Tuesdays and Thursdays, 2 PM - 3:20 PM, B040 PSC
CRN: 21623 (for 422), 21630 (for 522), 4 Credits
Web Pages: https://classes.cs.uoregon.edu/24W/cs422/
https://canvas.uoregon.edu/courses/237697
Anthony
Hornof, Professor
356 Deschutes
hornof@cs.uoregon.edu
Mondays noon-1PM, and Thursdays 4-5PM, or by appointment.
Simultaneously in 356 Deschutes and at https://uoregon.zoom.us/j/6792271357
In this course, students should learn:
Sommerville (2015) Software Engineering, 10th Edition, Global Edition. ISBN 9781292096131.
You are expected to purchase a copy of the book, or to purchase digital access to the book, and to do all of the assigned reading (in the course Schedule.pdf) before class, and to 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. Please follow the guidance provided on the course web page on the best way to read a textbook. Use the good exam questions on the course web site to help motivate the reading.
To master the course material, you must attend every class, and participate in every course-related activity. The "participation" portion of your grade for the class will be based on the number of classes you attend, your performance on quizzes, and your participation in class. You should try to speak in class at least once per week.
This class follows the UO Course Attendance and Engagement (policy) which requires faculty to determine which engagement opportunities in a course (such as attendance, assignments, group activities, exams, and quizzes) can be missed or “made up” without jeopardizing a student’s opportunity to meet the expected learning outcomes for the course. Consistent with this UO policy, the instructor of this class has determined that there are no engagement opportunities that a student could miss and still gain mastery of the course material.
It would be impossible, for example, to “make up” a live in-person lecture. Here is what happens in every meeting of this class:
Everything. Contained in this classroom
is a microcosm of human experience
assembled for you to query and examine and ponder(Excerpted from Tom Wayman in “Did I Miss Anything?”, 1993)
Please get to know, and share contact info with, other students in the class so that, if you have to miss a class and miss out on "Everything" (according to Tom Wayman), another student can help you learn a little of what you missed. (Both of you would benefit from this review.) I am sorry but it would be impossible for me to recreate a class for you.
There are no make-up exams. Exams in the class are “standardized” (AERA, 2014). If you miss the midterm or final exam, it would be impossible to recreate for you the pedagogical benefits of all students taking the same test, in-person, at the same time and the same place.
However, if you miss the midterm or the final exam, you can "make up" the exam by copying the lecture notes covered on that exam by hand, and videotaping the entire process, following the process described at How to "Make Up" a Missed Midterm or Final Exam. If you meet all the requirements of the copying process, you will be awarded a grade of 70% for the missed exam.
Students are expected to attend lectures, presentations, group meetings, and scheduled meetings with the professor, and to take handwritten notes at classes and meetings. Please bring paper and pencil to class, and to all meetings. Students are expected to participate in class presentations and discussions. Software engineering 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.
Please come to class ready to engage the material and to interact face-to-face with the other human beings in the classroom. Please 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 examination schedule. The specific day and time will also be posted by Week 5 of the term in the entry for this class on the UO Class 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.
The two websites associated with this class are:
The URLs for these two web pages are at the top of this Syllabus. Students in this class are expected to check Canvas for announcements daily. It appears as if you can have these announcements sent to you as email by issuing these command in Canvas: "User Settings / Notifications / Announcement / Notify me right away."
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.
A modern skilled technology expert must be able to communicate his or her ideas clearly and concisely. Projects will be evaluated in part based on the instructor's subjective assessment of the quality of the written materials submitted.
The course web page on good technical writing provides important guidance on good writing, including some specific requirements for documents to receive full credit. PDFs of some excellent guides on good writing are available on the course Canvas site under "Files / Technical Writing".
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. All multi-page documents should have page numbers.
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%
Project 2: 25%
Midterm: 20%
Final Exam: 20%
Class Participation and Quizzes: 10%
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 "–".
A Google docs spreadsheet is available to help you see your progress towards your final grade. To use the spreadsheet, please make a copy of it, and then follow the instructions in the spreadsheet, such as to load your assigned scores into the spreadsheet. Please update the spreadsheet as new scores are provided.
Answers to quiz questions will provided in class, or available in the course materials.
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 make a reasonable attempt to assist the University in providing your accommodation. You may also provide the instructor with additional written information regarding your situation, either on paper or electronically. Please allow two weeks for the implementation of your accommodation.
It is requested that you do not make audio or visual recordings of the class without instructor permission.
Generative AI (such as ChatGPT) is an exciting development in computer science, artificial intelligence, and the philosophy of knowledge. This class aims to help students learn how to write code and technical documents, not how to write "prompts" for code and technical documents. Submitting code or text generated by Generative AI will be considered a violation of academic honesty, a rude prank, and a waste of educational resources. If it can be determined that a student has submitted code or text generated by Generative AI, the student will fail the class.
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.
None yet.
A.Hornof 1/8/2024