New Mexico Computer Science for All

UNM CS-108L: Computer Science for All

University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico
Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, New Mexico
*This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. CNS-1240992

Course Description
CS-108L - Computer Science for All is an introduction to Computational Science and Modeling class. The class is a dual-credit computational science course open to high school students as well as college students. CS-108L is a hybrid course. This means that a significant part of the course content is on-line and the remaining part is taught in-person. For our class, most of the lectures are delivered during out-of-class times via videos and reading materials while in-class time is used for hands-on activities, project and programming work, questions and other interactive learning.

In this course, the student will create original computer programs using an agent-based modeling environment (or programming language) called NetLogo. NetLogo runs on Windows and Mac operating systems. NetLogo is open source and free to use. Students will gain experience designing, building, testing, debugging and running experiments with computer models and complex adaptive systems.

The course is open to both College and High School students. College students who successfully complete the class receive 3 UNM credits. High schools students who successfully complete the class receive 1 high school credit and 3 UNM college credits.

Pre-Requisites: None.
Co-Requisites: None.

Instructors:

Maureen Psaila-Dombrowski, Project Coordinator, Santa Fe Institute
Irene Lee , Research Scientist, Santa Fe Institute

Course Information:

Introduction to the Course (Syllabus, Course Structure, Grading Information, etc.) (.doc)
UNM Academic Calendar. (.html)
Introduction to NetLogo tutorials (.html)

Course Material:

Week 1: Introduction to NetLogo
Week 2: Decomposition And Data Representation
Week 3: Introduction to Abstraction
Week 4: Introduction to Modeling
Week 5: Boolean Logic
Week 6: Variables and Scope
Week 7: Running Experiments with Computer Models
Week 8: Review and Quarterly Exam
Week 9: Algorithms
Week 10: More Algorithms
Week 11: Recursion
Week 12: Epidemic Modeling
Week 13: Ecosystem Modeling
Week 14/15: Project Work
Week 16: Review and Quarterly Exam