These types of courses are commonly called 'capstone design projects' because they emphasize self-reliance and design innovation based upon your engineering and science education during your prior years in the university. Students undertake a design project which may be software, hardware, or a combination of both as appropriate to their professional interests. Faculty members serve as project consultants and technical mentors. Students are required to write formal reports on their work which are graded for style and content. A formal oral presentation on the final results is required.
Throughout the duration of the project, it is intended to have the course simulate a typical engineering work environment. Multi-person design teams are encouraged. In such a case, each team shall nominate a team leader whose role will be coordination in addition to his/her technical project duties. The team leader may be rotated during the project. You should set up periodic meetings with your advisor. Multi-person teams are mandatory for students registering for EECS 398L (Electrical Engineering), EECS 398M (Computer Engineering) and EECS 398 N (Systems & Control Engineering). Students registering for EECS 399L (Electrical Engineering) and EECS 399N (Systems & Control Engineering) optionally can do single person projects.
Although the semester seems long it is MOST IMPORTANT that you find a suitable project early. Furthermore, many projects are put in a 'wait-state' while special ordered parts or software make their way slowly to the 'project engineers', so get your initial designs done as quickly as possible.
Finally, you should think of your projects as being performed on your first job for your supervisor. He will not tolerate late reports!
If you receive credit for the technical component of one semester of senior project you will still be responsible for the non-technical contact of the class (i.e., ethics papers,patent disclosure, etc.) as defined by the course instructor.
You are also responsible for preparing a final project report and making an oral presentation of your work. These will follow the formats required of other senior project students in that semester and will typically be presented at the beginning of the semester in which you return to Case.
In all cases, you must receive written permission from your supervisor to use your work product for senior project credit. We are more interested in the design process, so it is very reasonable to keep proprietary/confidential material out of the report and presentation required for the senior project class.
We have also identified three books which are relevant references for this course. You are encouraged to read and study the relevant sections.They are available on Course Reserve from the Kelvin Smith Library or you may purchase your own copies.
Dr. Merat's electronics references. Many undergraduates, especially, senior projects, are often looking for software, device information, and hardware for their projects. This page is a collection of resources which I have come across. Please let me know of any others which should be added to the list.
The US Patent and Trademark Office is a great source of information about commercial products.You can get the text of any patent since 1976 and tiff images of every patent since 1790. Although you can download only one page at a time if you use the government Web page there is shareware which will allow you to download the entire patent at once and even convert it to a pdf file.
The Online Ethics Center for Engineering and Science at Case Western Reserve University . This is a fantastic resource for information about ethics in science and engineering. I highly recommend you use this resource during our ethics discussions and for your ethics papers.