Senior Projects Course Information, Fall 2009

Text: None

General description: This is not the standard lecture/exam course that we are all used to. Instead, the emphasis of the course is on a semester-long capstone project that synthesizes a number of ideas you have learned in other courses. Most students undertake a software development project in a small team; others pursue an individual research project.

Schedule: We will meet as a class almost every Monday and Wednesday. We will meet some Fridays, especially at the beginning of the semester. When we do not have a scheduled class meeting, the time can be used for project team meetings or for meetings with the instructor, customers, or research director. However, you are expected to attend every scheduled meeting and to contribute to the discussions.

In the early part of the semester we will use the class meetings for project organization and at the end of the semester they will be used for formal project reports. There will also be some scheduled lectures/presentations and four sprint reviews during the middle of the semester. It is up to the students to monitor the posted class schedule and to attend meetings when required.

Requirements: Students/teams are required to

• Attend scheduled meetings.
• Create and support a project web page.
• Plan, track and report on all project work.
• Submit project documentation. For software development projects this may include:
  • Requirements
  • Task analysis
  • Design options
  • Prototype
  • Design
  • Test plan and results
  • User's guide
  • Code
  • Executable package
  • Project poster
  • Project postmortem
• Present, to the class and to other invited guests:
  • Project goals
  • Intermediate reports, as requested
  • Final report/demonstration
  • Poster (suitable for display)
• Do exercises, readings, activities as announced. It is up to the students to monitor the posted "activities" and follow the instructions for them.
• Grading: The components of the grade for the course are summarized in the following table. Typically, a student should earn at least 600 points to pass the course.

  Activity	Points	My Points
  Project Written Report	100
  Project Oral Presentation	100
  Project Poster	100
  Project Web Site	100
  Sprint reviews Code releases	30 points per review
  Weekly logs	10 points per log (format, timeliness)
  Miscellaneous exercises	100
  Participation	100
  Total	850