This course provides students a continued introduction to problem solving, abstraction, and algorithmic thinking that is relevant across the field of new media. As the second course in programming for new media students, this course continues an object-oriented approach to programming for creative practice. Topics will include re-usability, data structures, rich media types, event-driven programming, loaders, XML, object design, and inheritance. Emphasis is placed on the development of problem-solving skills as students develop moderately complex applications.

In this course, students will learn to create visually rich interactive experiences. It is a course in programming graphics and media, but it is also a course on the relationship between ideas and code. Students will explore topics in math and physics by building programs that simulate and visualize processes in the natural world. Assignments will include major programming projects, such as building a virtual world inhabited by digital creatures that display observable behaviors.

This course focuses upon the application of data structures, algorithms, and fundamental Newtonian physics to the development of video game applications, entertainment software titles, and simulations. Topics covered include 3D coordinate systems and the implementation of affine transformations, geometric primitives, and efficient data structures and algorithms for real-time collision detection. Furthermore, Newtonian mechanics principles will be examined in the context of developing game and entertainment software where they will be applied to compute the position, velocity and acceleration of a point-mass subject to forces and the conservation of momentum and energy. Programming assignments are a required part of this course.

This course introduces web technologies commonly used in the production and distribution of both content focused web sites, and in the creation of interactive applications and games. Students will create web sites and web-native interactive experiences, and publish them to the web. Programming projects are required.

This course provides students the opportunity to explore the design and development of media-rich web applications that utilize both static and procedurally manipulated media such as text, images and audio. This course examines client and server-side web development and features common to such applications. Issues explored include framework characteristics, information management, presentation, interactivity, persistence, and data binding. Programming projects are required.

This course provides students a challenging introduction to the design and development of media-rich web applications that utilize both static and procedurally manipulated media such as text, images and audio. This course also examines web and interactive development and code architectures that are common to such applications. Students taking this course must be able to work independently and engage in directed research activities related to framework characteristics, information management, presentation, interactivity, persistence, and data binding. Programming projects are required.

This course provides students the opportunity to continue the exploration of Media Rich Internet Applications (MRIAs). Topics include communications for media ecologies, distributed web application frameworks, advanced interactivity, data transformation, representation, automation, persistence, and large scale systems deployment. In addition, students are exposed to concepts and technologies related to the next generation of MRIA development.

This is intended to allow for special one-time offerings of undergraduate topics or to allow faculty to pilot new undergraduate offerings. Specific course details (such as the course topics, format, resource needs, and credit hours) will be determined by the faculty member(s) who propose a given special-topics offering.

The student will work independently under the supervision of a faculty advisor on a topic not covered in other courses.