ECE 480 Course Syllabus
Instructor: Erik
Goodman
Office: 2308M
EB
Phone: 355-6453, email: goodman@egr.msu.edu
Office hours: MWF
(other times by appointment)
Course Web Pages: http://www.egr.msu.edu/classes/ece480/goodman CHECK THESE FREQUENTLY!
ACCOMMODATION AVAILABLE:
A.
Purpose of the course and course learning objectives
At the completion of this
course, each student should have actively participated as a member of an
engineering design team and made significant contributions to achieving the
team's stated goal and objectives. Each design project should involve the
collaborative development and evaluation of a "product" that contains
an embedded computer. Students will also demonstrate individual competence in
designing/building a digital circuit, programming a microprocessor, and writing
a graphical user interface.
Specific team activities will
include:
1. Preparing
an engineering design proposal that has clearly stated specifications and
design criteria,
including realistic constraints, based on the problem area
presented to the group
2. Sharing in the
day-to-day design activities and management of the project
3. Sharing in the
presentation of oral and written reports
4. Sharing in the
demonstration of results at key milestones during the life of the project
5. Evaluating the
project's progress and outcomes against a clearly articulated set of criteria
At the completion of this
course, each student will be able to:
1) describe
various forms of technical communication and the reasons for using them;
2) write well-organized technical reports;
3) write a team proposal for a major design project and obtain approval;
4) understand and be able to work in Peer Response Groups on writing feedback;
5) comprehend appropriate content and style of oral presentations;
6) understand the importance of career planning and management;
7) access relevant standards and interpret their meaning and application;
8) delineate the principal design criteria and constraints for an electrical or computer engineering design project—e.g., cost, size, power, environmental factors, reliability, safety, maintainability, and reusability;
9) describe and understand the overall engineering design process—e.g., project justification, identification of constraints, establishment of design criteria, establishment of timetables, identification/scheduling of critical path, the partitioning of work, project monitoring, and project evaluation;
10) describe and understand contemporary industry practices and trends with respect to electrical and computer engineering;
11) describe and understand key concepts in design reliability, including design for six sigma and related practices in widespread use in industry;
12) describe, understand, and apply key tools used in the overall electrical and computer engineering design process;
13) understand the benefits and potential problems of teaming, describe qualities and processes of effective teams, and describe the role of teamwork in system design;
14) acquire and understand information contained in contemporary technical literature—e.g., trade journals, magazines, books, conference proceedings, and supplier literature—about hardware components, software, design tools, third-party suppliers, etc.; and
15) browse the web to acquire information about electrical and computer engineering, software, design tools, third-party suppliers, etc.
B. Overview of the course
format
The course is structured
around three key activities, including (1) the completion of a team-based major
engineering design project, (2) individual development of design and lab skills
in a scheduled lab, and (3) lectures and activities on electrical and computer
engineering design.
The course places only minor
emphasis on lectures by the professor. Instead, there is a strong emphasis on
guiding the experiential learning of students, and on students teaching one
another. The first 6 weeks of the course focus on formation of design teams and
formulation of projects and project plans, and the last 9 weeks focus on design
project work. Lectures focus on both technical issues and teaming/professional
issues.
Students will:
1. Attend lectures
2. Read assigned
materials and participate in class discussions
3. Give demonstrations
and oral presentations
4. Write proposals,
progress reports and a final report
5. Write individual
papers – application note and professional self-assessment paper
6. Create web pages, a
page for a brochure, and a CDROM disk
7. Build and test
devices and systems, and deliver a completed prototype to their sponsor
8. Search for
information and apply it
9. Extend their
problem-solving skills
10.
Maintain an "Engineering Project Notebook" of their design
project activities (in a bound, page-
numbered lab notebook)
11.
Participate in giving a technical lecture
12. Work
in teams to share in the learning and to share in the work
13. Be responsible for "taskwork"
and "teamwork"
14.
Complete selected lab experiments/mini-projects in the first half of the
course to become familiar
with the lab, its equipment, and microprocessor use.
C. Design Team Composition
Design Teams:
i. There will be 4-6 members per
design team (typically 5). Projects involve an array of applications,
technologies, and strategies. Short descriptions of the projects to be worked
on in fall, 2007, can be viewed at "www.egr.msu.edu/classes/ece480"
Design
Team “Non-Technical” Roles: (These roles are in addition to the technical
responsibility you will have on your design team.) Individuals on a design team
will have one of the following roles:
revising project plan in response to changing circumstances,
etc.)
2. Web site (coordinates preparation
and maintenance of the design team’s web site)
3. Document preparation (coordinates
the preparation of documents including
proposals,
reports, posters, etc.)
4. Presentation preparation
(coordinates the preparation of presentations using
PowerPoint, posts on web site)
5. Team Lab coordinator (coordinates
keeping the lab clean, orders and tracks parts
with ECE shop, etc.)
