Have you ever wondered how your favorite mobile applications are developed?

Come with us on a gentle journey through the mobile application development landscape,
using Android as the platform. Along the way we will learn to use Android Studio, the
integrated development environment (IDE) for Android apps. This course is intended for
students who have some prior programming experience. The course will introduce you to
the basics of the Android platform, Android application components: Activities and their
lifecycle, UI design, Multimedia, 2D graphics and networking support in Android.
This course covers the following topics:

Android platform and the Android Studio IDE

Android components, Activities and their lifecycle, Intents

UI Design: Widgets and Layouts, UI Events, Event Listeners

2D graphics: Canvas/Drawing using a view

Multimedia: Audio playback and MediaPlayer

Network support: AsyncTask, HttpURLConnection

What you'll learn

Describe the basic components of an Android application

Define the lifecycle methods of Android application components
Describe the basics of event handling in Android
Describe the basics of graphics and multimedia support in Android
Demonstrate basic skills of using an integrated development environment
(Android Studio) and Android Software Development Kit (SDK) for
implementing Android applications
Demonstrate through a simple application the understanding of the basic concepts
of Android

Course Syllabus

Week 1: The Android Platform: Introduction to the Android platform and the
Android Studio IDE, Android components, Activities
Week 2: User Interface Design: Intents, Activity lifecycle, UI Design: Widgets
and Layouts, UI Events, Event Listeners
Week 3: Graphics Support in Android: Drawables, Basics of Material Design,
2D graphics: Canvas/Drawing using a view
Week 4: Multimedia in Android: Audio playback and MediaPlayer, SoundPool

Week 5: Networking support: Basics of networking in Android, AsyncTask,

HttpURLConnection

Resources
Week

Resources
Android Overview
Lecture Slides

App Fundamentals
Android UI Basics
Android UI Events

Further Reading

Application Fundamentals
Resources Overview
Android App Structure

Lecture Slides

Android Activity Intents

Activity Lifecycle

Android Application Fundamentals

Further Reading

More About Intents

ListView
More about Activities and their Lifecycle

Overall Course Objectives

By the end of this course, you will be able to:

Describe the components of an Android application

Define the lifecycle methods of Android application components
Describe the basics of event handling in Android
Describe the basics of graphics, multimedia and networking support in Android
Demonstrate skills of using an integrated development environment (Android
Studio) and Android Software Development Kit (SDK) for implementing
Android applications
Demonstrate through a set of simple applications the understanding of the
concepts of mobile application development

Course Outline
Week Release Dates
1

28 Jul 2015 09:00

(GMT+8)

Weekly Objectives
Due Dates
Understand the various Assignment: 3 Aug
23:59 (GMT+8)
components of an
Android application
Design and implement Peer Grading: 6 Aug
23:59 (GMT+8)
an application in
Android Studio and
deploy it to an emulator
or a mobile device

4 Aug 2015 09:00

(GMT+8)

Design a simple UI
with some widgets and
implement the code to
respond to users
interactions with the UI
widgets
Design an app with
Assignment: 10 Aug
multiple activities, and 23:59 (GMT+8)
start one activity from
another using intents Peer Grading: 13 Aug
Use more UI widgets 23:59 (GMT+8)
like ListView and
design a Custom
ArrayAdapter for the
ListView
Design complex UI
with layouts using

11 Aug 2015 09:00

(GMT+8)

18 Aug 2015 09:00

(GMT+8)

25 Aug 2015 09:00

(GMT+8)

RelativeLayout and
LinearLayout
Design colorful UI
Assignment: 17 Aug
23:59 (GMT+8)
employing colors,
styles and themes
Use some elements of Peer Grading: 20 Aug
Material design in your 23:59 (GMT+8)
app UI
Design a simple game
using the 2D graphics
support available in
Android
Design the game using
2D graphics with
SurfaceView
Use MediaPlayer to
provide background
music for your game

Assignment: 24 Aug
23:59 (GMT+8)
Peer Grading: 27 Aug
23:59 (GMT+8)

Use SoundPool class to

produce sounds for the
game
Make use of the GSon Assignment: 31 Aug
library to process JSon 23:59 (GMT+8)
strings in your app
Use an AsyncTask to Peer Grading: 3 Sep
offload processing to 23:59 (GMT+8)
the background
Connect to a server and
download data
Learn to use the
Picasso image
downloading library