Senior Projects

Senior Projects

Fall 2016

Activity Archives

At the end of the fall semester, each individual student must submit, in electronic form, an archive of files, indicating what they have accomplished throughout the semester. This assignment should be submitted as a .zip file (or other common archive) containing multiple embedded files. One file in the archive should containan activity log, saved as a Word or PDF file, indicating a week-by-week schedule, starting the week that this is assigned. Weeks may be divided according to calendar week, Tuesday – Monday (since we meet for Senior Projects on Tuesdays), or however you see fit. For each week, at the very least, you should provide a summary of what you personally accomplished related to your senior project. Examples of items that may be indicated in the schedule include:

• Brief synopses of articles read, including the title and authors, a summary of the content (a single paragraph should do), and an explanation of why the article is (or is not) relevant to your project.
• Descriptions of any hardware that you implemented or tested during the week, including the outcomes, difficulties faced, remaining implementation, etc.
• Descriptions of any code that you wrote during the week. If you completed code, explain how you tested it. Also provide instructions for running the code.
• Descriptions of experiments performed during the week, including pertinent results and evaluation if possible.
• Descriptions of important conversations that occurred among group members, including outcomes of the conversations.
• Descriptions of other relevant communications with pertinent people (e.g., other professors or professionals at Cooper or elsewhere), including outcomes of the conversations. Include contact information if appropriate.

Do not feel limited by the items above.Anything that you think is appropriate should be included. If it is significant to note the specific day or time of an activity, note it (you can use a granularity of less than one week whenever that makes more sense). If a week goes by in which you do not work on the project, just indicate that in the schedule (hopefully this does not happen often!).In general, I expect the schedule to contain about one page of content per week.

Whenever appropriate, you shouldinclude additional files in the archive, and you shouldrefer to these files by filenamewithin your schedule (also indicate the relative path, if the files are organized in subfolders). For example, if you read a paper that is available in electronic form, include the paper in the archive and refer to it from your main schedule. If you wrote code, you should include the code in the archive, and the schedule should include instructions for running the code. (If the code changes throughout the semester, you probably only need to include the final version, although you can refer to work on the code throughout the schedule.) If you put something together relying on technical specs that were significant, you should include the specs. If you build something interesting, take a picture of it and include the image as a separate file. Videos are also allowed. I will not necessarily read every file in its entirety (e.g., I will not read all attached research papers), but I will at least read the activity log and peruse the archive.

The purposes of this assignment are at least two fold. First, there should be enough specificity such that if something were to happen to you, your partners would be able to use your archive to understand and potentially recreate what you have done so far. (I have had a couple of cases in the past where students got sick, or left school between semesters, and it has left their partners in a bind, unable to access important files, to interpret code, to access contact information, etc.) Second, it should indicate to others (myself included) your role in the project and demonstrate a level of discipline throughout the semester.

Grading may be based on the thoroughness, without too much extraneous detail, of the listed activities in the activity log and the included files in the activity archive; the conciseness and explanatory power of your descriptions; the appropriateness of the level of work indicated; and the quality of your accomplishments. I may consider your prose, grammar, and style if it affects my ability to comprehend your schedule. Your submission is due by e-mail at 2 P.M. onTuesday, December13,before the start of our final regularly scheduled Senior Project slot. However, I strongly encourage you to update your schedule and archive every week, which should change this from a difficult assignment to a relatively simple one!