ECE 480 design teams compete
for the Prism VentureWorks Prize (Mr. William Siefert, an alumnus of ECE, is a General Partner in Prism VentureWorks). The prizes provide $1,500 for First
Prize, $1,000 for Second Prize, and $500 for Third
Prize, divided among the team members (via checks issued by MSU). Judging
is done by a panel from industry who read the teams’ final
reports, attend the final presentations, ask questions of the teams, and view
posters and demonstrations.
Professor’s
Choice Award
The Professor’s Choice Award,
which carries a cash prize of $1,000 and is recorded on a plaque outside the
capstone lab is awarded to the team judged by the
course instructor to have done the most outstanding job in fulfilling their
design requirements.
Provost’s
Prize
The Provost’s Prize is
awarded to the team judged the most outstanding among the winning teams of the
Prism VentureWorks Prize, the Edison Award, and the
top capstone team from any other department participating in Design Day. It is judged by a panel including one judge
from each prize’s panel plus the dean and two associate deans of the
D. Scheduled Laboratory
In the scheduled lab sections
the students work individually and independently on four mini-design projects.
The purpose of the lab is to improve lab skills and become acquainted with the ECE
480 lab equipment, to assure that all students possess certain basic
competencies, to improve skills at finding and reading technical literature
such as specification sheets, to get practice at working on some simpler design
problems, to increase the student's confidence and independence in the lab, and
to get some practice at using written and oral communication skills.
Lab design miniprojects: (labs start the first week of class)
Week 1: With a partner, program
a digital signal processor (DSP) via
a development kit and the LabView
graphical programming
environment
Weeks 2-3:
Build a timer (555) circuit: Use spec sheet, prototyping on
protoboard first, then putting on
circuit board with solder
Weeks 4-5: Program a
Weeks
6-7: Perform serial I/O to/from
written by student in Visual C++, Visual Basic or LabView
E. Travel policy for students:
Some
teams may wish to travel out of the
F. Ordering parts for your design team projects
You will not be reimbursed for any parts ordered or purchased from any source except through the ECE Shop, unless you have in advance the WRITTEN permission of the ECE Shop staff to do so.
G. Course Grading Policy
1. The course includes a
series of graded assignments (graded by Profs. Goodman or the faculty
facilitator) and additional grading by facilitators based on team
participation/contribution.
2. Students may lose points:
By not attending class
By not participating in team activities
By
not developing and documenting an identifiable and appropriate
"intellectual property/technical
contribution" on the team’s project
By not completing class deliverables with a high standard of quality
By not completing scheduled
lab deliverables
By not having a positive impact on team outcomes or course outcomes
By failing to demonstrate fulfillment of the course learning objectives
Please note that an identifiable "intellectual property/technical contribution" by each individual is required. The teams, as they plan their projects, will be asked to clearly divide the technical tasks and identify individual responsibilities for the technical portions of the team design project (not “webmaster”, “project management,” etc., roles, but technical responsibilities). Each individual will be required to submit an application note documenting his/her intellectual property/technical contribution to the project. In addition, all such technical contributions should be documented in each student’s engineering notebook – that means that the notebook should contain the drawings/schematics/etc., not only words like “designed xyz circuit today.” The engineering notebook is NOT a “meeting log,” but rather the place where the student performs and thereby documents the technical work he/she has performed, signing it after each day’s entries (in industry, it would also be periodically witnessed, to assure its usefulness in documenting time of first creation/discovery of intellectual property). The Professional Self-Assessment paper turned in by each individual must also describe the student’s technical contributions to the project. Also, the facilitator should be briefed by each person at the meeting each week, so that the facilitator can clearly identify the technical contributions made by each individual during the semester.
3. Class and team meeting
attendance are required. Unexcused absences in excess of two will result in
a reduction in the grade. An absence is excused if you notify the instructor prior
to the class session (e.g., leaving a phone or email message), or if you
notify the team leader in advance of the meeting. In both cases, a legitimate
reason is required (for example, “In
4. You will be evaluated
through the following graded activities:
5. Your reports, technical lecture,
presentations, and demonstrations will be reviewed for individual technical
accomplishments and contributions, as well as for teamwork. Your
personal engineering design notebook and in-class assignments will be key
documents, recording your ideas and efforts as well as supporting other
reporting requirements (such as the professional self-assessment and team
progress reports). Although you will assess team members' performances as part
of group processing, all grading is the responsibility of the instructor.
6. Communication Skills
Practice
Each student will talk in an oral presentation before the class three times
during the
semester.
Each student will write two papers individually (application note and
professional
self-assessment)
Each student will participate in preparing three oral presentations during the
semester.
Each student will be involved in a team.
Each student will participate in writing six team reports during the semester.
