Earn College Credit from IIT to Replace the AP Computer Science AB Exam in 2015

Are you a high school student who is interested in pursuing a career in the lucrative and ever-expanding field of computer science? If so, Illinois Institute of Technology can help you get a jump start on your future! IIT is offering eligible students a chance to take an online advanced programming course in data structures for college credit in spring 2015. The credits earned at IIT can be transferred to any school, and the course can be taken from anywhere in the country.

The course, CS 331, “Data Structures and Algorithms,” is offered through IIT’s Department of Computer Science and will be taught by Mattox Beckman, an award-winning CS senior lecturer. Beckman’s lectures will be streamed online using synchronized slides, allowing you to review the material and replay lectures as needed for the entire semester. CS faculty at your school will be supplied with materials to assist you in the programming laboratory portion of the class. Unlike a regular data structures course, this course will use functional programming language and teach applicable and relevant real-world skills. Below is a list of what you can expect to learn in this course:

• Explain, implement, and apply the following data structures: lists (unordered and ordered), stacks, queues, expression trees, binary search trees, heaps, hash tables.
• Analyze the time and space complexity of algorithms using asymptotic upper bounds (big-O notation).
• Explain and use references and linked structures.
• Outline basic object-oriented concepts: composition, inheritance, polymorphism.
• Write and test recursive procedures, and explain the run-time stack concept.
• Analyze searching and sorting algorithms, and explain their relationship to data structures.
• Choose and implement appropriate data-structures to solve an application problem.
• Explain how to use unit tests and version control in your software development.
• In spring 2015, CS 331 will be taught in Clojure.

To be eligible, you must have completed a CS1-equivalent course of the AP CS A course/exam with a 4 or better and you must enroll in a data structures course at your high school in spring 2015 that you can take in conjunction with the IIT course. Please note that some universities will not accept the IIT credit for this course unless you have Introductory Programming credit from the AP CS A exam.

CS 331 is free for Chicago Public School students, and offered at a discounted price of $250 for all other students. For more information please contact Matthew Bauer at IIT at bauerm@iit.edu.