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Syllabus
Frequently Asked Questions


See the FAQ for more information about how to select a project, and course logistics.

Oral proposal information

Written proposal information

Proposal deadlines

Sample proposal #1
Sample proposal #2

This quarter as member of a design team you will be responsible for researching the project topic,identifying the tasks to be performed, determining the availability of all the tools and equipment needed, defining your milestones, and preparing and delivering written and oral presentations on the design proposal. The emphasis will be first on selecting an interesting and challenging project and then on explaining the design tradeoffs that exist at all stages of the project. In addition you should have all equipment that you will need identified and ordered by the end of the quarter so that you can complete your design by the end of the spring quarter.

Course objectives:
The main objective of the senior capstone design course is to provide a multidisciplinary experience, integrating knowledge from the core, intermediate, and advanced courses in electrical engineering. Most undergraduate engineering courses teach students problem solving in a particular area. Information is presented in organized lectures and students demonstrate their mastery of it through written problems and exams.

In contrast to this learning style, practicing design engineers are often given an open-ended problem, and they must seek the appropriate resources to solve it while they remain within certain budget constraints. These resources may include hardware and software tools, research papers and reports, books describing relevant ideas and other people with useful experiences. Part of their task may be to determine if any solution to the problem exists at all. They may work in teams, so they have to be able to organize themselves, decide who does what and meet regularly to check on progress and discuss the difficulties encountered in the process. Finally, at the end of the project they need to be effective in demonstrating their results and defending their design decisions. By taking part in this course, you will get experience with all these spects of team work during the engineering design process.

Course Requirements:
Your major task this quarter is to formulate and write a detailed proposal, due March 9th, describing the work to be done on the project and defend it orally. The proposal should at least include:

1. A complete specification of the problem you will try to solve.
2. The results of a thorough literature survey of the appropriate topics and a bibliography.
3. A break down of the project into tasks and a description of how these tasks interact with each other.
4. The approach you will use to address the technical problems associated with each task and a description of work in progress.
5. A description of the tools and equipment that you think will be needed, and orders for all equipment parts you need to get.
6. A project organization plan identifying: who will be responsible for each major task and who will participate in the team work for each task (a status report on any work in progress and difficulties). a realistic schedule for the next quarter with milestones to the project completion.

Grading:

20% Weekly progress
30% Final written proposal
30% Final oral presentation
10% Individual participation
10% Teamwork