Criteria for CSE Capstone Design Courses (Proposed)

The EC 2000 document is being revised so that the set of requirements for the capstone course(s) reads as follows:

• Students must be prepared for engineering practice through the curriculum culminating in a major design experience based on the knowledge and skills acquired in earlier coursework and incorporating engineering standards and realistic constraints.

Prior to this revision, there was additional language requiring that the realisitic constriants include certain specific considerations. These considerations now appear in Criterion (3c) which is being modified from:
"an ability to design a system, component, or process to meet desired needs;" to:
"an ability to design a system, component, or process to meet desired needs within realistic constraints that include most of the following considerations: economic; environmental; sustainability; manufacturability; ethical; health and safety; social; and political".

CIS courses that meet the following requirements will be considered by the Undergraduate Studies Committee for designation as Capstone Design courses. When courses that are currently designated as capstone courses are reviewed when the respective "Course Group Reports" are prepared, one issue that the involved faculty should address is whether the courses continue to be appropriate for designation as capstone design courses; as well as address the question of whether other courses in the group meet the intent of the capstone design courses and, if so, propose to the UGSC that these courses be so designated.

All CSE majors must take one of the capstone design courses, most commonly the one appropriate to their specific option. If a course currently designated as a capstone design course loses that designation, students who took the course when it was so designated may use it to meet their capstone course requirement.
The current list (as of 1/21/'04) of capstone design courses is: CIS 731, 758, 762, 772, 776, 778.

(Proposed) Criteria:

1. Level: Must be at the senior level.
   Rationale: This is required to be a culminating design experience.

2. Prerequisites: Must include as prerequisites all relevant courses that are part of the CSE core or the option for which the capstone course is intended. Specifically, CIS 560, and at least one upper division course that is either in the CSE core or is in the required part of the option for which the course is intended, should be prerequisites. CIS 601 should also be a prerequisite (since it helps develop oral and written communication skills, and addresses important ethical and professional issues).
   Rationale: The course is required to be a culminating experience based on the knowledge and skills acquired in earlier coursework.

3. Design component: Design must be the major component of the course. Student teams (see item (7) below) should explore and evaluate possible design alternatives. Each member of each team should play an active role in the design activities.
   Rationale: The course is required to be a major design experience.

4. Course content: The course must incorporate consideration of as many of the following issues as are appropriate to the course:
   • Realistic constraints: This may, for example, involve space and time considerations in the implementation. These issues may be addressed in the lectures, and students should be consciously aware of these considerations, perhaps via class discussions, even if they don't play an explicit role in the actual design project.
   • Standards: In the case of at least some of the capstone courses, it should be possible to discuss standards; for example, Posix standards in the OS course; XML or other documentation standards in the Software Engineering course; etc. Again, even if the design project doesn't involve standards in a direct manner, students should be aware of these considerations.
   • Maintainability: The design should include consideration of how to make the system maintainable to perhaps accomodate changing requirements or to continue functioning in a somewhat different environment etc.
   • Ethical, social issues: Issues relating to such matters as security, privacy, etc., are often directly related to the general area of the capstone courses even if not necessarily with the particular projects. Hence, students should again be consciously aware of these issues, perhaps via class discussions.
   In summary, any of these considerations that relate directly to the specific project must be addressed explicitly and carefully in the project. For those that are in the general area of the course but less directly related to the project, students should, as noted above, be consciously aware of the issues involved; this may be ensured via lectures, student presentations, informal (in-class) discussions, etc.
   Rationale: The capstone course is where the students are supposed to be trained to work on projects of the kind they are most likely to work on in at least the early part of their professional careers. Therefore it is reasonable to make these projects are realistic as possible, and indeed this what the EC 2000 language also requires.

5. Documentation: Deliverables should include suitable documentation of both the design and any significant implementation performed in the project. The grading scheme should account for the quality of the documentation.
   Rationale: Oral and written communications are important requirements of the accreditation criteria and the capstone course is a very appropriate one in which to practice these skills.

6. Oral presentation: Each student should be required to make at least one significant oral presentation (10 minutes or longer), or two or more shorter presentations about his/her design/implementation. The grading scheme should account for the quality of the presentation(s), possibly using peer evaluation for the purpose.
   Rationale: See above.

7. Team working: Students should be organized into appropriate teams for working on their design projects. Where possible, these teams should be multi-disciplinary
   Rationale: Team working is another important component of the accreditation criteria. Both the nature of the capstone courses and the fact that these courses have their enrollment capped at 30 make them good candidates for team working. An interesting approach is used in the new Animation course to make the teams multi-disciplinary: art students and CSE/CIS majors are teamed up; similar approaches may be possible in other courses.

8. Course size: Enrollment in each section of capstone courses should be capped at 30 students.
   Rationale: To enable team working as well as oral presentations.

Capstone courses will probably be organized in the standard way our courses are organized. But during discussions in UGSC, a few somewhat unusual alternatives were also discussed. In whatever way the course is organized, one important point is to ensure that not all class meetings are used for lectures. For one thing, oral presentations by each student will require several class sessions. In addition, it would be useful to have sessions during which teams meet and work on their designs and possibly make informal presentations about their designs to get feedback from the instructor and their peers. It is probably appropriate to reserve at least 10 class periods for these purposes with no more than 30 class periods being used for regular lectures. Of course, that would require the course to meet for 4 hours a week, rather than 3. If the course only meets 3 hours a week, the time devoted to regular lectures should be reduced appropriately so that a sufficient amount of attention is focused on the design activity, as well as on oral presentations and team working.