7. An approximate
breakdown of the grading is:
10%
Professional self-assessment paper (individual)
10% Design
issues paper (group)
20% Miniprojects (in scheduled lab)
60% Design project work (technical
aspects-1/2, teaming-1/4, communications-1/4)
(Primary
input comes from facilitator, with additional input from instructor to
insure consistency of grading, fairness across groups;
includes each student’s
individual
application note)
The overall grade is also reduced by unexcused absences beyond 2.
H. Estimated time required
per student
Each student should plan on
budgeting approximately 15 or more hours/week for this course on average. (Some
weeks may require less time and some more time, particularly toward the end of
the semester.)
This includes:
- time spent in the classroom
- time spent completing homework/lab assignments/papers
- time spent in design team meetings
- time spent working individually on design project
- time spent on preparing for the team’s technical lecture and
other
presentations
I. Class Meeting Time
ECE 480 meets on Monday,
Wednesday, and Friday from
You should make every effort
to reserve Monday evenings from 7-10:00 p.m. for special meetings of your team,
since no lab sections meet at that time, to guarantee some evening when all
members are available. However, your regular weekly team meetings can be
set for other days/times as appropriate. Your weekly meeting time with
your facilitator must be scheduled for a time when all team members and the
facilitator are available, before
Week 1: Miniproject
#1 (in scheduled lab)
Week 3: Miniproject
#2 (in scheduled lab)
Week 4: Preproposal
& initial team webpage
Soldered board for Miniproject #2 due at BEGINNING of lab this week
Week 5: Miniproject
#3 (in scheduled lab)
Each
team emails to Goodman their sponsor’s high-resolution logo, in about 3-inch
maximum dimension, for back cover of program.
Team should request it from sponsor in first meeting – it may take a
while to obtain from their marketing department. On-line logo from company web site is likely
NOT to be of sufficient quality.
Week 6: Proposal – on paper
and via oral presentation
Week 7: Miniproject
#4 (in scheduled lab)
Week 8: First progress report
(see guideline), including design evaluation matrices, due to facilitator at
weekly meeting;
team's page for Design Day Program due to Goodman
Week 9: Demo for facilitator
(usually in the lab); photocopy of each person’s engineering design notebook
to facilitator
Week 11-13: Student technical
lecture (by team)
Week 11: Application note
(individuals)
Week 12: Design issues paper
to Goodman (team)
Week 12: Demo for
facilitator, and second written progress report (brief, 2-page, see guideline)
Week 13: Ethics paper from
each student to Strangas
Week 14: Professional
self-assessment paper (answering specific questions, and
including
one-page resume)
Week 15: Final written report
due in print (7 copies) and electronically to Goodman on Wednesday,
December 5, 6pm, for transmission to judges
and to facilitator. If under
Confidential Disclosure
Agreement (CDA), 4 copies of report must be
“cleaned” – i.e., stripped of confidential
material, since
judges will not be under this agreement.
Week 15: Friday, December 7,
Design Day, final oral presentation, poster, demo, and judging.
All other final deliverables are due Monday, December 10 (CDROM
containing deliverables and web site, hardware ready for shipment to
sponsor if not given to sponsor at conclusion of Design Day, etc.). One copy of poster goes to ECE Office for
Goodman; other goes to team’s sponsor (if not provided to sponsor after oral
presentation at Design Day on Friday).
Finals Week, no later than
Wednesday, Dec. 12, noon: Turn in all hardware, notebook computer, lock; clean
out lockers, get signoff from ECE Shop, turn in to Goodman's
mailbox
Estimated hours per week: (4
credits x 3-4 hours per credit) gives ~15 hours/week.
Students are reminded of the
University’s policies regarding Academic Honesty:
Academic Honesty: Article 2.3.3 of the Academic Freedom Report states that "The student shares with the faculty the responsibility for maintaining the integrity of scholarship, grades, and professional standards." In addition, the (insert name of unit offering course) adheres to the policies on academic honesty as specified in General Student Regulations 1.0, Protection of Scholarship and Grades; the all-University Policy on Integrity of Scholarship and Grades; and Ordinance 17.00, Examinations. (See Spartan Life: Student Handbook and Resource Guide and/or the MSU Web site: www.msu.edu.) Therefore, unless authorized by your instructor, you are expected to complete all course assignments, including homework, lab work, quizzes, tests and exams, without assistance from any source. You are expected to develop original work for this course; therefore, you may not submit course work you completed for another course to satisfy the requirements for this course. Also, you are not authorized to use the www.allmsu.com Web site to complete any course work in (insert course number here). Students who violate MSU rules may receive a penalty grade, including--but not limited to--a failing grade on the assignment or in the course. Contact your instructor if you are unsure about the appropriateness of your course work. (See also http://www.msu.edu/unit/ombud/honestylinks.html ).