CIT 382 Information Architecture & Intranets
Syllabus, Winter 2008
CRN 21428
10:00-11:20 TR, 026 Kla

Instructor and GTF Office Hours: See Staff Info in Blackboard.

Course Goals

• Information Architecture (IA) & Intranets. For 382, IA means how to structure information to support 3-tiered web applications. Initially, content in our 382 intranet will be stored in a mySQL database on cs.uoregon.edu (web 1.0). In the second half of the course, we'll migrate the entire application to a virtual machine image in Amazon's EC2 Elastic Compute Cloud (web 2.0).
  
• Web Applications. 382 projects will use Macromedia Dreamweaver as a simple application framework for LAMP applications.
  
• Web 2.0-- the Internet as a Platform. You will port your LAMP applications to a scalable web architecture provided by Amazon's (EC2) "virtual private server." Amazon's and Google's web services are examples of cloud computing.

See the instructor if you feel you have already mastered the course content.

382 labs start week 2.

Topic Schedule

382 Textbook (Required)

Reference Texts from O'Reilly Publishers (Not Required)

JavaScript: The Definitive Guide, by David Flanagan

CSS: The Definitive Guide, by Eric Meyer.

Computing your Course Grade

Midterm Exam, Thur. 2/28 ...  40%
Programming Projects .......  40%
Final Project ..............  20%

90% is an A, 80% a B, 70% C, 67% C-/P, 60% D, 0-59% F/N.

You can use the online grade calculator as a tool to predict (and verify) your grade.

Things All 382 Students Must Know

• Academic Policies
  
  
• Projects. If you want to pass the course, you must do the projects. Students who do not do the projects do not pass the course. To help resolve any confusion about your grade, you must keep copies of all your projects on uoregon.edu until your final grade is completely resolved.
  
  
• Office Hours You're encouraged to use them for help with the course, or for academic advising (CIS, CIT). Note, however, that it is your job to keep up with class, and that office hours may not be used to fill in what you miss if you regularly skip class. If you have a legitimate reason for missing class, you are welcome to come to office hours to fill in what you missed.
  
  
• EMAIL works best for short questions. Please include "382" in the subject line. For longer questions and debugging assistance, please use office hours.
  
  
• ATTENDANCE: Attend class regularly for best results; your participation is both invited and welcome.

• 382 Blackboard gradebook. All grades will be available online in Blackboard: Project scores, exam scores.
  
  Please monitor your scores in the gradebook, as maintaining the gradebook is a collaborative effort. You have two weeks from the time a score is first posted in the gradebook to notify your instructor of any errors.

INCLEMENT WEATHER COMMUNICATIONS

As winter approaches, we face the possibility of inclement weather disrupting campus operations. Poor weather conditions force all of us to make difficult decisions regarding our ability to travel to campus safely.

If weather forces cancellation of 382, your instructor will

1. Notify the CIS department
2. Send email to all students in the class.

Therefore you may determine whether class has been canceled by checking your email and/or calling the CIS office, 346-4408.

In the event that weather forces you to miss a class, please contact your instructor to make arrangements for extensions on project due-dates, etc.