This section of the syllabus "0. Addendum" includes modifications that override the remaining sections of the syllabus. These modifications are needed for the remote teaching that is needed to "flatten the curve" of the spread of COVID-19.
Note also that some text in the later sections has been edited with strikethrough.
Class location: https://uoregon.zoom.us/j/98736774867
The password has been emailed to students.
Office hours location: https://uoregon.zoom.us/j/6792271357
The course textbook can be accessed at
https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/software-engineering-principles/9780470031469/ after purchasing a $19 student ACM membership at https://services.acm.org/public/qj/quickjoin/qj_control.cfm. Page numbers and section numbers have been removed from this digital version and so, to read the assigned sections of each chapter, you can use this Van Vliet Table of Contents (PDF) to figure out the sections you need to read.
You obviously need to use a computer to attend class, but please minimize the digital distractions that you present to yourself during class.
You should show Zoom video of yourself at the start of class, during Q&A with the instructor, and at the end of class. The goal here is to provide a semblance of the social context that permeates face-to-face classroom learning. (Though I do not claim that we are a "community of inquiry".)
Please let me know if any aspect of this class is a problem for you.
Remote Resources for UO Students: https://remote.uoregon.edu/student
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 10:15AM - 11:45 AM
https://uoregon.zoom.us/j/98736774867
CRN: 31583, 4 Credits
CIS: https://classes.cs.uoregon.edu/21S/cis422/
Canvas:
https://canvas.uoregon.edu/courses/176767
Whiteboard: Google Docs
Anthony
Hornof, Professor
356 Deschutes
hornof@cs.uoregon.edu
Office Hours: Tuesdays and Thursdays, Noon-1PM, or by appointment
In this course, you will learn methodologies and practices for building software systems that are adaptable, robust, reliable, and usable. The development of such systems require the cooperation and participation of a number of people working as a team. This class will help you to learn how to work effectively on a team. You will learn structured approaches for analyzing systems requirements, specifying software design, testing systems, and managing the software development process.
Hans van Vliet, Software Engineering: Principles and Practice, 3rd edition, John Wiley & Sons, 2008. The book is available at
You are expected to acquire a copy of the book, do the assigned reading before class, and come to class ready to discuss the reading, with questions about what you read. You are expected to take notes on what you read, understand the material, and to look up words that you don't know in a dictionary.
You are expected to maximize the teaching and learning opportunity by attending all classes. You are expected to schedule other commitments to avoid conflicts with the course. The only acceptable excuses for missing a class are documented medical problems, religious holidays (if cleared in advance), attending academic conferences (if cleared in advance), and documented personal emergencies. If you miss a class, you are expected to contact your classmates to try to acquire the knowledge, guidance, and materials that you sadly missed in that class. The instructor will not be able to provide makeup lectures or materials.
Students are expected to attend all lectures, presentations, and scheduled meetings with the professor, and to take handwritten notes at all classes and meetings. Bring paper and pencil to class. Students are expected to participate in class presentations and discussions. User interface design is an iterative process, often involving group discussions of design alternatives. The instructor may present work submitted by students to the class for critique and discussion. Your in-class participation may be supplemented by emailing the instructor with questions or comments, which he will try to incorporate into lectures.
Come to class ready to engage the material and to interact face-to-face with the other human beings in the classroom. Power down and put away all electronic devices before class starts. Activities such as texting, surfing the web, or checking email during class is inappropriate, discourteous, and distracting to other students and the instructor. Please use lecture time to practice your skill of pondering.
Lecture notes are available for download from the course website. If you would like to have a personal copy of the notes during lectures, please print a copy and bring the printout to class. You can also annotate the printouts with your own handwritten notes.
For this course, you are expected to have either (a) a computer of your own on which you can contribute to programming and other project activities or (b) a USB flash drive such that you can use the computers in Room 100 in a time-effective manner. If you are using a personal computer, this computer should have at least 3 GB of hard drivespace available for this class, and a up-to-date operating system. You should have basic system administration skills for your system, such as to be able to and install and configure software, and to maintain and troubleshoot the computer. Students are expected to maintain secure and reliable backups of all of there coursework such that (a) other students cannot access that data and (b) multiple independent copies of all important files are kept on independent geographically-separated drives.
There will be two group projects. The first will last four weeks and be assigned by the instructor. The second will last four weeks and will be proposed by the groups. The second project will be due during the final week of classes. For the first project, the instructor will assign the teams. For the second project, students may be permitted to select their own teams. You are expected to participate in group meetings outside of class, and to be generous and flexible with your time for scheduling team meetings and for communicating with group members.
There will be a final exam in the time slot allocated on the UO final exam schedule. Pop quizzes and in-class exercises may further supplement learning and assessment. An unexcused absence at an exam, quiz, or in-class assignment will result in zero points for that assessment opportunity. During exams, a student may not continue to work on the exam after that student has left the room.
There two websites associated with this class:
Students in this class are expected to check Canvas for announcements daily. You can configure Canvas to have these announcements sent to you as email.
Please contact the instructor with any questions and concerns at all regarding the class, following these guidelines:
Students have the responsibility to communicate with the instructor about any questions, concerns, or problems that they have during the course. These might relate to any aspect of the class including lectures, group dynamics, communication breakdowns, or anything. Please visit the instructor during his office hours or set up an appointment to discuss any problem or concerns.
Projects will be evaluated in part based on the instructor's subjective assessment of the quality of the written materials submitted. A modern skilled technology expert must be able to communicate his or her ideas clearly and concisely.
