CSCI 6838 Course Syllabus Spring 2007

CSCI 6838 Capstone Projects
Spring 2007
Course Syllabus, Policies and Guidelines

by K. Yue

1. General Information

Instructor

Dr. Kwok-Bun Yue, Professor of Computer Science
Delta 163, 281-283-3864, yue@uhcl.edu; URL: http://dcm.uhcl.edu/yue/
Office hour: R 3:30-6:00, walk-in, or by appointment

Course Description

Students will be assigned a research or commercial project which requires integrating knowledge and standard procedures in the discipline. A written paper and a presentation will be required.

Course Goals

The goals of the courses are:

Students gain practical experience in the discipline by working on realistic projects.
Students gain experience to work in a team environment.
Students gain experience in writing technical papers and making technical presentations.

Specifically, after taking the courses, the following learning outcomes are expected.

Students will gain experience on working on real-world computer projects.
Students will be able to analyze real-world problems to devise requirement specifications.
Student will be able to construct effective software solutions for real-world problems.
Students will be able to work professionally with team members, customers, mentors and supervisors.
Students will gain experience in project management.
Students will be able to present technical presentations effectively.
Students will be able to write technical reports.

Prerequisites

24 hours completed in the graduate degree programs of CS or CIS.

Course Format

For each week, every team is expected to:

meet by itself once.
meet with the mentor and/or instructor once.
write minutes for the two meetings.

Grading

Grading will be based on the quality of deliverables and presentations, as well as the instructor's observation on student performance during technical meetings and demonstrations. The instructor will also highly value feedback from external mentors.

Other Useful Information

UHCL emergency hotline (to check weather related closing, for example): 281-283-2221.

2. Course Policies

The following policies and guidelines will be used for grading projects. Students are responsible to ensure that their projects are following the guidelines.

Policies and procedures: including general course expectation, procedures, grading policies, etc.
Guidelines for maintaining an active project Web page: the minimal contents of the Web page.
Guidelines for oral presentation: slide contents, slide preparation and presentation.
Guidelines for database design and documentation.
Guidelines for writing final report: contents and layout.

Other policies and hints:

No incomplete grade or administrative withdrawal under nearly all situations.
Penalty on cheating will be extremely severe. Standard academic honesty procedure will be strictly followed. Use your best judgment. If you are not sure about certain activities, consult the instructor.
Students should not miss any meetings and presentations. They should participate actively and be punctual. In emergency situation when one cannot attend a meeting, notify other participants as soon as possible.
Course participation is of utmost importance.
Be punctual.
Check the course Web page regularly.
If you need help in debugging, you may come to my office with the most recent listing of your program, output and error messages, and a disk containing your program so I can run it. However, unlike other courses, the team is supposed to solve technical problems themselves.
If you have problems with your accounts, you may want to contact my research assistants directly by sending them an email and copying it to me. It is very important to secure working development and deployment platforms as soon as possible.
Software development is time consuming. Start early and plan well ahead.
If you expect any potential problems, consult me as soon as possible so I may help you.
Procrastination usually results in poor grades.

3. Course Syllabus and Schedule

Schedule subjects to changes. You may check the UHCL Spring calendar.

Date	Contents
Week #1: 1/16/2007, 1/18/2007	First week class meetings: introduction to the course; policies and guidelines; descriptions of available projects. This is the most important class. Do not miss it. Milestones: project selected; teams formed; team roles assigned; overall project rationale and requirements understood; team information sent to mentors and instructor. Each student should send an individual email to the instructor from a working email address. Each team should schedule a meeting with the instructor.
Week #2: 1/23, 1/25	Second week class meetings: discussion on project requirements, final reports and presentations. Milestones: Major requirements understood; Website up and running; met with the mentor at least once; software and hardware requirements specified.
Week #3: 1/30, 2/1	Milestones: Technologies identified; reliable production and development platforms secured; major task assignments decided; have met with the mentors at least twice.
Week #4: 2/6, 2/8	Milestones: Project requirements completed.
Week #5: 2/13, 2/15	Milestones: Development and production platform well tested; programming and documentation standards specified; collaboration techniques specified; mentor feedback to project requirements and designs identified and incorporated. Due before 2/15 5:00pm: a 1-2 page abstract of the project should be sent to the instructor through email in MS Words format. 2/16: Last day to apply for Spring 2007 graduation.
Week #6: 2/20, 2/22	Milestones: Design and testing plan completed.
Week #7: 2/27, 3/1	Class meeting: mid-term progress presentations. Everyone must attend and is expected to actively participate. Each student should ask at least one question. The instructor will provide feedback immediately. Each team has 25 minutes for its presentation, including the question and answer session.
Week #8: 3/6, 3/8	Project in progress
Week #9: 3/13, 3/15	Project in progress; Spring break holiday.
Week #10: 3/20, 3/22	Project in progress
Week #11: 3/27, 3/29	Teams demonstrate first project prototypes to the mentors and/or instructor in scheduled team meetings. March 26: Last day to drop a Spring class or withdraw for the semester without any grade penalty.
Week #12: 4/3, 4/5	In progress.
Week #13: 4/10, 4/12	Class meeting: final presentations. Everyone must attend and is expected to actively participate. Each student should ask at least one question. Each team has 30 minutes for its presentation, including the question and answer session. Dress professionally.
Week #14: 4/17, 4/19	Team second project demonstrations during the week. The first version of the final reports due on 4/19 5:00pm.
Week #15: 4/24, 4/26	Final version of the final reports and all deliverables due on 4/26 5:00pm. The final reports should be sent via email. All other deliverables should be easily accessible from the team's Website. If deliverables cannot be posted in the Web, the team should create a CD containing all deliverables. The team should include sufficient documentation to assist the instructor to navigate the deliverables.
Week #16: 5/1, 5/3	Spring final examination period

Dr. Kwok-Bun Yue
Professor, Computer Science and Computer Information Systems
Chair, Division of Computing and Mathematics
University of Houston-Clear Lake
2700 Bay Area Boulevard
Houston, TX 77058
Yue's home page Yue's email yue@uhcl.edu phone 281-283-3864