Learning to program necessarily means tackling a range of concepts, tools and ways of structuring problems. Having a solid grasp of these foundations allows one to adapt to different programming environments and toolkits. The purpose of this course is solidify these foundations and in doing so expand the repertoire and fluency to work with the basic material of interaction design: code.

The ambition of this course is to sharpen and extend students’ Javascript knowledge from Programming I, allowing them to work with more sophisticated and varied interactive technology and thus expand their possibilities throughout the education programme.

While the course mostly works with the Javascript language, to a limited extent other environments may be also utilised. The exact content of this course will be in relation to with contemporary developments in interactive technologies.

The course is based on the notion of a “flipped classroom” in which students follow online materials out-of-class, and class time is used for coaching, critique, discussions and occasional lectures. There will also be opportunity to sharpen and solidify the essentials from Programming I.

After completing the course, students will be able to:

1. Independently locate and use a third-party programming library or API relevant to interactive technology

2. Architect and build cross-device interactive experiences

3. Produce, store, process and utilise data streams relating to human activity

Instruction consists of lectures, laboratory sessions, seminars and project work.

API Lab: Each group selects an API/library to investigate, identifying what is interesting about it for interaction designers, and creating examples that make use of it. Each group reports their findings with annotated code samples and a live demo (ILO 1, HP 1.5)

Project: Each group builds an interactive artifact that operates across devices/platforms. Each artifact must also interoperate with another group’s, in terms of exchanging data and events (ILO 2 & 3, HP 6)

Students receive a pass (‘G’) when all learning outcomes are achieved to a satisfactory level.

You will need to purchase an Arduino Micro (or equivalent) and some basic components (up to 900sek). The details of this will be posted on It’s Learning.

• Haverbeke, M. (2014) Eloquent JavaScript (2nd Edition). No Starch Press. Available as a physical book, or online: http://eloquentjavascript.net/

The University provides students who participate in or who have completed a course with the opportunity to make known their experiences and viewpoints with regards to the course by completing a course evaluation administered by the University. The University will compile and summarize the results of course evaluations as well as informing participants of the results and any decisions relating to measures initiated in response to the course evaluations. The results will be made available to the students (HF 1:14).