If you go to GMU, I do NOT recommend taking the IT 104 class for your requirement.
1.) It doesn’t teach you anything useful.
2.) The syllabus is condescending and lies to you about what “coding” is to make it’s “non-IT” students feel better about themselves.
3.) TA’s teach the lab and they don’t care if you learn anything or not, instead choosing to rush through the material so they can leave early.
4.) There’s obvious tension between the prof’s and the department. If I had dollar for every time my lecture professor said, “I don’t know, I’m just teaching what the department wants,” or “I didn’t design this lecture,” or “You don’t really need to know all this, just recognize it for the test,” I could earn back what I shelled out for this class.
5.) There’s no consistency or bother to make sure there’s consistency and accuracy.
If you need your IT requirement still, take a different class instead. It sounds like a good idea to take a class that teaches you about basic coding, website building, programs, etc. but that is not what you’ll get with this class unfortunately.
Yeah. But the real sham is that there is a requirement for such courses built into so many non-tech programs. Real IT people are specialists. Nobody really needs an overview course.
GMU touts that it’s important every one of their students leaves the uni “tech literate,” or at least capable of learning about technology. They don’t want anyone to leave and not be prepared, which is admirable, and you’re right that real IT people are specialists, so the idea of an “Intro to IT” is misleading. However, I was actually looking forward to this course because I’m lucky I know how to access the internet, I’m so computer dumb. I wanted to learn the basics of coding, or at least what that even means, and how computers even work so if I go to buy a new computer I know what ROM and RAM are. So far all I can remember is there are 8 bits in a byte. So someone like me that is IT dumb and wants somewhere to start, or least acquire the mental tools to learn later down the road, this class seems like a no-brainer.
I think the real problem though is that, because they require an IT class for non-IT majors, they have to shove so many people into a class and make it at a level everyone can pass that the class gets dumbed down to middle-school level. So maybe not making it a requirement is the solution, I dunno.