SYLLABUS

Contact Information:

Time Thursday: 3:30 PM - 4:50 PM (Classroom Lectures)
Tuesday: 2:00 PM - 3:15 PM (Entrepreneurship Lectures)
Thursday: 2:00 PM - 4:50 PM (Laboratory)
Place Lecture: 100 Simrall (Auditorium)
Entrepreneurship Lectures: 001 Swalm (First Floor Auditorium)
Meetings: Simrall 206
Labs: Simrall 323 (other rooms by appointment)
Instructor Joseph Picone
Office: 413 Simrall
Office Hours: 8-9 TR (others by appt.)
Email: picone@cavs.msstate.edu
Phone: 662-325-3149 / Fax: 662-325-2298
Teaching Assistants Jordan Goulder (Documentation)
Office: 302 Simrall
Office Hours: 9:30 AM to 12:00 PM TR (others by appt.)
Email: jwg10@msstate.edu
Phone: 662-325-8111
Class Alias ece_4512@cavs.msstate.edu
URL http://www.cavs.msstate.ed./publications/courses/ece_4512
Textbook Resources D.C. Hanselman and B.L. Littlefield, Mastering MATLAB: A Comprehensive Tutorial and Reference, 1/e,, Prentice-Hall, 1996, pp. 542, ISBN: 0-13-191594-0.

P. Horowitz and W. Hill, The Art of Electronics, 2nd Edition, Cambridge University Press, 1994, ISBN: 0-521-37095-7.

R. Schinzinger and M.W. Martin, Introduction to Engineering Ethics, McGraw-Hill, 2000, ISBN 0-07-233959-4.

K.A. Smith, Project Management and Teamwork, McGraw-Hill, 2000, ISBN 0-07-12296-2.

G. Voland, Engineering By Design, Addison-Wesley, 1999, ISBN 0-20-14985-10.
Prerequisite Grade of C or better in each of ECE 3163, ECE 3243, ECE 3724/CS 3124, and ECE 3732; and grade of C or better in one of either ECE 3324, ECE 3254 or ECE 3414; and consent of instructor.

You must also be a member of a team that has a project registered in the Project Proposal database.

Grading Policies:

Grades are calculated using the following weights:

Standard:
  Hardware Prototype 50%
  Design Document 10%
  Weekly Deliverables 10%
  Design Review 10%
  Preliminary Design Review 5%
  Advisor Evaluation 5%
  Web Site 5%
  Peer Review 5%

Letter grades will be assigned according to the following distribution:

A
100 - 90
B
89 - 80
C
79 - 70
D
69 - 60
See you next semester
Below 60
Description:

The goal of our two semester sequence is to provide you with a realistic design experience, and teach you the tools and methodologies that can help you be successful at this endeavor. Demonstration of a fully functional prototype is requirement. Receiving a passing grade is not a guarantee that you will be allowed to proceed to Senior Design II. You must first demonstrate a fully functional prototype to your advisor and the course instructor. In the event that your prototype doesn't work at the end of the semester, you should plan on making up the work over the semester break. Without this approval, you will not be allowed to enroll in the second semester of this course.

In order that each team member be motivated to participate fully in the team, teams are allowed to vote members out of the group (we were inspired by the television series "Survivor") at the end of semester. For the member voted out, this might mean you have to retake this course, so you need to work to avoid this at all costs. Communication amongst team members and the project advisor about expectations and performance is essential. Far too often, students voted out complain that no one in the group appreciated how much work they really did.

To be considered for a passing grade in this portion of the class, your design review must convince the committee this project is ready for the fabrication stage (the following course in the two-course sequence). You also must convince the committee that you have done a sufficient amount of simulation and prototyping of your system, and that all critical design questions have been answered.

Demonstration of a fully working prototype by the end of the semester is the most critical piece of this course. Hence, half of your grade is based on a binary decision about your prototype. The course instruction team and the project advisor will be involved in this decision. You cannot pass the course without completing this component of the course.

The design document is a comprehensive description of the entire project including: requirements, test specification, design, and test certification. It presents both simulation data and hardware measurements (for the packaged version of the hardware!), demonstrating that your design has met its goals. This document should address most of the points listed on the cover page of the course web site. Templates for this document are available on-line.

Technical writing is a very important part of the overall course goals in senior design. Because you are supplied with a detailed Microsoft Word template for the design document, grading of the design document will be strict. Documents will first be graded based on their technical content. Next, for each infraction of the formatting guidelines, you will have one letter grade deducted from the overall grade for your document. A failing grade on the design document will be counted more heavily - a team cannot receive a grade higher than a C in this course if they fail the design document component of the course.

We now use a popular project planning tool, Microsoft Project, in this course. This will help you plan your projects on a daily basis. Every Friday evening, you will be responsible for making a deliverable available on your web site. There will be approximately 15 deliverables over the course of the semester, each worth about 1% of your grade. These will be described in detail in class and via email. A schedule is provided below. Team leaders will be responsible for managing the project document. This will be explained in more detail in class. The weekly MS project assignments, and related documentation assignments, now comprise the single largest component of your final grade.

The design review is the big enchilada. You must address all design deficiencies noted in your preliminary review, and review all aspects of the project (with technical details supporting your claims). This will be a 15-minute presentation. At the time of the design review, a project web site must be available containing all information about the project, including the documents described above and the design review presentation.

