CS691: Welcome

Welcome to CS691. In this course, you will tie together everything you have learned in the program (and much more!) by collaboratively developing an innovative software product.

Essential information

Lectures:	Monday 6–8:35 in LLC 234A
Professor:	Christopher League <christopher.league@liu.edu> Please include “CS691” in the subject, to ensure that I don’t miss your message.
Office:	LLC 206k Phone: 718 488 1274
Hours:	Tue 4–5, Wed 2–3, or by appointment
Web site:	`http://comsci.liu.edu/courses/691/`

Structure

The project will proceed in phases—some lasting just one week, others lasting several weeks. Project groups will be assigned by me, and they will usually last for just one or two phases. The phases will include requirements definition, high- and low-level design, prototyping, and coding and testing of various components.

The first half of each lecture will begin with a discussion about a particular technique or tool that is relevant to the current phase of the project. Some possible topics include:

Managing projects with “make”
Revision management with “cvs”
Database programming
Network programming
Unit testing
Effective debugging
etc.. (I am open to suggestions, if there is some relevant technology you would like to learn!)

Additional documentation and notes will usually be available on the web site. On some topics, we will have short quizzes in the next lecture, but these will be announced in advance.

The second half of each lecture will essentially be a project meeting, where we evaluate what we have done so far, and decide how to proceed. Some weeks, time will be available to work on your projects in class. Other weeks, I may require brief, informal presentations from certain project groups.

Each week, one student will be responsible for keeping notes (minutes) for the lecture (meeting). The notes should be typed and posted to the mailing list within a day or two. This way we will always have a record of our ideas and decisions. Please use plain text or HTML if possible; diagrams should ideally be converted to .gif or .jpg.

Requirements

Your success in your project groups will determine the major part of your grade (60%), but there are other components as well. Quizzes based on lecture topics will form 10%. There will be a final exam based on all the various things we have learned in the course and while doing the project (15%). Your participation in discussions, both in class and on the web site will be worth 10%. Finally, you will be required to keep a weekly developer's journal for 5% of your grade.

The journal is to be a personal, not a group effort. It should include what you accomplished (or tried to accomplish) in the past week, what you learned, how well your group is working, etc. It should be no more than a paragraph or two per week, and you can just email it to me in plain text format with the subject “cs691: journal.”