Summer 2021 Syllabus

CIS 526 - Web App Development

Instructor Contact Information

• Instructor: Nathan Bean (nhbean AT ksu DOT edu)
• Office: DUE 2216
• Phone: (785)483-9264 (Call/Text)
• Website: https://nathanhbean.com
• Virtual Office Hours: By appointment via Zoom . Schedule a meeting via email or Discord

Preferred Methods of Communication:

• Chat: Quick questions via Discord are the preferred means of communication.   Questions whose answers may benefit the class I would encourage you to post in the #cis526 channel, as this keeps a public history your classmates can review.  More personal questions should be direct messaged to @Nathan Bean.
• Email: For questions outside of this course, email to nhbean@ksu.edu is preferred.
• Phone/Text: 785-483-9264 Emergencies only! I will do my best to respond as quickly as I can.

Prerequisites

• CIS 501
• CMST 135 or equivalent experience in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Students may enroll in CIS courses only if they have earned a grade of C or better for each prerequisite to these courses.

Course Overview

Fundamental principles and best practices of web development, user interface design, web API design, advanced web interfaces, web development frameworks, single-page web applications, web standards and accessibility issues.

Course Description

This course focuses on the creation of web applications - programs that use the core technologies of the world-wide-web to deliver interactive and dynamic user experiences. It builds upon a first course in authoring web pages using HTML/CSS/JavaScript, introduces the creation of web servers using the Node programming languages, and building sophisticated web clients using declarative component-based design frameworks like React.

Course Objectives

The following are the learning objectives of this course:

1. Students will develop a thorough understanding of the http client request - server response pattern, and be able to implement multiple kinds of requests and responses, including HTML tags, browser-based JavaScript, programmatically, and with tools.
2. Students will understand and be able to make use of asynchronous programming, including creating original asynchronous functions and utilizing promises and the async/await key words.
3. Students will be able to develop traditional full-stack web applications using Node, a SQL database, and a Linux OS.
4. Students will be able to develop client-side [progressive] web applications using transpilation and minimization.
5. Students will be able to develop secure web applications using password authentication, cookies, and json web tokens.

Major Course Topics

• The Document Object Model
• Responsive Web Design
• JavaScript Object Serialization Notation
• JavaScript Event Loop
• Asynchronous functions
• Promises
• async/await
• HTTP
• AJAX & Fetch
• Routing
• REST
• Form Serialization Formats
• Developing APIs
• Database Object Relational Mappers
• Template Rendering
• Single-page Applications
• Progressive Web Applications

Course Structure

This course is divided in modules, which typically consist of a series of lesson content (as video lectures or online textbook materials) followed by a hands-on tutorial. The tutorials show how to take the ideas just discussed in the lessons and apply them in creating web applications in a step-by-step manner. Following every third module is a larger project assignment, where you will utilize the skills you’ve been developing from the lessons and tutorials to iteratively create a web application.

For the eight-week summer course, each cluster of three modules plus project should be completed in one week. There is a lot to learn and much of the learning involved is hands-on as you work on the code for tutorials and your projects. It is recommended you set aside 10-20 hours per week to focus on this course.

Lessons are delivered in written or video (with written transcript) form. Sprinkled between lessons are activities and quizzes that check your understanding of the readings and lecture content.

Tutorials are delivered through Codio, and offer immediate, automatically generated feedback as you complete the assignments, letting you know if you’ve made a mistake or skipped a step. You can run these assessments as many times as needed until you have completed the project to your satisfaction.

The projects are more free-form - I want you to be able to flex your creative muscles and make a web app that both meets your customer’s needs and reflects your own style and approach. These will be graded by hand using a rubric that focuses on functionality, code quality, accessibility, and aesthetics.

Grading

In this course, each assignment constitutes a a portion of the final grade, as detailed below:

• 25% - Activities & Quizzes
• 35% - Tutorials
• 40% - Projects

Up to 5% of the total grade in the course is available as extra credit. See the Extra Credit - Bug Bounty and Extra Credit - Helping Hand assignments for details.

Letter grades will be assigned following the standard scale:

• 90% - 100% → A
• 80% - 89.99% → B
• 70% - 79.99% → C
• 60% - 59.99% → D*
• 50% - 0% → F

* Note that CS Majors must earn a C or better to use this course for their degree.

Late Work

In this class, there is a tremendous amount of new skills to develop in a short amount of time. Falling behind will jepordize your chances of successfully completing the course. Trying to complete late assignments while also working on new material will also make it unlikely that you will retain what you are trying to learn. It is critical that you keep on-track. Accordingly work submitted after its due date wil have its grade reduced by 50% of the total points possible on that item.

