• Instructor: Prof. Evan M. Peck
  • Office: Dana 334
  • Email: evan.peck@bucknell.edu
  • Office Phone: 570-577-2345
  • How to meet with me: If I’m not in my office with the door open, the best way to schedule a meeting is to visit my website and click the Meet with Me button.

Course Overview

This is a project-based course. You will develop a large piece of software using an agile software development process. The course meets three hours a week with a mix of lectures, collaborative learning activities, client meetings, and team meetings.Clients from both the community and from industry will propose projects for students to work with. Since we have only one semester to work on the projects, we will need to make a decision on the project in a short period of time, e.g., about two weeks.

Since this is a W-2 course, students are expected to have a substantial amount of writing. During the semester, we will set a number of milestones (short term goals) for the project that each team needs to meet. These milestones can be in the forms of written papers, presentations, deliverable software components, among others.

Course Outcomes

Students will be able to…

  • function effectively in a project team (CAC 5);
  • use knowledge from previous courses in designing, implementing, and evaluating a culminating computing project (CAC 1, 2);
  • organize, write, and deliver technical written document(s) and oral presentation(s) about the project (CAC 3).

Expected Work

The ultimate goal of this course is for student teams to design, implement, test, and release a piece of software. Though the final product is important, the process of reaching the goal is equally important.

We will employ an agile software development process. Students are expected to accomplish a number of tasks in producing the software.

Individual Responsibilities

  • Attendance and Participation: CSCI 479 is a project course. While we will have three meetings per week at the specified hours, we will not have regular lectures. Instead we will discuss various issues and explore technologies needed to complete the product as a class or as a project team. Attendance and participation in all meetings are critical.

  • Individual writing and reflection: Each student is asked to respond to weekly prompts in a shared Google Drive folder. The intended reader of this submissions is your instructor. The expected length is approximately one page. A template is provided for you via Google Classroom.

  • Final Reflection of Bucknell education experience: Because CSCI 479 is designed to be a culminating experience for students, each student is required to write an individual paper to reflect on their Bucknell education. Contents should include, but not limited to, your experiences as a student at Bucknell, your computer science education, your general education, and your extra-curriculum activities that help you grow intellectually. General length of the paper should be approximately 2,500 words.

Group Responsibilities

  • Asessing their success as a team: A number of tasks throughout the semester, including the final project, will be completed in teams. Contribution to team work is an essential part of the course. Team work includes design, coding, testing, writing, technical presentations, and research. To assess how teams are working together, we will use a survey to collect data.

  • Following agile processes and artifacts: Each team will maintain a Product Backlog and a Sprint Backlog. While the format of Product Backlog and Sprint Backlog varies greatly, we will pick a simple, yet effective one to use. The backlogs should be updated regularly to reflect the product progress and team work.

  • Designing and presenting the architecture of their system: Student teams will present to the class a system architecture. The overall design should include major components of the system, interaction among the major components, snapshots of screens, user interfaces, and other artifacts to show how the system might work together.

  • Project progress reports and presentations: While we will exchange information about the project at each of our meetings, two formal progress reports and presentations are required during the semester.

  • Final Report and Presentation: Each team will write a final report and make a final presentation about their project at a designated time.

Assessment

Grades

  • (Individual) Writing and Reflection Prompts: 20%
  • (Individual) Participation and Engagement: 10%

  • (Individual) Final Reflection Paper: 11%

  • (Team) System Design Report & Presentation: 8%
  • (Team) Project Progress Report & Presentation: 16%
  • (Team) Final Project Presentation & Report: 20%
  • (Team) Final Project Artifacts: 15%

If there are problems with a student’s engagement or contributions to their group, the instructor will re-weight any or all dimensions of team grades (positively or negatively). However, it is each team’s collective responsibility to work towards processes of respect, transparency, accountability, and documentation to help mitigate these instances.

Code of Conduct

A course like CSCI 479 involves reflection, collaboration, and communication. Computer science has a checkered history with respect to inclusion - in corporate environments, in our classrooms, and in the products we create. As a result, we strive to promote characteristics of transparency and inclusivity that reflect what we hope our field becomes (and not what is now).

We reject behavior that explicitly strays into harassment. Harassment refers to offensive verbal or written comments in reference to gender, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, race, or religion; sexual images in public spaces; deliberate intimidation, stalking following, harassing photography or recording, sustained disruption of class meetings, inappropriate physical contact, and unwelcome sexual attention.

We also reject more implicit forms of exclusion and devaluing, such as ignoring a group member’s input or communication, making assumptions about technical ability or interest (which frequently manifests along dimensions of gender and race), or devaluing the contributions of peers.

If you feel someone is violating these principles (for example, with a joke that could be interpreted as sexist, racist, or exclusionary), don’t be a bystander! If you are comfortable doing so, please send a private email to Prof. Peck to explain the situation. You may also look Bucknell’s Bias Incident Reporting options.

Confidentiality notice: While I will preserve your confidentiality if you come talk to me about class incidences that you’ve observed, heard about, or been a victim of, there is an important limitation that you should know about. At Bucknell, faculty are considered “Responsible Employees”. If we become aware of sexual misconduct, we must report it to the Title IX Coordinator. If confidentiality is important to you in cases of sexual misconduct (the Title IX process cannot guarantee it), consider the resources on this site that are specifically marked as confidential.

(Portions of this code of conduct are adapted from Prof. Lorena A. Barba)

Accessibility

If you have a disability and think you may need an accommodation, I encourage you to contact the Office of Accessibility Resources (OAR) at 570-577-1188 or OAR@bucknell.edu. The OAR is here to help and will work with you to determine appropriate accommodations. If accommodations are needed, the OAR will communicate those to me through a Letter of Accommodation. I will not be given information about the nature of your disability, only the accommodations you need. I will treat any information I receive as private and confidential. Please visit https://www.bucknell.edu/Accessibility for more information about the OAR.

Basic Needs Security

Any student who has difficulty affording groceries or accessing sufficient food to eat every day, or who lacks a safe and stable place to live, and believes this may affect their performance in the course, is urged to contact the Dean of Students for support. I’d also encourage you to look at this list of resources created by Prof. Mir during Summer 2022, which can help connect students with food and other basic items. If you are comfortable in doing so, you can (optionally!) let me know so that I can advocate on your behalf and provide you with the support structures that I can access.