Concurrent with the design review, we will host a conference-style prototype hardware demonstration. This will be set up in a room adjacent to the presentations, and consist of a conference booth type format where each team is allocated a table at which they will demonstrate their hardware. Each team will be responsible for constructing a poster providing an overview of the project. Faculty, student, and industrial representatives will visit each project and provide a detailed evaluation of the hardware. This portion of the final design review will last about two hours and run concurrently with the design presentations.

The preliminary design review should be a dry-run of the final presentation. It is a 15-minute presentation by one team member that reviews project. At this presentation, any deficiencies that are documented must be rectified in your final design review. At this stage of the course, you will be expected to show solid design constraints, a preliminary design, and a comprehensive simulation and testing plan.

Another significant component of your grade is derived from your advisor's evaluation of role on the team and your peer review. Remember the prime directive: "Keep your advisor happy." The rationale your advisor uses to arrive at your grade is at his or her discretion. Be sure to communicate with your advisor to fully understand his or her expectations.

The project web site will be graded according to its comprehensiveness. A good site will contain a complete archive of the project, including all documents, presentations, data, measurements, schematics in source file format, software, etc. Web sites are graded on a competitive basis so keep an eye on your competition.

Your course grade will be computed using the categories and weights described above. Final grades can be adjusted by 5% (one letter grade) based on feedback collected from a peer review process. The method of application of this input is rather complicated, and arrived at using a "raise-pool" format (based on the way salary raises work in industry). Each member of the team is allowed to influence each other team member's grade by 5%. To raise one grade by an amount delta, you must reduce another team member's contribution by an equivalent amount. The sum of your adjustments must equal zero. If all team members receive the same rating, their grades remain unchanged. To increase one member's grade by the maximum of 5%, you must lower all other members grades by an equivalent amount. Feedback from each student will be collected and averaged, so the actual contribution per team member is 5/N where N is the number of members in your group. If each team member tries to assign all the credit to themselves, the net result will be that no one receives extra credit. To arrive at these evaluations, team members will submit a written evaluation of their fellow team members. All claims of mutiny, insurgency, poor performance, etc., must be documented in sufficient detail to be given consideration.

We will attend four entrepreneurship lectures this semester in coordination with GE 3011. Developing an appreciation of global issues in engineering is very important at this stage in your career. The entrepreneurship lectures are one means by which we encourage you to start thinking about important non-technical aspects of your career.

Schedule:

Please note that the dates below are fixed since they have been arranged to optimize a number of constraints. You need to adjust your schedules, including job interviews and site visits, accordingly.

Class
Date
Time
   Topic(s)
1
01/15
3:30 - 4:50 PM
   Organization and Introductions
2
01/22
3:30 - 4:50 PM
   The Design Cycle / Design Document Overview
3
01/29
3:30 - 4:50 PM
   MS Project
4
02/03
2:00 - 3:15 PM
   Entrepreneurship Lecture No. 1
5
02/12
3:30 - 4:50 PM
   Software Engineering
6
02/19
2:00 - 4:50 PM
   Project Meetings
7
02/24
3:30 - 4:50 PM
   Entrepreneurship Lecture No. 2
8
03/02 - 03/04
2:00 - 4:50 PM
   Preliminary Design Review
9
03/11
3:30 - 4:50 PM
   Teamwork
10
03/23
2:00 - 3:15 PM
   Entrepreneurship Lecture No. 3
11
04/01
3:30 - 4:50 PM
   Standards / Economics
12
04/08
3:30 - 4:50 PM
   Lecture - TBD
13
04/15
2:00 - 4:50 PM
   Project Meetings
14
04/20
2:00 - 3:15 PM
   Entrepreneurship Lecture No. 4
15
04/27 - 04/29
2:00 - 4:50 PM
   Design Reviews


Deliverables:

Presentations and hardware demonstrations are due at times shown above. The weekly deliverables will be due at the times shown in your Microsoft Project documents. All other deliverables, such as the final design document, the web site, peer reviews, etc., are due on 12/04. The course instruction team will download these documents from the web site at this time and grade them.

Assignment
Due Date
 Item(s)
1
01/15
 proposal database entry
2
01/22
 proposal database entry;
preliminary web site;
product specification.
3
01/29
 revised proposal database entry;
revised product specification.
4
02/05
 MS Project document;
problem statement.
5
02/12
 MS Project document (update);
design constraints.
6
02/19
 MS Project document (update).
7
02/26
 MS Project document (update);
revised problem statement.
8
03/04
 MS Project document (update);
mid-term presentation review.
9
03/11
 MS Project document (update);
revised design constraints.
10
03/18
 MS Project document (update);
test specifications;
software interface design (physical model).
11
03/25
 MS Project document (update);
software interface design (use cases).
12
04/01
 MS Project document (update);
information model;
revised test specifications.
13
04/08
 MS Project document (update);
software process model;
executive summary.
14
04/15
 MS Project document (update);
approach.
15
04/22
 MS Project document (update);
design document checkpoint.
16
04/29
 MS Project document (update).


Miscellaneous:

Here are a few miscellaneous items that need your attention: