CISC 1110 Course Objectives

By the end of this course, students should

a.   Understand the concept of a program (i.e., a computer following a series of instructions)

b.   Understand the concept of a variable holding a value, how a variable is declared and how it can change

c.   Understand the concept of a loop – that is, a series of statements which is written once but executed repeatedly- and how to use it in a programming language

d.   Be able to use a conditional statement to select a choice from two or more alternatives

e.   Be able to break a large problem into smaller parts, writing each part as a module or function

f.   Be able to use an array to store multiple pieces of homogeneous data, and use a structure to store multiple pieces of heterogeneous data

g.   Be able to work with both character and numerical data

h.   Understand the concept of an algorithm (that is, a series of steps that can be carried out in a mechanical way) and a few specific examples of algorithms (for example, finding an average, sorting, searching)

i.   Understand the parts of a computer system and how they interact

j.   Understand the concept of a program in a high-level language being translated by a compiler into machine language program and then executed