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General Information

Class Meetings

Lectures: Tue/Thurs, 12:30-1:45 PM, Room SCI 328

Instructor

Prof. Nadeem Abdul Hamid
Office: SCI 354B 		Phone: (706) 368-5632 (office)
Email:
Office Hours: Mon-Fri 8-9AM / Mon, Wed 11AM-1PM / Tue 10-11AM / (or by appt)

Objectives and Outcomes

Course Catalog Description

CSC490 Senior Project:WI 3-0-3
A capstone experience in computer science focused on the design and implementation of computer systems. PR: CSC 320 and senior standing

Course Objectives

This course serves to cap a Computer Science student's undergraduate experience with a large project in which they apply their knowledge, understanding, and skills from the previous undergraduate classes to the specification, design, and construction of a substantial software or hardware/software system.

Upon completion of this course, the student will be able to:

Expected Outcomes

Students will meet the objectives with at least 75% success, based on evaluation criteria discussed below.

Materials and Methods

Methods of Instruction

Two meetings per week. As this is a project-oriented course, class time will mostly be spent in project direction, discussion, and student presentations (requirements and design reviews, code inspections, project presentations, etc.). Class meetings will occasionally be used for presentations by the instructor on topics such as practical design, implementation, and testing techniques.

Materials and Resources

Required Textbook:
(none)
Optional Reference:
Rapid Development by Steve McConnell (Microsoft Press).
Online course website:
http://fsweb.berry.edu/academic/mans/nhamid/classes/cs490/06_spr - It is your responsibility to check the web site for this course regularly (i.e. daily) throughout the semester.

Assessment

Your semester grade will be based on the instructor's overall evaluation of the quality of your work. You are expected to attend all required class meetings, to prepare high-quality materials and presentations, to submit all required material on time, and to interact with your instructor and fellow students in a professional and effective manner.

The grading for this course will not be based on a strict point system. The final grade will be determined as a percentage from the following components with varying weights at the discretion of the instructor:

This is a senior-level class at an institution of higher learning, designed to be taken during the final semester of your undergraduate Computer Science program. This course is the culmination of your entire undergraduate degree program. Thus, your written work, oral presentations, interactions with the instructor and other students, as well as your programming and technical work, must be at the highest level of quality and professionalism.

Your written work must reflect that you have a college degree; there must not be any misspelled words or grammatical errors in any document that you submit. The instructor will deduct points on any assignment for misspelled words or grammatical errors. The instructor may, in some circumstances, ask you to revise and resubmit a document within some specified period of time. Similarly, your oral presentations must also reveal that you have a college degree; your final presentation must be free from grammatical errors.

Schedule

Project completion will involve all aspects of system development, including requirements gathering, design, technology selection, implementation, validation and verification, deployment and customer evaluation, and project management.

A projected schedule of tasks and deliverables throughout the semester is shown in the table below.

All project documentation will be WWW-based. At the end of the semester, each project will have a complete website containing all deliverables, plus anything else they added.

Week(s) Activities Deliverables Presentations
1 Project selection, semester development plan Short project description, project plan, and calendar schedule none
2 Project definition and description; in-depth project investigation; requirements specifications; customer interviews; initial design brainstorming; risk assessment Bibliography none
3 - 4 Completion of initial requirements and design; in-depth design; platform, environment, and external component selection Strawman requirements and design specification Project requirements outline
5 - 10 Implementation; user documentation; requirements and design revisions; verification and validation Requirements and design specification; License agreement; Users' manual Design reviews; Requirements and design changes; Implementation lessons
10 - 11 Testing, report and discussion Test report Test results
12 - 13 Customer evaluation; further implementation and testing; change requests none none
14 Final project demos; evaluation and reflection Complete project portfolio and report Oral presentations and demos

Course Policies

Attendance Policy

Please see the Berry College Viking Code for "Class Attendance Policies" (pp 10-11, 2004-2005 edition). Missing three (3) or more classes without justifiable reason (and appropriate documentation) will be considered excessive absences and an alert form will be sent to the proper authorities.

Academic Integrity

Students are expected to have read carefully and understood the rules governing breaches of academic integrity that are to be found in the Viking Code (pp 16-17) and the Course Catalog (pp 27-28, 2003-2005 edition).

For this course, any work that you submit must be entirely your own (unless I specifically allow you to work in pairs/groups on a particular assignment). Do not copy or use other students' submission or any other existing code (including code on the Internet). Copying programs and code from other sources and trying to just make minor changes therein will be detected and can result in severe penalties, up to and including an F in the course. You are always welcome to consult me for assistance - in person, by email, phone, etc. - if you are stuck.

As a general rule, if you do not understand what you are handing in, something is probably wrong. If you have given somebody some code simply so that it can be used in that person's assignment, you are probably cheating.

Late Work

Late work will not be accepted unless an excuse is obtained prior to the day on which the assignment is due. This policy will be waived only in an "emergency situation" with appropriate documentation and/or prior arrangement with the instructor.

(Note: "I couldn't get the computer to work" or "My email/internet was not working", etc. are not acceptable excuses for late work (in general -- if the Berry network experiences major downtime I will adjust deadlines). If you start working on assignments early, instead of at the last minute, you will have time to ask me about any technical difficulties you are having.)

Disabilities Accommodation Statement

Students with disabilities who believe that they may need accommodations in this course are encouraged to contact the Academic Support Center in Krannert Room 326 (Ext. 4080) as soon as possible to ensure that such accommodations are implemented in a timely fashion. Failure to contact the Academic Support Center will constitute acknowledgement that no disability exists and that no accommodations are needed.

Portions of this syllabus based on Senior Project syllabus prepared by Dawn Wilkins (University of Mississippi, Oxford, MS).