File: mist4600day1activities.html
URL: www.terry.uga.edu/~jaronson/mist4600/

MIST 4600: Computer Programming in Business
JE Aronson

Day 1 Activities

Montserrate, Bogota, Colombia

Montserrate, Bogotá, Colombia, June 2006

Today
Overview and Structure of the Course
In Class Activities
Active Learning

Build an Application (if time)


In Class Activities

D1: Introductions

Purpose: Let's get to know each other.

Introduce yourself to the class. Tell us your (this questionaire is included in the personal information form mist7810personalinformationform.html)
  1. Name
  2. Email Address
  3. Phone Number
  4. Hometown
  5. Major(s)
  6. What year you are in
  7. When you plan to graduate
  8. What you plan to do when you finish
  9. Something interesting or unusual about yourself (do you have a hobby, play a sport, went or did something interesting once (or more)?)
  10. Or: what is the most surprising thing that ever happened to you?

D2: Brainstorming: How do you feel about the course? How do you think I feel about the course? What have you heard about the course from other students/people? 

Purpose: Let's get a sense about how we feel about the course and compare notes. Let's also find out what everyone has heard about the course.

Take out a piece of paper and answer:


Turn both of these in.


D3: True Colors (I0): Personality/Temperament Types and Learning Styles.

Purpose: To illustrate the different personality types and to identify the strengths and weaknesses of each one. These can help you understand to some degree how you learn and relate to other people.

In-class learning style exercise for the first class (you may be doing this on your own) - see the separate write-up on the Web [color.html (description), and colorform.html (just the answer sheet for the questions)]. There are many more details about the True Colors concepts and theory available in the Birkman True Colors book, which is summarized in the PowerPoint Presentation TrueColors.ppt.



D4: Active Learning

Active learning involves taking responsibility for your learning. This is pretty much a given in an advanced course. Instructors are responsible for structuring a learning environment. In a nutshell, active learning involves the following success factors:
  1. Come to every class (even if you are late).
  2. Pay attention in class. Stay focused.
  3. Get two or more course buddies.
  4. Read the material (do the work) before you come to class.
  5. Try stuff out on your own. Experiment! See what works, what doesn't and try to figure out why or why not!
  6. Just because something is not to be turned in for credit does not mean it is not important for your learning and can have impact on your exam scores. Try everything you possibly can, including suggestions made in class and end of chapter exercises in a timely way. They all will reenforce your learning (dramatically). Experience shows that students who do so typically perform well on exams.
  7. Take notes (on paper is the best way). This is a form of active listening.
  8. Practice peer learning - get together with fellow students to work together on understanding new material and have course buddies.
  9. Plan to learn how to learn, if you have not yet to do so. The primary goal of the Division of Academic Enhancement is to enhance the academic success of University of Georgia students by providing a wide range of courses, programs, and services. Several courses are oriented toward learning and college success. If you are having trouble learning, contact them in 233 Milledge Hall, or via http://www.uga.edu/dae/ , 706.542.7575.


Build an Application

Let's get familiar with using BlueJ and implementing something in Java.

Page maintained by JE Aronson
Last Modified: December 30, 2008