However, even if a module is not submitted on time, it must still be completed before a student is allowed to begin the next module. So, students should take care not to get too far behind, as it may be very difficult to catch up.

Finally, all course work must be submitted on or before the last day of the semester in which the student is enrolled in the course in order for it to be graded. No incompletes will be given in this course for any reason.

If you have extenuating circumstances, please discuss them with the instructor as soon as they arise so other arrangements can be made. If you find that you are getting behind in the class, you are encouraged to speak to the instructor for options to make up missed work.

Recommended Texts & Supplies

To participate in this course, students must have access to a modern web browser and broadband internet connection. All course materials will be provided via Canvas and Codio. Modules may also contain links to external resources for additional information, such as programming language documentation.

In particular you are encouraged to use:

• Node Docs - THe documentation for the Nodejs platform and APIs.
• Mozilla Developer Network - A key reference explaining how browsers implement the web standards
• CSS-Tricks - A collectiotn of guides and articles on using CSS to accomplish a variety of tasks
• w3c.org - The online home of the World-Wide-Web Consortium, the organization that sets web technology standards

This course offers an instructor-written textbook, which is broken up into a specific reading order and interleaved with activities and quizzes in the modules. It can also be directly accessed at https://textbooks.cs.ksu.edu/cis526 .

Students who would like additional textbooks should refer to resources available on the O’Riley For Higher Education digital library offered by the Kansas State University Library. These include electronic editions of popular textbooks as well as videos and tutorials.

Subject to Change

The details in this syllabus are not set in stone. Due to the flexible nature of this class, adjustments may need to be made as the semester progresses, though they will be kept to a minimum. If any changes occur, the changes will be posted on the Canvas page for this course and emailed to all students.

Academic Honesty

Kansas State University has an Honor and Integrity System based on personal integrity, which is presumed to be sufficient assurance that, in academic matters, one’s work is performed honestly and without unauthorized assistance. Undergraduate and graduate students, by registration, acknowledge the jurisdiction of the Honor and Integrity System. The policies and procedures of the Honor and Integrity System apply to all full and part-time students enrolled in undergraduate and graduate courses on-campus, off-campus, and via distance learning. A component vital to the Honor and Integrity System is the inclusion of the Honor Pledge which applies to all assignments, examinations, or other course work undertaken by students. The Honor Pledge is implied, whether or not it is stated: “On my honor, as a student, I have neither given nor received unauthorized aid on this academic work.” A grade of XF can result from a breach of academic honesty. The F indicates failure in the course; the X indicates the reason is an Honor Pledge violation.

For this course, a violation of the Honor Pledge will result in an automatic 0 for the assignment and the violation will be reported to the Honor System. A second violation will result in an XF in the course.

In this course, unauthorized aid broadly consists of giving or receiving code to complete assignments. This could be code you share with a classmate, code you have asked a third party to write for you, or code you have found online or elsewhere.

Authorized aid - which is not a violation of the honor policy - includes using the code snippets provided in the course materials, discussing strategies and techniques with classmates, instructors, TAs, and mentors. Additionally, you may use code snippets and algorithms found in textbooks and web sources if you clearly label them with comments indicating where the code came from and how it is being used in your project.

You should restrict your use of code libraries to those specified in the assignment description or approved by the instructor. You can ask for approval via RocketChat in the course channel, and if granted, this approval is valid for the entire class for the specified assignment.

Students with Disabilities

Students with disabilities who need classroom accommodations, access to technology, or information about emergency building/campus evacuation processes should contact the Student Access Center and/or their instructor. Services are available to students with a wide range of disabilities including, but not limited to, physical disabilities, medical conditions, learning disabilities, attention deficit disorder, depression, and anxiety. If you are a student enrolled in campus/online courses through the Manhattan or Olathe campuses, contact the Student Access Center at accesscenter@k-state.edu , 785-532-6441; for K-State Polytechnic campus, contact Academic and Student Services at polytechnicadvising@ksu.edu or call 785-826-2674.

Diversity and Inclusion

In an ideal world, science and technology would be objective. However, much of science and technology is subjective and is historically built on a small subset of privileged voices. In this class, we will reference many materials from a diverse set of sources, but limits still exist on this diversity. I acknowledge that it is possible that there may be both overt and covert biases in the material due to the lens with which it was written, even though the material is primarily of a technical nature.

Please contact me or submit anonymous feedback through the Computer Science department office if you have any concerns or suggestions regarding this course and related materials.

Netiquette

Online communication is inherently different than in-person communication. When speaking in person, many times we can take advantage of the context and body language of the person speaking to better understand what the speaker means, not just what is said. This information is not present when communicating online, so we must be much more careful about what we say and how we say it in order to get our meaning across.

