The Project Notebook for ECE 480 -- Purpose and Requirements

 

Purpose

Practicing engineers maintain workbooks. Through these workbooks, these engineers document the evolutionary development of new ideas, concepts, and products. This documentation is necessary as formal claims are made with respect to the rightful ownership of intellectual property through the filing of patents and licenses. These workbooks also become valuable resources as the engineers prepare reports and presentations since a well maintained workbook provides an efficient method for remembering and organizing detailed information.

 

With this in mind, each student enrolled in ECE 480 will be required to maintain a project notebook for the design project portion of the course. The project notebook will document the evolutionary development of the student's knowledge and understanding of embedded systems. It will help provide documentation that demonstrates how well the student was able to fulfill the course learning objectives. Finally, writing regularly in the notebook will stimulate the student to reflect on what has been accomplished to date and what remains to be accomplished in order to fulfill their own learning objectives for the course.

 

Requirements

1. Style and Format

 

          1.1. The project notebook must be bound (sewn binding) and have pre-numbered pages (look for a "lab" notebook in the bookstore).

          1.2. All entries should be dated, and (of course) in their proper time sequence. Begin a day by dating the journal/notebook and end the day by signing and dating the journal/notebook.  If you have multiple time-separated work sessions during one day, treat each as a separate entry, signing whenever completing a session.  You won’t have too many signatures, but might have too few.

          1.3. The project notebook may reference software, hardware, reports, etc. that you have produced as interim or final products.  If you turn them in to the instructor, you may assume that they can be referenced in the notebook.  Reference figures or diagrams by number or by name.

          1.4. The student's name must be placed on the upper-right corner of the outside cover of the journal.

          1.5. Entries must be written in ink in the project notebook.

 

2. Content

 

          2.1. The notebook must document the evolutionary development of the student's knowledge and understanding of the technical components/systems/software involved in the project.  The notebook is the place to draw your “working” or rough schematics and diagrams, do your technical calculations, etc.  These items document what you have tried, what worked, what did not, and why.  This will also show your facilitator what you have contributed to the team’s technical progress.  If you write something that is incorrect or irrelevant, you may draw a line through it, but should not “obliterate” it.  If something is superseded by later work, record that, saying what replaced it (page number, date).

          2.2. The notebook must provide documentation that demonstrates how well the student was able to fulfill the course learning objectives.  At accreditation time, the visiting team will look critically at examples of these notebooks to determine what the students gained from this capstone course.

          2.3. The project notebook DOES document all design-team meetings that you attended, who was present, anyone who was expected but "didn't show," and decisions that were made, but it is NOT just a meeting log!

 

3. Review and Evaluation

 

          3.1. The project notebook must be handed in to your facilitator for interim review once during the term and at the end of the term.  You should bring it to each of your meetings with your team, in order to record specific tasks you have agreed to address, and for use in reviewing your progress with the rest of the team.  Your facilitator may want to look at it at any of your regular weekly meetings.  You will receive feedback about your notebook from your facilitator after the first time you submit it.

          3.2. On the first due date for the notebook, each student is responsible for submitting to the facilitator a high-quality photocopy of the journal/notebook pages for the period covered to date. The photocopy must be on 8.5x11" paper with the student's name clearly marked on the first page.

          3.3. Each student will also be required to hand in a timeline of entries to the notebook (i.e., a graph of the dates on which entries were recorded, to reflect frequency and patterns in using the journal).  This should be appended as the last page handed in (first time) and placed after the last used page of the notebook when the final one is handed in at the end of the semester.  The graph should be a weekly histogram, showing for each week the number of entries made in the notebook (some days may have multiple entries to be counted, if distinct “work sessions” occurred on the same day, so a week could have more than 7 entries).