Professor Xavier wants to design and develop a new set of courses, all with the goal of helping students learn more about set theory and algebra; probably five or six courses altogether. They'll all fit within several academic degree programs (as minors, or as sets of electives); some are prerequisites for others, and some can be taken by themselves. There are high-level learning outcomes that the degree programs expect these courses to help satisfy, and some are flowed down to one course, others to another. The outcomes in turn break down into a number of supporting objectives. Objectives are mapped further into activities that are done by students during a particular class.
So, first, Professor Xavier would like some ideas about what kind of data structures could represent this "tangled mess" of outcomes that flow to objectives, objectives contained within courses, courses consisting of activities, and objectives flowing to these activities as well.
He then has another problem. He has several people who can develop different parts of different courses for him, and he'd like a simple way to think about the workload that each person has, how the work from one developer flows on to the next one, etc. He's concerned that some steps in this course development process might build up backlogs of work, while others have people sitting idle.
What kind of data structures might help him represent this problem? How might he set them up?
Homework Assignment:
This week asks you to develop your "first best guess" about how to model these different aspects of planning a set of courses. It probably helps to start by drawing pictures and then label them. Think about what they might be made of, and then write up some descriptions. Scan them and attach together as your submission. Use Microsoft PowerPoint or any other tool you want to help you visualize and communicate your ideas.