Senior Projects

1
Senior Projects

• Fall 2009
• Meeting 1
• August 24, 2009

2
Welcome

• Capstone course
• What is a capstone?
• Why a capstone course?
• Your goals for the course?
• Ancillary activities
• Job search and other next steps
• Fun with computing
• Fun without computing
• Breadth of knowledge

3
Course Web Site

• Central repository for information and
  instructions
• Linked from My Courses
• Check it now

4
Systems
5
SEL (aka MSC 158)

• Hawk
• Userid/pswd LDAP. Make sure it works
• Rational suite
• Visual Studio
• Macs
• Room access
• Remote access
• Remote login
• FTP

6
UNIX

• Sun cluster
• Userid/Pswd
• Tools
• Awk
• Perl
• Grep
• Remote access
• Secure shell
• FTP

7
Special Systems

• Freeware
• Can be downloaded and installed
• Costware
• Department or other funds may be available
• Small systems
• iPhone, iPod Touch
• Interesting interfaces
• Multitouch table

8
THE Project
9
Time Commitment

• 3 credit course
• Project class implies 4-5 hours per week per
  credit outside of class
• 15 calendar weeks
• 3 x 4.5 x 15 202.5 person-hours

10
Project Log

• Due each Monday, 1000 a.m.
• Submitted as a Word document attached to an email
• File name is ltlast namegtltmmddgt.doc
• Example beck0824.doc
• Documents in four sections
• Team meetings time, place, results (if
  applicable)
• Individual effort, either as a team member or as
  a single person, including time estimate by task
  to nearest 15 minutes
• Next weeks plansstarting at 120 p.m. ET of the
  submission day
• Obstacles to progress

11
Interim Project Reports

• M, 8/31 Initial Project Description
• W, 9/16 Sprint Review 1
• W, 10/7 Sprint Review 2
• W, 11/4 Sprint Review 3
• M, 11/23 Sprint Review 4

12
Final Project Presentations

• Senior Projects Fair, Reading Day F, 12/11
• Final Sprint Review and Code Release M, 12/14,
  130 400 p.m.
• Sigma Xi Research Day
• Research conference

13
Modified Agile Development

• Describe the agile development process

14
Forgetfulness

• For the next few minutes,
• FORGET
• about the project that you think you want to do,
  that you planned for all summer.

15
Software Development Project

• Team-based
• Complex software system
• Identifiable customer for inclusion in the
  participatory design process
• Based, perhaps, on software engineering
  requirements document

16
Research Project

• Substantial research project
• Results suitable for publication and judging for
  awards

17
Collaboration

• TWISTZ Team Work in Several Time Zones
• Partners
• University of Uppsala, Sweden
• American University of Science and Technology,
  Beirut, Lebanon
• and others as projects evolve

18
Publication
19
Print

• Survey article
• Research paper
• Requirements document
• Users manual

20
Print Tools

• MS Word
• Which version?
• PCTeX
• Essential for well-produced mathematical
  expressions
• EndNote
• Handles bibliographic material

21
Oral

• Presentation with supporting visuals

22
Poster

• Conference presentation
• Hall display
• CS style, which will be defined later.

23
Web-Based

• Web site
• Wiki
• Blog
• Social network group

24
Competition

• Sigma Xi poster
• CCSC meeting
• ACM Student Research Poster Competition
• NCUR conference
• CRA undergraduate research
• Google
• Microsoft Imagine Cup