Cotextual Android Education

Abstract

Contextual Android Education James Reed With advances in mobile phone hardware, the demand for mobile applications has risen drastically. This has resulted in mobile phones becoming a popular new medium for application development. However, the body of knowledge for contextual examples and tutorials leaves much to be desired. As of January 2010, California Polytechnic State University has offered a mobile development class that teaches students how to write applications for phones running Google's Android platform. This class aims at taking advantage of students' current interest in mobile applications to teach them about difficult computer science topics. As a corollary, the class hopes to foster and encourage a sense of independence and entrepreneurship through having students design, implement, and publish their own applications to the Android Application Marketplace. The main contribution of this thesis project comes in the form of a series of detailed educational laboratory exercises and a system for grading student submissions in an automated fashion. These labs are designed to supplement the Android documentation by providing contextual examples, activities, and tutorials. It is therefore the goal of this thesis project to aid in transforming the class of mobile development students into a group of successful, practicing, mobile developers.