentation may be a team member, another IT professional in the same enterprise, a sales person, or a consultant. In all these cases the enterprise's resources may be at stake.

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Course Learning Objectives

The objectives for this course are divided into two parts: a set of essential objectives, and a set of enrichment objectives. The essential objectives will be helpful for your career as an IT professional; hence they lead to the course's essential outcomes that we want to help you master. The enrichment objectives are less important for the course, but lead to enrichment outcomes that you are encouraged to explore both for their own sake and because learning more about those will help deepen your understanding of the essential objectives.

This course's objectives are linked to the IT program's learning objectives (in references that look like this: [ITObj2]).

Essential Objectives

In one sentence, this course's main objective is that you will be able to learn about [ITObj2] and teach others about [ITObj2] innovations in IT [ITObj1]. In more detail the essential objectives for this course are that you will be able to:

Enrichment Objectives

Enrichment objectives could be multiplied without limit, but the following seem most important, especially in relation to the IT program's learning objectives.

The course's enrichment objectives are that you will be able to:

Course Learning Outcomes

This course's learning outcomes are divided into two parts: a set of essential outcomes, and a set of enrichment outcomes. The essential outcomes are designed to support this course's essential learning objectives, and thus to be helpful for your career as a computer scientist or software engineer; hence we want to help you to master them. They also form the basis for grading and assessment of your learning. The enrichment outcomes are not used directly for assessment. However, you are encouraged to explore topics related to the enrichment outcomes both for their own sake and because learning more about those will help your performance relative to the essential outcomes.

The course's outcomes are linked to the course's objectives and to the computer science program's outcomes. The links to this course's objectives are shown in references that look like this: [Communicate]. The links to the IT program's learning outcomes are shown in references that look like this: [ITOut3]).

Essential Outcomes

In one sentence, this course's main expected learning outcome is that you will be able to effectively communicate the importance and implications of new innovations in IT [Communicate] [Evaluate] [ITOut1] [ITOut3] [ITOut4] [ITOut7] [ITOut8].

In more detail, the essential objectives for this course are that you will be able to:

Enrichment Outcomes

Enrichment outcomes could be multiplied without limit, but the following seem most important, especially in relation to the IT program's learning outcomes.

The course's enrichment outcomes are that you will be able to:

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Prerequisites and Co-requisites

The formal prerequisite in the University of Central Florida catalog is "CNT 4603 with a grade of 'C' (2.0) or better", and there is a co-requisite of "CNT 4703C and CIS 4991."

See the professor if you have questions about the prerequisites or co-requisites.

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Acknowledgments

Many thanks to Ali Orooji and Euripides Montagne, as well as Mark Llewellyn, and Dan Marinescu, for discussions about this course.

Thanks to Curtis Clifton (now at Apple) for his initial work on the HTML for these web pages, which I have adapted from another course, and his style sheets, which I have also adapted.

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Last modified Wednesday, August 12, 2020.

This web page is for COP 4910 at the University of Central Florida. The details of this course are subject to change as experience dictates. You will be informed of any changes. Please direct any comments or questions to Gary T. Leavens at Leavens@ucf.edu. Some of the policies and web pages for this course are quoted or adapted from other courses I have taught, in partciular, COP 4020.