EPICS: LIA & LCFS: Home

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Instructor Information

Ankur Gupta is the official instructor for this course. We'll insert his information here shortly, but for now we have this.

Instructor: Jon Sorenson
Office:Fairbanks 158 (CSSE Department)
Phone/Voicemail:940-9765
Home Phone:280-1168 (before 9pm please)
E-Mail Address:
jsorenso@butler.edu
Home Page URL: http://euclid.butler.edu/~sorenson/
Office Hours: MTWRF 10:30-11:50, or by appointment

Course Goals

EPICS (Engineering Projects in Community Service) is about producing software for charity or non-profit organizations. Our goal is to practice the software lifecycle and the many intagibles that go along with developing large pieces of software.

The course projects for EPICS are

  • Languages in Action, a series of games and tools to help elementary and middle school students learn foreign languages. Currently we support Spanish and Greek, and our most recent client is the Greek school at the Greek Orthodox Church. The centerpiece of this software is a Flash game called Quickdrop. (The pictures you see on this page are from the first edition of this game.)
  • LCFS, software to support the administration of the Lutheran Center for Family Services (LCFS). This software is traditional IT applications using Microsoft .NET.

In addition to contributing to the team's efforts, you will have an individual responsibility called a semester job.

Towards a Liberal Education

The liberal arts are sometimes defined as intellectual skills and general knowledge. As a part of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, this course provides opportunities for you to practice and develop your

  • Communications skills, both oral and written,
  • Teamwork skills,
  • Leadership and project management skills, and
  • Algorithmic and logic problem-solving skills.
You will also have chances to apply ethical and moral decision-making in a context that is similar to the real business world.

Course Materials

None.

Grades

There will be two types of grades assigned in the course: team grades and individual grades.

Team Grades

Each team will be given a set of semester tasks to complete, with project deliverables (documents, software, etc.) that must be turned in to me. In addition, each team will make two presentations:

Formal Client Presentation:
This is a presentation for our clients to explain what was accomplished during the semester. If appropriate, this presentation will include a software demo.
Immediately after the presentation, the client(s) will be asked to fill out an evaluation form for the entire semester.
Informal Technical Presentation:
This is a presentation for me (the instructor) and other interested members of the department who want to learn how the team's work was done in some detail.
The overall team grade is based on the following:
  1. The quality and content of the project deliverables (the dossier) (40%)
  2. How close the team was to reaching the semester goals (20%)
  3. The quality of the client presentation (10%)
  4. The content of the technical presentation (10%)
  5. The client evaluation (20%)

I will discuss the semester goals with the team leaders to make sure they are reasonable for one semester's work.

Individual Grades

Your individual grade will be determined as follows:

  • 70% Peer evaluation
  • 30% Instructor evaluation
Each member of each team will fill out a peer evaluation form to evaluate the other members of that team. I will curve or scale these numbers so that the average peer evaluation grade matches the team grade. For example, if the team grade is a B+, and there are four team members, then the peer evaluation grades might be A, A-, B+, and C+. It is clearly in everyone's interest for the team grade to be as high as possible.

After peer evaluations are turned in, I will share the results of the evaluations with you. We will conduct "practice" evaluations and interviews in the middle of the semester.

Students with Disabilities

It is the policy and practice of Butler University to make reasonable accommodations for students with properly documented disabilities. Written notification from Student Disability Services is required. If you are eligible to receive an accommodation and would like to request it for this course, please discuss it with me and allow one week advance notice. Otherwise, it is not guaranteed that the accommodation can be received on a timely basis. Students who have questions about Student Disability Services or who have, or think they may have, a disability (psychiatric, attentional, learning, vision, hearing, physical, medical, etc.) are invited to contact Student Disability Services for a confidential discussion in Jordan Hall 136 or by phone at extension 9308.

I will be happy to comply with your needs as best as I am able.

Help

If you have questions or are confused, please feel free to come see me. I do not expect you to learn all the material the first time you see it; if you could do that, you wouldn't need me! You are welcome to visit me in my office anytime my door is open (which is most of the time). If you do not come during office hours, and I have work I need to do, I may ask you to come back later if you can. Don't take this personally. I enjoy teaching, and I like helping students, so don't think you are imposing on me by asking for help. This is my job.