SNHU study guides, course by course
SNHU's online programs run in 8-week terms with a fixed weekly rhythm: zyBooks or textbook readings, a discussion post with peer replies, and a graded assignment or project milestone due every Sunday. The pace is relentless rather than hard — miss one week and you're digging out for the rest of the term.
SNHU courses use a subject prefix and a hyphenated number — IT-140, CS-300, MAT-243. The prefix maps to the subject area (IT, CS, MAT, ENG, DAD for data analytics) and the number to the course level.
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IT-140 — Introduction to Scripting
IT-140 is SNHU's first programming course, teaching Python through zyBooks labs over an 8-week term. It feeds into IT-145 and the CS sequence, and it ends with a final project where you build a text-based adventure game from scratch.
IT-145 — Foundation in Application Development
IT-145 follows IT-140 and switches you from Python to Java, covering object-oriented basics — classes, objects, inheritance, and methods. The course builds toward a final project implementing a rescue-animal management system with multiple interacting classes.
IT-200 — Fundamentals of Information Technology
IT-200 surveys the IT landscape — hardware, software, networks, data, and security — and how the pieces fit together in organizations. It's an early requirement in SNHU's IT degree, assessed through weekly discussions and scenario-based assignments rather than programming.
IT-235 — Database Design
IT-235 teaches relational database design from requirements: entity-relationship diagrams in Crow's Foot notation, normalization, and translating a business scenario into tables and relationships. The multi-part final project produces a complete database design package for a business case.
Computer Science
CS-210 — Programming Languages
CS-210 introduces C++ and compares how different languages handle the same problems, sitting early in SNHU's CS core after IT-140 and IT-145. The signature project is the Corner Grocer item-tracking program, which reads a file and reports item frequencies using maps.
CS-250 — Software Development Lifecycle
CS-250 covers the software development lifecycle with a heavy focus on Agile and Scrum — roles, ceremonies, user stories, and how requirements become working software. There's little programming; assignments are mostly written analyses of a case-study development team.
CS-300 — Data Structures and Algorithms: Analysis and Design
CS-300 is SNHU's data structures course in C++: vectors, linked lists, hash tables, and binary search trees, plus Big-O runtime analysis. It builds to the ABCU advising program project, where you choose a data structure, justify it with runtime analysis, and implement a course-catalog loader and printer.
CS-320 — Software Test, Automation QA
CS-320 teaches software testing in Java: unit tests with JUnit, requirements-based test design, and basic QA strategy. Across the term you build and test three small services — contact, task, and appointment — then reflect on your testing approach in a final summary.
CS-330 — Computational Graphics and Visualization
CS-330 is SNHU's OpenGL course: you spend the entire 8 weeks building one 3D scene in C++ that recreates a real photo, adding geometry, textures, lighting, and camera controls milestone by milestone. It's one of the last courses in the CS program and assumes solid C++ from CS-210 and CS-300.
CS-340 — Client/Server Development
CS-340 covers full-stack basics with MongoDB and Python: you build a CRUD module for an animal-shelter dataset, then wire it into an interactive dashboard using the Dash framework. It's the course where database work, Python, and a web front end come together for the first time.
CS-305 — Software Security
CS-305 teaches secure coding in Java through the Artemis Financial project: you assess a provided codebase for vulnerabilities, then refactor it to add secure communications, hashing, and dependency checks. It sits in the upper CS core and assumes comfortable Java from IT-145 and CS-320.
CS-319 — UI/UX Design and Development
CS-319 covers user interface and user experience design: user-centered design principles, personas, wireframes, and prototypes. The term-long project has you design the interface for a mobile application, and many students carry that design forward into CS-360 to actually build it.
CS-360 — Mobile Architecture and Programming
CS-360 is SNHU's Android development course: you build a working mobile app in Android Studio across the term — typically an inventory, event-tracking, or weight-tracking app — with a login screen, an SQLite database, and SMS notification permissions. It assumes solid Java and benefits heavily from a CS-319 design to implement.
CS-370 — Current and Emerging Trends in Computer Science
CS-370 explores machine learning and AI as the program's emerging-trends course: neural networks, reinforcement learning, and the ethics of intelligent systems. The signature project is the pirate intelligent agent — a treasure-hunt game where you implement deep Q-learning in a provided Jupyter notebook to train an agent to find the treasure.
CS-465 — Full Stack Development I
CS-465 teaches full-stack web development on the MEAN stack — MongoDB, Express, Angular, and Node — through the Travlr Getaways project: a travel website with a customer-facing site and a single-page admin application secured with JWT authentication. It's one of the last major project courses before the capstone.
CS-499 — Computer Science Capstone
CS-499 is the final course of SNHU's CS program: you select artifacts from earlier courses and enhance them in three categories — software design and engineering, algorithms and data structures, and databases — assembling everything into a professional ePortfolio with a code-review video and a self-assessment.
Mathematics
MAT-240 — Applied Statistics
MAT-240 is SNHU's applied statistics course for non-STEM majors, covering descriptive statistics, probability, confidence intervals, hypothesis testing, and regression with real-world data. The signature work is a housing-price analysis project where you act as a junior analyst for a fictional real-estate firm.
MAT-243 — Applied Statistics for STEM
MAT-243 is the statistics course for SNHU's CS and STEM degrees, covering the same core topics as MAT-240 — probability, inference, hypothesis testing, regression — but with Python and Jupyter notebooks doing the computation. Weekly work runs through zyBooks with Python scripts you modify and interpret.
MAT-225 — Calculus I: Single-Variable Calculus
MAT-225 is SNHU's single-variable calculus course: limits, continuity, derivatives, applications of differentiation, and integration through the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus. It's required for math-track and some STEM degrees, with weekly problem sets and exams in an online homework platform.
MAT-230 — Discrete Mathematics
MAT-230 covers the discrete math that underpins computer science: logic, proof techniques, sets, functions, combinatorics, and graph theory. It's required in SNHU's CS degree and is many students' first encounter with proof-based mathematics rather than computation.
English
ENG-122 — English Composition I
ENG-122 is SNHU's first-year writing course, taken early in nearly every online degree. Over 8 weeks you draft and revise a critical-analysis essay through scaffolded milestones — topic selection, draft, peer and instructor feedback, and final revision — alongside weekly discussion posts.
ENG-123 — English Composition II
ENG-123 follows ENG-122 and centers on persuasive writing: you build an argumentative essay on a debatable issue through scaffolded milestones — topic and audience selection, research, drafts, and revision — with weekly discussions alongside. It completes the written-communication requirement for most SNHU degrees.
Data Analytics
General Education
IDS-403 — Technology and Society
IDS-403 is one of SNHU's interdisciplinary general-education capstones, examining a technology of your choice through the four general-education lenses — history, humanities, natural and applied sciences, and social sciences. The term builds toward a project analyzing your technology's relationship to society and to yourself.
HIS-100 — Perspectives in History
HIS-100 introduces historical thinking through a research project you build all term: you choose a historical event, develop research questions, work with primary and secondary sources, and present your analysis. It satisfies a general-education requirement and emphasizes method over memorization.
PSY-108 — Introduction to Psychology
PSY-108 surveys the major areas of psychology — research methods, the brain and behavior, learning, memory, development, personality, and psychological disorders — as a general-education social-science option. Weekly work runs through readings, discussions, and applied assignments rather than high-stakes exams.
Accounting
Economics
Marketing
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