This page contains elaborate plans for the AgencyAgency course, F2013 ed.
‘Iolani School, Sullivan Center's iPad App Design & Development course lesson plan for Fall semester of 2013.
The course takes students through a full design and development process with the release of an iPad app that serves the school community as the final course project deliverable. Work will be team-based and activity-oriented.
- Instructors
- Purpose and Organization
- Course Objectives
- Assessments
- Project Scope
- Optional Reading
- Course Schedule
- Editing This Document
- License
- Cara Oba coba@iolani.org
- Kyle Oba koba@iolani.org
Please contact us if you plan on being absent, are unable to participate, or wish to discuss something. Email is preferred.
The purpose of the course is to provide real-world experience in a variety of aspects including the design and development process, skill acquisition, concept application, to participating in a collaborative work environment. As such, you will either be working together as a class or in smaller groups of three to five individuals.
The course will be structured around the following:
- in-class instruction
- in-class activities
- discussion of readings/activities (review of “homework” or in-class activities)
- active work time
- presentations
- critiques
Through this real-world project, the course aims to:
- empower students to engage themselves in real-world opportunities to which they will apply creative, analytical, and critical thinking skills;
- provide a process framework that can be applied to designing and developing any product;
- simulate a real-world design studio and software development shop context;
- increase their experience with general project management;
- encourage self-management and leadership;
- promote proficiency in collaboration and communication skills;
- increase students’ sense of agency in skill acquisition;
- provide working knowledge of some basic research, design, and programming concepts and tools; and
- deliver a tangible end-product that both the students and the school can showcase.
This course uses assessments to help increase individual self-awareness and assess student performance potential. The framework for the rubric(s) are based on meeting Sullivan Center's learning objectives, and the Partnership for 21st Century Skills’ framework. There will be no quizzes, or tests. Assignments will not be graded except in the larger context of the final project deliverables and participation.
If you're interested in the assessment rubric, please see the example sheet. We will use this to give you feedback on your progress and potential. It does not equate to a grade.
As this is a semester long course, assessments will be based on the following items and on the following schedule. The project schedule may shift and the dates may change accordingly.
- Oct 24, 2013 40% Participation (Qtr 1)
- Dec 10, 2013 20% Final App and Presentation
- Dec 19, 2013 20% Process Book (in lieu of Final)*
- Jan 15, 2014 20% Participation (Qtr 2)
*The process book documents your personal process and project experience. It will include your activities, decisions, thought processes, and artifacts of your process, among other things. Its purpose is to incite self-reflection, awareness, and retrospection both during the project and at its completion.
Fortunately, the sky is not the limit for the scope of this project. That’s a good thing, because it allows you to focus your efforts and tackle something manageable. The following criteria are guidelines for determining reasonable project scope. The selected projects should:
- have a clearly defined audience;
- require minimal content creation (should utilize already available and static content, should require limited processing of data, or might utilize user generated content);
- have low maintenance requirements or clearly identifiable owner; and
- have features built-around existing user behaviors and processes.
Depending on how we feel as a class, we may do as few as one and as many as three projects.
There is no assigned reading before the course starts. However, we encourage you to read any of the optional reading you find interesting.
Expect changes in dates and topics as the course will change to meet our needs as they develop.
The full course schedule (what's posted of it) can be found on the dedicated course schedule page.
You can create and then submit a pull request.
If you want to learn how to write Markdown (the syntax) used for this web page, check out these links:
- Markdown Syntax, by Daring Fireball
- GitHub Flavored Markdown - some extras for GitHub
To preview your Markdown locally, try the Marked Mac App ($3.99). It has a GitHub Preview Style.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
