The material in this course will be conveyed and evaluated in three
complementary ways. Percent of final grade is in parentheses:
Readings Preparation, Lecture, and Dialog (50%).
We will be reading dozens of ground-breaking articles, some basic
material from Ghezzi et al., and one book.
You should pursue outside readings as your interests lead you, and as
your project requires. Your grade in this portion will be determined
by your preparation and participation during lectures and
discussion, so come prepared to discuss or use the material for
at least the primary sources for the day's lecture.
Participation in mailing list discussions, giving class presentations,
or acting as a class discussant (facilitator) also count towards
participation.
I will be collecting your annotated readings (or notes) after class as
part of your grade. I will also use this to track your attendance,
and hence to a significant degree your participation.
If you miss class, I will accept your notes for up to 3 classes.
Failure to turn
in your annotated reading for a given day will count as zero for
participation for that day (approximately 5% of your readings grade,
or 2.5% of your overall grade).
Please make copies if you want
to have your notes for immediate reference.
Project (50%). To make the concepts in
the papers concrete and develop your software engineering skills, we will
be developing small software products in teams. Each week there will be
a milestone. Your grade on the project will be determined by the quality
of your work on each milestone. Should the grade on a milestone be below
an A-, you can resubmit that milestone one week later for a regrade
(for a maximum grade of A-). Product delivery is only one milestone,
so producing a running program is only a small part of the grade.
This is a team project, and you will be graded largely as a team.
All team members are responsible for the healthy functioning of the
team. However, I will ask each of you to evaluate your teammates
at the end of the course. The evaluation results can affect your project
grade up to one letter grade in either direction.