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Foundations of Computing (COMP10001)

Undergraduate level 1Points: 12.5On Campus (Parkville)

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Overview

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Summer Term
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AIMS

Solving problems in areas such as business, biology, physics, chemistry, engineering, humanities, and social sciences often requires manipulating, analysing, and visualising data through computer programming. This subject teaches students with little or no background in computer programming how to design and write basic programs using a high-level procedural programming language, and to solve simple problems using these skills.

This subject is the first subject in the Computing & Software Systems and the Informatics majors, and introduces students to programming and the basics of algorithmic thinking.

INDICATIVE CONTENT

Fundamental programming constructs; fundamental data structures; abstraction; basic program structures; algorithmic problem solving, testing and debugging; introduction to the Web, multimedia and visualisation.

Examples of projects that students complete are:

  • A text analytics “library” consisting of a series of independent functions to calculate/extract different things given a document/document collection as input
  • A video recommender system, broken down into a series of functions
  • An AI player for an online card game, designed such that students play off against each other (and against the class) at the end of semester

Please view this video for further information: Foundations of Computing

Intended learning outcomes

On Completion of this subject,the student is expected to:

  • Use the fundamental programming constructs (sequence, alternation, selection)
  • Use the fundamental data structures (arrays, records, lists, associative arrays)
  • Use abstraction constructs such as functions
  • Understand and employ some basic program structures
  • Understand and employ some basic algorithmic problem-solving techniques
  • Read, write, and debug simple, small programs

Generic skills

On completion of this subject, students should have developed the following generic skills:

  • An ability to apply knowledge of basic science and engineering fundamentals
  • An ability to undertake problem identification, formulation and solution
  • The capacity to solve problems, including the collection and evaluation of information
  • The capacity for critical and independent thought and reflection
  • An expectation of the need to undertake lifelong learning, and the capacity to do so

 

 

 

Last updated: 3 October 2024