Univ of Maryland offers course on Android apps for handheld systems

University of Maryland is offering an online course that provides a comprehensive introduction to the design and implementation of Android applications for handheld systems, such as smartphones and tablets.

About the course:

The course has been developed in two parts (Part 1 and Part 2), which will cover the fundamental programming principles, software architecture and user experience considerations underlying handheld software applications and their development environments.

After the course student will be able to build their own Android applications and experienced engineers to master a powerful set of development skills.

Part 1 of this course will focus on the core components of the Android platform that underly all Android applications such as :

• Setting up your Android development environment
• Working with screen configurations and multiple screen sizes
• Working with the all-important activity class and its lifecycle
• Being able implement intents and permissions
• Running multiple activities with the fragment class
• Creating user interfaces to make your apps run smoothly for your users.

Part 2 will focus on advanced components and concepts provided by the android platform:

• Notifying users about important events
• Handling concurrency
• Acquiring data over the network
• Leveraging multimedia and graphics
• Incorporating touch and gestures into your apps
• Working with sensors

The course will involve in-­depth, hands-­on examples of applications implemented with the Android Platform and students will apply what they learn, using the android platform, in laboratory projects and in a large course project defined in collaboration with MoMA, the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Pre requisities:

• The course is created for students who knows how to programme in Java, but are not expected to have studied mobile application development.
• This corresponds roughly to Sophomore- or Junior-level undergraduate students in a computer science related discipline or the equivalent.

Course syllabus:

The course syllabus is designed on following topics:

• Understand the components comprising the Android Platform
• Use various tools found in the Android Development Environment
• Recognize the four fundamental components of Android applications
• Work with the lifecycle of the activity class
• Create a simple Android application
• will create applications comprising more than one Activity
• understand how to define and enforce permissions
• design applications that run on multiple, differently-sized devices.
• Student will define and deploy applications with sophisticated and elegant user interfaces

Course length: 4 weeks
Course begins on: March 15