Here are a few general rules to help us all communicate online in this course, especially while using tools such as email or Canvas:

• Use a clear and meaningful subject line to announce your topic. Subject lines such as “Question” or “Problem” are not helpful. Subjects such as “Logic Question in Project 5, Part 1 in Java” or “Unexpected Exception when Opening Text File in Python” give plenty of information about your topic.
• Use only one topic per message. If you have multiple topics, post multiple messages so each one can be discussed independently.
• Be thorough, concise, and to the point. Ideally, each message should be a page or less.
• Include exact error messages, code snippets, or screenshots, as well as any previous steps taken to fix the problem. It is much easier to solve a problem when the exact error message or screenshot is provided. If we know what you’ve tried so far, we can get to the root cause of the issue more quickly.
• Consider carefully what you write before you post it. Once a message is posted, it becomes part of the permanent record of the course and can easily be found by others.
• If you are lost, don’t know an answer, or don’t understand something, speak up! Email allows you to send a message privately to the instructors. Don’t be afraid to ask questions anytime, as you can choose to do so without any fear of being identified by your fellow students.
• Class discussions are confidential. Do not share information from the course with anyone outside of the course without explicit permission. Do not quote entire message chains; only include the relevant parts. When replying to a previous message, only quote the relevant lines in your response.
• Do not use all caps. It makes it look like you are shouting. Use appropriate text markup (bold, italics, etc.) to highlight a point if needed.
• No feigning surprise. If someone asks a question, saying things like “I can’t believe you don’t know that!” are not helpful, and only serve to make that person feel bad.
• No “well-actually’s." If someone makes a statement that is not entirely correct, resist the urge to offer a “well, actually…” correction, especially if it is not relevant to the discussion. If you can help solve their problem, feel free to provide correct information, but don’t post a correction just for the sake of being correct.
• Do not correct someone’s grammar or spelling. Again, it is not helpful, and only serves to make that person feel bad. If there is a genuine mistake that may affect the meaning of the post, please contact the person privately or let the instructors know privately so it can be resolved.
• Avoid subtle -isms and microaggressions. Avoid comments that could make others feel uncomfortable based on their personal identity. See the syllabus section on Diversity and Inclusion above for more information on this topic. If a comment makes you uncomfortable, please contact the instructor.
• Avoid sarcasm, flaming, advertisements, lingo, trolling, doxxing, and other bad online habits. They have no place in an academic environment. Tasteful humor is fine, but sarcasm can be misunderstood.

Expectations of Conduct

All student activities in the University, including this course, are governed by the Student Judicial Conduct Code as outlined in the Student Governing Association By Laws , Article V, Section 3, number 2. Students who engage in behavior that disrupts the learning environment may be asked to leave the class.

Campus Safety

Kansas State University is committed to providing a safe teaching and learning environment for student and faculty members. In order to enhance your safety in the unlikely case of a campus emergency make sure that you know where and how to quickly exit your classroom and how to follow any emergency directives. To view additional campus emergency information go to the University’s main page, www.k-state.edu , and click on the Emergency Information button, located at the bottom of the page.

Student Resources

K-State has many resources to help contribute to student success. These resources include accommodations for academics, paying for college, student life, health and safety, and others found at www.k-state.edu/onestop .

Academic Freedom Statement

Kansas State University is a community of students, faculty, and staff who work together to discover new knowledge, create new ideas, and share the results of their scholarly inquiry with the wider public. Although new ideas or research results may be controversial or challenge established views, the health and growth of any society requires frank intellectual exchange. Academic freedom protects this type of free exchange and is thus essential to any university’s mission.

Moreover, academic freedom supports collaborative work in the pursuit of truth and the dissemination of knowledge in an environment of inquiry, respectful debate, and professionalism. Academic freedom is not limited to the classroom or to scientific and scholarly research, but extends to the life of the university as well as to larger social and political questions. It is the right and responsibility of the university community to engage with such issues.

Copyright Notice

©2020 The materials in this online course fall under the protection of all intellectual property, copyright and trademark laws of the U.S. The digital materials included here come with the legal permissions and releases of the copyright holders. These course materials should be used for educational purposes only; the contents should not be distributed electronically or otherwise beyond the confines of this online course. The URLs listed here do not suggest endorsement of either the site owners or the contents found at the sites. Likewise, mentioned brands (products and services) do not suggest endorsement. Students own copyright to what they create.

Original content in the course textbook at https://textbooks.cs.ksu.edu/cis526 is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-SA license by Nathan Bean unless otherwise stated.