Instructor

Paul McQuesten

Office

211 Hentschke Hall
Voice mail: x3544
Email: paul_mcquesten@redlands.edu
http://bulldog2.redlands.edu/fac/Paul_McQuesten

Meeting
Times

Group: Friday 9:30, Jones Center, South Lab.
Individual Meetings:  211 Hentschke Hall

Course Description:

This course provides the opportunity for a senior in Computer Science to design, develop and implement a reasonable size software project as a capstone experience.  This project work provides the student with an opportunity to integrate the knowledge acquired from various computer science courses in addition to enabling that person to study and learn at least one additional topic area of computer science not done through the classes you have taken.

Since this is a WB course, satisfying the writing requirements of the Liberal Arts Foundation category, your monthly reports and the final paper need to be written and submitted in the style of professional papers. Each one of these documents needs to undergo at least two revisions.

We will follow the IEEE/ACM publication standards for citations.

 Class Requirements:

This is a project course and the students are evaluated based on their individual performance with respect to the project work that they design, develop, and implement.

Following general guidelines apply:

·         Weekly meetings: Aim toward identifying a sequence of subgoals that enable the realization of the scope of the project work. Students present the details of the tasks that they have completed and their plan of action for the next week. Discussions follow the presentations that provide critical evaluations and constructive suggestions for the planned work.

·         Weekly reports: Clearly identify tasks performed by the student in the previous week. May include materials read, programs written etc. Attach listings of  any new program code done during that week. (no more than one page)

·         Monthly report: Specifically address the completed portions of the projected software, report the status of testing, and identify remaining tasks, with a tentative but realistic schedule. (multiple pages)

Outcomes:

At the end of the semester, student should:

·         Demonstrate the finished software product.

·         Provide a written report (about 10 pages) pointing out the scope of the original project and its relation to the finished work. This report could be easily generated with the help of the weekly reports. Use the design and implementation strategies discussed in the Software Engineering class to make this report professional.

·         Compare the project with a couple of other similar projects reported in the literature.

Evaluation methods:

Every student is graded based on the level of achievement related to his/her project work.

The factors used in the evaluation include:

·         The scope and complexity of the project selected (15)—problem definition, scope, user specifications, literature survey etc.

·         The level of new preparation utilized by the student in realizing the project work (10) —the new topics in computer science that were studied and learned to realize the project

·         The level of commitment to the project and the realization of various goals during the entire semester (10)—system design, architecture, requirements analysis

·         The design and implementation of the programs developed (35)—detailed design, coding and debugging, test case definitions, unit testing and system testing

·         Your contributions to the discussions in the class meetings (15)—suggestions and critique on the problem definitions of others;

·         Final presentation and project write-up (15)

Grading:

            The final grade in the course will be based on the following scale

Percent

Grade

 

Percent

Grade

100- 95

4.0

 

74-70

2.0

  94- 90

3.7

 

69-65

1.7

  89-87

3.3

 

64-62

1.3

  86-83

3.0

 

61-59

1.0

  82-80

2.7

 

58-55

0.7

  79-75

2.3

 

below   55

0.0

Class Schedule

This schedule lists only those activities related to writing requirements

Week

Date

Version

What

2

Jan 17

1st draft  

Project Specification and User Requirements
(about 3 pages)

3

Jan 24

1st draft

Requirements Analysis and System Design
(3 – 6 pages)

4

Jan 31

2nd draft

Project Specification and User Requirements

5

Feb 7

 

Monthly Report 1

 

Feb 7

2nd draft

Requirements Analysis and System Design

6

Feb 14

final version

Project Specification and User Requirements

7

Feb 21

final version

Requirements Analysis and System Design

8

Mar 7

1st draft

Test Case Definitions and System Testing
(3 – 5 pages)

9

Mar 14

 

Monthly Report 2

10

Mar 21

 

 

11

Mar 28

2nd draft

Test Case Definitions and System Testing

12

April 4

 

Monthly Report 3

13

April 11

final version

Test Case Definitions and System Testing

 

April 18

Final

Project Presentation and Report submission:
The final write up will include the contents of all the three papers noted above along with material culled out of the monthly reports. It will also include the detailed design component, unit testing results and the outcomes of system testing. This final paper will be at least 15 pages long.

Acknowledgement

This syllabus courtesy of Pani Chakrapani. Any errors or other infelicities were introduced by me. Revised Jan. 17, 2005.