| Category | Difficulty |
|---|---|
| Reading Assignments | 4 |
| Ethics Assignments | 2 |
| Discussions | 1 |
| Capstone Project | As hard as you want |
This course allows your team to design and implement a project that will be the culmination of your time in the ECE program. This course requires a team to choose a project that is within scope of a semester, prepare design documents and presentations, organize a schedule when you plan to achieve project milestones, and also discuss ethical dilemmas in the technical industry.
This course requires groups of 2-3 members per team.
It's important to know that it is not the job of the course staff to help with debugging projects. The staff does it's best to pair your group with an adviser and a TA that best help you answer "possibility" questions. They're there to help you stay on your schedule, answer questions whether a certain approach is possible (i.e. a "possibility" question), and to keep up to date on your teams progress.
The course director is Professor Bill Nace. As the course director, he mostly oversees course logistical issues. There are also 3-4 other professors on the 18-500 course staff. These professor are typically chosen to cover the different concentration areas (Device Sciences and Nanofabrication, Signals and Systems, Circuits, Hardware Systems, and Software Systems).
- Practical Engineering Design
- Teamwork
- Design Document Preparation
- Design Presentations
- Resource Management
- Deadline Planning
- Ethics of Technology
- Budgeting
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Reading Assignments: In general, the reading of the textbook is not challenging. The textbook is oriented around the design of one of Intel's chips, however it does well to not get bogged down in the digital implementation details. The book is used to help students recognize the various phase in project development, and to expose some of the design process the team at Intel went through in creating the chip. The chapters are quite lengthy to read, but they are pretty entertaining. All in all, these assignments aren't meant to take a lot time to do. The goal is to get you to learn about how a design process applies in industry, and allow you to, hopefully, apply some of those practices to your own project.
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Ethics Assignments: The course requires you to read some ethical case studies and discuss the challenges faced in these studies. Again, these aren't meant to take a lot of time away from your project, but teach students that when decisions made in industry have large impacts. It's important for people in industry to try to anticipate how their creations will affect the people that use them.
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Discussions: After an ethics reading assignment is due (roughly 2 per semester) you will be required to participate in a discussion on what you read in a following lecture. These aren't supposed to be difficult, but intended to start a conversation. You will then be required to write a reflection based on the discussion.
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Capstone Project: This is the crux of the class. It's important that you give a lot of time to work on your project. A team that meets all their deliverables and milestones won't necessarily get a high grade, if they chose an easy project. The staff is there in the beginning to help you choose a project that is doable within a semester, but not too easy. They want you to anticipate future unknowns, and guess how long it will take you to solve them on your own.
- Attending in class is mandatory. These are easy points, just attend lecture and work on your project
- Ask your TA and adviser questions, their opinion is critical when deciding grades at the end of the semester
- Include many details in your status reports, this is an easy way to let your TA know how your project is coming along
- Pick team members that have the same goals and work ethics as you. If you're just trying to get a passing to graduate, trying to work with people who have the same goals.
- The course staff recommends picking partners that cover different areas, but this isn't really that helpful if you choose a project that primarily focuses on only one of the concentrations
- An important to know about the awards at the end of the semester is that well polished projects are typically more well received. The awards are given based on how well you can demo your project on demo day.
- Make sure your presentation slides are done well. Professor Nace and the advisers take these presentations very seriously and expect a high degree of professionalism. Also, while they don't require you to dress up for your presentations, typically the students that do receive graded more favorably.
- This isn't a research project. Choose something that you can complete. While it might be tempting to take this as an opportunity to explore an active research area, it will be difficult
- While it's tempting to work with your friends, that alone is not a good enough reason to work with them. Make sure you choose people you know you can work well with.
- You get $600 to spend on whatever you want for this project. Additionally, you're allowed to borrow more expensive equipment (LIDARs, FPGAs, Routers, etc.) from professors with their permission.
- Quinn, the parts manager, is your friend. If you need something, he will do his hardest to get you the part you need.