CSE477 Workload and Grading

Workload

The course consists of the following elements:

1. Lectures: there will be approximately 20 formal lectures and another 8 guest lectures from industry representatives.
2. Special sessions: there will approximately 3 special sessions late on Tuesday afternoons (4:30-6:30). These will be during the 1st, 7th, and 10th weeks of class. The first session will be used for discussion of possible class projects. The remaining two will be used for project presentations and design reviews (each project will be represented during each of the two sessions, the one in the 7th week will be used to introduce the project and its goals, the one in the 10th week will be used to describe the accomplishments and likely demonstration) in which all enrolled students will take part. These presentations will be videotaped and each student will be required to submit a self-evaluation of their presentation.
3. Reading: you will be reading a large fraction of the Jones & Flynn text. In addition, other material will be provided to you.
4. Assignments: there will be three laboratory assignments that will familiarize you with the microcontrollers you'll have available for your projects. Our goal is to have the laboratory experiences be directly relevant to your projects. The laboratory assignments will also serve to familiarize you with construction and debugging equipment we have available.
5. Exam: there will be a single 50 minute mid-term exam that will be open book and notes (only your own, of course). It is tentatively scheduled for Monday, 9 February. There will be no final exam.
6. Project: the projects are the heart of the course and will occupy all of your time during the last five weeks and a good fraction of your time in the first five weeks of the quarter. You will be expected to prepare a demonstration during finals week. The date for the demonstrations is Friday, 20 March.

This course serves as the capstone design course for the Computer Engineering Program. Its purpose is to tie together much of the material from the courses in the curriculum into a coherent whole by asking you to apply your knowledge to the design, construction, and debugging of a complete embedded system involving software, hardware, and interfacing.

Because of this holisitc mission, this course has a very heavy workload. It will probably end up being much more than the 4 credits assigned to the course would normally imply.

Grading

The course grade will be roughly determined as follows:

• 20%: laboratory assignments
• 20%: midterm exam
• 50%: project
• 10%: class participation