Good writing occurs on three levels:
Organize your ideas in paragraphs. But do not write long run-on stream-of-consciousness paragraphs in which you write down whatever comes to mind, such as a long step-by-step recounting of how you did something. If you find yourself doing this, go back, edit, and add structure. Always proofread your work. Do not write paragraphs that are lists with lots of text jammed together, as as done in the following paragraph. It is the exact same text as shown in the 3-item list above. Notice how it is much easier to understand the ideas when when organized as a list. The following paragraph is much harder to read than the identical 3-item list above:
Actively work to improve your writing. Take writing classes, study books such as Kane's New Oxford Guide to Writing and Strunk & White's Elements of Style, and access the drop-in writing tutoring at the Teaching and Learning Center.
Each artifact, document, source code file, README.txt, and so on, that you submit should include, at the top of the file, the names of all authors, and the date that the document was created or last modified. It should be immediately clear what this thing is, who created it, and when.
Being able to write handwritten notes that co-workers can read is an important job skill. If a student’s handwriting on an exam is determined to be difficult to read, there will be a 5% or 10% reduction in the score assigned to that exam. If your handwriting is not legible, please study Better Handwriting for Adults (PDF). If you have difficulty writing basic letters, please start with the exercises and worksheets at http://www.handwritingforkids.com/ or https://www.sightwordsgame.com/writing/handwriting/.
Any media that is submitted as part of coursework should be of good quality. Photographs should be sharp, properly exposed and cropped, and communicate what needs to be communicated. Videos should be the same, and with a stable image (such as by using a tripod), clear audio at good volume levels, and edited to remove extraneous content. Data files should be only as large as is needed to deliver the relevant content.
Projects will be assessed against a set of evaluation criteria that will be made available with each project. Read these criteria carefully because they reflect the aspects of the projects that are important given the pedagogical goals of the class.
While much in the discipline of computer science is objective (such as whether a computer program will compile and produce a specified answer), most of the material that is covered in this class will be concepts, ideas, terminology, conventions, and practices that cannot be defined in pure objective language such as that of a computer program. Exams, quizzes, and projects are graded based on the instructor's subjective assessment of the accuracy and completeness of the answers and materials provided by the students.
The instructor will apply an understanding of the material that he has established (a) with first-hand experience interacting with the concepts and ideas covered in the class over five years of professional software industry and two decades of managing funded research projects in academia, (b) writing funding proposals that have won $3 million in funding from federal agencies, (c) serving as a program director at the National Science Foundation for two years during which he contributed to decisions to award roughly $50 million of federal funding on topics discussed in the course, (d) reviewing proposals for federal agencies including NSF and NASA who specifically requested his expert evaluations of the feasibility and technical merit of submissions, (e) extensive reading on the material covered in the course, and (f) extensive discussions with practitioners and researchers who specialize in the topics of the class.
Grades will be determined based on your performance on the following assessment units: projects, exams, quizzes, and in-class exercises. If any of the projects (or other assessment units) are assigned and executed as a group project, your grade for that project will be based on the group's performance for that project.
Your final grade will be weighted across the assessment units as follows:
Project 1:
25%30%
Project 2:30%35%
Midterm:20%15%
Final Exam:20%15%
Class Participation and Quizzes: 5%
The course will be graded in a manner that does not limit the number of good grades (such as As and Bs) that will be awarded, and may result in nobody getting a bad grade (such as a D or an F). You will be graded based on the extent to which you have mastered the material that is assessed in each project or exam, with the highest possible level of mastery for each project and exam determined by the top 10% of the overall scores that students receive for that project or exam. For example, if the top two scores on an exam in a class of 20 students are are 75% and 85%, then the criterion will be set at 80%. And the scores for all students in the class for that project will be scaled up as if 80% correct counted as 100% correct. If you scored a 76%, your score will be scaled up to a 95% (76 / 80 = 95), and you got an A on that exam. The scaling will be assigned to each assessment unit in the class, with a separate numerical criterion determined for each unit.
After scores are scaled up, letter grades will be assigned as follows:
90% and higher = A
80-89.9% = B
65-79.9% = C
50-64.9% = D
49.9 and below = F
For grades of A, B, and C, scores in the top third of each range will receive a "+" and the bottom third a "–".
Assignments submitted late will be subjected to a full letter grade penalty (10% after the score is scaled up). Assignments will be accepted no more than 48 hours past the due date and time. Exceptions will only be considered if the request is submitted before the due date. Any grading discrepancies (such as a miscounting of points on an assignment) must be resolved within a week after the assignment is returned.
Enrolled students who do not attend the first official meeting of this course will be dropped from the course.
The modern technology workplace is diverse, international, and intercultural. This course welcomes and values these differences as an opportunity to increase our awareness of the contemporary global society, how to work better in groups, and how to build better computer systems.
If you have a documented disability and anticipate needing accommodation in this course, please provide the instructor with your letter of accommodation from the UO Accessible Education Center during the first week of classes. He will advise the AEC on how to best provide this accommodation. You may also provide the instructor with additional written information regarding your situation, either on paper or electronically. Please allow a week for the implementation of your accommodation.
It is requested that you do not make audio or visual recordings of the class without instructor permission.
Students who are found to have committed an academically dishonest act in this course will receive an F for the course.
Academic honesty includes the following. You should do all of the following:
Academic dishonesty includes the following. You should not do any of the following:
All evidence of academic dishonesty will be pursued following the Faculty Guide for Addressing Suspected Academic Misconduct.
Students will be notified in writing of any changes to the syllabus.
This course is modeled, in part, after previous versions of the course taught by Professors Stuart Faulk and Michal Young.
A.Hornof 4/1/2021