ECE Department Capstone Project Program
Grading
Students are assigned individual grades based upon:
- successful completion of the project
- project proposal (PDS) and presentation
- weekly written progress reports
- team meetings
- engineering logbooks
- project notebooks
- final project report and oral presentation
- individual contribution to the project's success
While your final grade is assigned by the faculty advisor, the community partner's recommendations are given particular weight so we ask them to complete a brief evaluation for each student also.
Team Evaluation and Self Assessment
Each member of your team needs to complete and turn in to your faculty advisor a completed team evaluation and self assessment twice during your project: once by the end of February, and another with your final project report.
Project Wiki/Repository
Your team must maintain a project web site (e.g. Wiki) containing or linking to repository of all relevant project documentation (including proposals, requirements, specifications, schedules, progress reports, and test plans). You may also use the site to link to data sheets, applications notes, and other relevant documents.
Engineering Logbooks
Engineering logbooks may or may not be required for your project. Consult your project sponsor and faculty advisor during your first team meeting to determine if it will be required for your project. A principal use of the Engineering Logbook is to document IP development in support of patent applications. For that purpose you must adhere to specific standards for it to be useful:
- Your engineering logbook must be a contemporaneous chronological record of your work
- It should be written so that someone else ("skilled in the art") can follow your design work and verify it with minimum effort
- Your log should be a detailed record of every part of your design process
- The format should be neat, readable, durable, and orderly
- The log must be maintained in a bound notebook (not loose leaf, 3-ring binder) with each page numbered and dated
- You should use ink only. A single line crossing out errors will keep things neat
- It is acceptable (and recommended) to paste-in printouts, web pages, other documents
- Do not leave blank pages; make diagonal lines through otherwise blank pages. Start a new date on a fresh page, drawing a diagonal line through unused space on the prior page.
- In a company where patents are an issue a supervisor or other person will review and sign-off on your logbook periodically.
- Avoid negative characterizations (specifically avoid terms with legal implications like "obvious", "novel", "useful", "unpatentable", "this will not work", "this solution is inferior"). However, don't omit "failed" experiments; they serve to demonstrate not only work done but that the ultimate solution wasn't "obvious".
However, even in organizations that do not require engineering logbooks to protect IP, most engineers still use them. You are required to maintain an engineering logbook for your capstone project. Your faculty advisor will review it periodically, and you'll be required to turn it in at the completion of the project. Check with your industry sponsor to see if they have specific requirements for their engineers. At a minimum, your engineering logbook should include:
- Project Description
- Research
- Sources
- URLs
- Names, telephone numbers
- A summary of the information obtained and an explanation/evaluation of how it relates to your project
- Your thought process on each part of the project
- All work
- What you did
- What results you obtained
- Projected next steps
- Equations
- Calculations
- Drawings
- Block diagrams
- Explanatory Text
- Contemporaneous meeting notes (regular meetings, design reviews, etc)
- References to documents maintained in the Project Notebook
Weekly Progress Reports
Weekly progress reports play a crucial role in team communication and keeping a project on track and on schedule. Each week on a day agreed to by your industry sponsor and/or faculty advisor you need to send an email containing your weekly progress report (WPR). The e-mail should be sent to each of your teammates as well as your industry sponsor and faculty advisor. It's a good idea to cc: yourself so that you have a record and can include them in your project notebook. It's a good idea to make the subject line of your WPR e-mail include your project name and the keyword "WPR" along with the period covered (e.g. the week ending date).
Your weekly report should be brief but contain:
- A brief refresher on the overall project, your part in the project, and your specific tasks and goals from the prior week
- An explanation of what actions you took and what you accomplished
- A description of what problems you encountered and how you solved them
- A discussion of problems remaining and your thoughts on possible solutions
- Your action plan for the following week
To: Faculty_Advisor, Industry_Sponsor
Cc: Teammates
Bcc: Self
Subject: WPR (Embedded Controller Capstone Project) week of October 14th
Last Week
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Completed the Verilog code for the state machine
Completed the test plan for the translator (sent out for review)
Next Week
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Conduct review of translator test plan during scheduled team meeting
Write the testbench for the bus interface unit
Problems/Issues
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Unable to get a license key for the FPGA tool set.
Need Lisa to call vendor.