Course Syllabus

[.PDF version of this Syllabus]

This Syllabus describes the administrative bits and parts necessary for this course, and serves as the "contract" between myself (the Instructor) and you. I take your remaining in the course as acceptance of these rules.

Remember that in this "capstone" course for your degree at Oregon State University, responsibility and maturity are required of you. Please use the information given in this document throughout the course.

Contact

The best way to contact myself and your fellow students is via the Canvas Discussion boards. You'll also be able to find students - and frequently myself - on the OSU CS Slack channel: https://osu-cs.slack.com where we have a #467 channel already set up! Even though I'll be on Slack, questions of class-wide import should be posted on Canvas, for all to see.

If you need to reach the person responsible for grading an assignment, please see the Home page to know whom to contact.

If you need to reach me personally, please use my OSU email: brewsteb@oregonstate.edu. In order to have email reach me or the TA, you must put [CS467] in the subject line, or else we may miss it. I expect that I'll respond to your email within one business day. Please note that I do not generally communicate over the weekend or on holidays.

I and the TA will be playing the role of Client in this course: a few roles I won't be playing are Debugger, Programmer, or Architect. The programming and debugging is entirely up to you! Do not send me code except as required by assignment.

Office Hours

I won't be holding regular office hours for this course - please contact me via the Discussion boards for normal questions, and email me directly if you'd like to schedule an interactive chat session.

Availability

I will typically respond within one business day of all communications during weekdays. I am normally not available weekends, evenings, or holidays, which includes OSU, state, and federal holidays. Exceptions to this would be emergencies and scheduled appointments.

Book and Materials

This course has no particular book or materials. It is entirely project-driven. You assume responsibility to learn any additional languages, technologies, or skills incumbent to your success, though you most likely already know everything you'll need to know! Because you're awesome. You know it, I know it.

Academic Honesty

Please review and understand the OSU E-campus academic integrity standards. Of particular concern is plagiarism: the representation of the words, ideas, code, etc. of others as your own. To avoid this, make sure you cite references, examples, code blocks, and conceptual ideas from others in your source code and in your reports. It is expected that the submissions you make consist of code written almost entirely by you and your Dev Team.

Submitting Assignments

When submitting assignments, please be aware that neither the Instructor nor the TA(s) see comments added to the text boxes in Canvas that are alongside your assignment submissions. No notifications (email or otherwise) are sent out when these comments are added, so we aren't aware that you have added content! If you need to make a meta-comment about a submission, please include it in the submission .zip file itself, or email the person directly who will be grading it (see the Home page for grading responsibilities).

Grading

Grading responsibilities are shared between the Instructor and TAs: see our Home Page for a breakdown of whom is grading which assignment. Point values for each assignment are given on the Assignments page - please consider the point values of each assignment relative to the others.

All assignments must be submitted on Canvas, according to the posted due date and time, or they will be subject to penalties. Normally, assignments that are submitted late by less than 24 hours will have 10% deducted from their grade (e.g. an assignment submitted at 12:01pm, if it was due at 12:00pm, will be worth 90% of its graded value). Assignments submitted late equal to or more than 24 hours, but less than 48 hours, will have 25% deducted from their grade. These late penalties are off of the total possible, not the amount you earn. Assignments may not be submitted late past 48 hours, and will be worth 0 points. Please note: some assignments may not be accepted late, or may have different ranges of submission-capable dates. Please check the availability dates on the Assignments page to see when each assignment may be submitted.

There are no finals, mid-terms, or other tests in this course. The only assignments are those involving authoring the software project and creating reports about the project.

Each student's total effort is expected to be at least 100 hours during this course. Project quality that does not reflect this investment of time will be graded lower.

Your group will not create your grade for you. You need to accomplish the goals you sign off on by submitting the Project Plan. In this course, individual failure to communicate with your team, or provide reasonably working code compatible with the project as per specifications, may result in you receiving a non-passing grade, while the rest of your team passes.

There won't be a curve applied to the grading of this course, nor is there any rounding or weighting of assignments. The points you see are the points you get, including in the table below. The grading scale is as follows, and will be adhered to strictly (I have already taken into account some pretty generous rounding):

91.5 ≤ A ≤ 100
89.5 ≤ A- < 91.5
87.5 ≤ B+ < 89.5
81.5 ≤ B < 87.5
79.5 ≤ B- < 81.5
77.5 ≤ C+ < 79.5
71.5 ≤ C < 77.5
69.5 ≤ C- < 71.5
67.5 ≤ D+ < 69.5
61.5 ≤ D < 67.5
59.5 ≤ D- < 61.5
0 ≤ F < 59.5

OSU Accessibility Statement

Accommodations for students with disabilities are determined and approved by Disability Access Services (DAS). If you, as a student, believe you are eligible for accommodations but have not obtained approval please contact DAS immediately at 541-737-4098 or at http://ds.oregonstate.edu. DAS notifies students and faculty members of approved academic accommodations and coordinates implementation of those accommodations. While not required, students and faculty members are encouraged to discuss details of the implementation of individual accommodations.

Letters of Recommendation

As much as I appreciate having you in class, it is very unlikely I will be able to provide you with a letter of recommendation. I will only be able to write those letters for students that I have really gotten to know. If you're interested, and think I know you well enough, feel free to ask!

About The Instructor

I've been teaching at OSU since Winter term, 2014, and have loved every minute of it! I have written and taught CS372, CS344, CS312, and CS467. Here's a video with a bit about me:

Relax

Finally, relax: this course is a blast because working on programming projects is awesome. You're going to love it, and I'm going to love seeing what you produce!