Ask YC: How would you teach a Facebook Apps course?
A while back I was given permission to run a course at Carnegie Mellon entitled "Creating Facebook Applications".  I have free reign to do what I want with the course, but from conversations with people in the industry, I have narrowed down a few specifics.  Here's the info:<p>* The course will have 20-30 students in each section and will meet once a week for 80 minutes<p>* Students will work in groups of up to 3, and will develop 3 applications over the course of the semester (one sample "learn the API" application and two legit applications)<p>* There will be a product fair towards the end of the semester showing off the apps.<p>Since I'm sure most people here are pretty familiar with the past/present/future of the Facebook API, I figured I'd ask what you would like to see if you were taking such a course.  Specifically:<p>- What topics would you like to see covered besides virality, monetization, and scaling?<p>- How should I measure success of an app?<p>- How much should I guide the application concepts, should I restrict one of the 3 apps to "education themed", or should I let the students run wild?<p>- Any speakers I should get in touch with to see if they'd like to give a talk (I have a few in mind already)?<p>- Is it worth inviting VCs and other influential people to the product fair?  It's much further for most of them to travel than going to, for example, Stanford...<p>I'll be spending the summer preparing for the course, so any input to help direct my lectures would be greatly appreciated.