Dear ECE4012 Students,
Especially with this last week which some actually took as what
used to be called "Spring Break", thank you to those of you who
have worked with your Advisors to redefine team goals and
communicated with me since we announced our COVID-19 response
requirements in the below-copied March 12 message to you. In
communicating with Advisors, students, our GTAs, and ECE
laboratory staff, changes to Senior Design are described below.
We do not anticipate any additional live lectures. Our GTAs
have your notebook submissions and are grading them with plans
that you receive feedback regarding within the next couple of
weeks.
As of this writing, your group web spaces are available to your Web Masters,
so in your Weekly Report due before April 8 (or sooner) please
include a link to your web site populated with deliverables due to
date including your earlier accepted Proposal and any
COVID-19-revised Proposal. Please email me if you identify
problems accessing your web space. Although OIT allocated
10GB to the entire class, I shall try to have this raised by
OIT. In the mean time, try to stay below 250 megabytes per
group until you hear otherwise. If you need more space
immediately, please email me. If you want to email me
regarding web space concerns, please do so from your Georgia Tech
email account and using your Weekly Report format (including your
Group Number)
modified to indicate the concern is related to your group's web
space.
You may have many other questions. To facilitate clarity, I
understand that Professor Frazier wishes to host a online live
meeting during our March 30 Monday 1:55pm lecture time for
discussion and questions. If you have not received an
invitation, you will.
There will be more to follow as we update content, find mistakes,
and identify opportunities to improve. It has been
fascinating to speak via telephone or online mechanisms with some
many of you scattered geographically. Congratulations on
your individual and group initiatives in identifying alternative
living conditions, providing group continuity, and managing your
lives during this unprecedented time.
-Whit Smith
Regarding Hardware & Fabrication
After discussion with our laboratory staff regarding financing and
the physical management of hardware shipped to campus, it is clear
that we cannot ship or hand-off to still-local students all of the
hardware which they may want during the remainder of this
semester. While during the last week I have executed for
students some 3D printing and other fabrication work and
distributed some small parts, we do not have the manpower nor
facilities access which would be required to attend to the needs
of all student groups while meeting the COVID-19 constraints.
A surprising number of teams appear already to have a member with
the hardware in-hand which they need to complete their project or
have worked out the details to make it possible.
Congratulations on your initiative. For these teams whose
Advisor has mechanisms to deliver to the key student or students
needed resources, please do try to work with your Advisor and
finish your projects as initially proposed. Otherwise, we
shall need to have you work with your Advisor or Advisors to move
to designs suitable to the post-COVID-19 constraints which might
include combinations of simulations, CAD files, or other products
which can be documented to support their redefined projects.
Deliverables
COVID-19 constraints do not affect your ability to send Weekly
Reports, post final documentation to group web sites, and maintain
Design Notebooks. Considerations for other deliverables are
listed below.
Final Presentations & Demonstrations as Videos
The 2020 Spring Capstone Design Expo has been cancelled
despite efforts to have it exist in some modified form.
(Should another Expo form become available, we shall notify you
regarding.) As many teams use the Expo forum for their
Final Presentation and sometimes include a Demonstration of
their proposed Technical Specifications, similar to BME we
recommend requiring that teams make one or two video
presentations of
a single video combining a Final Presentation with
an embedded Demonstration
two videos with one being a Final Presentation and the other
being the Demonstration
While most of yous already have access to video cameras (e.g.
smartphones & laptops) and experience with video editing, I
have included online video examples from prior
teams (including one from Dr. Mick West's 2017 Spring
Expo-winning project) along with tutorials and links to a Free & Open Source video editor
for which my daughter required no instruction to crop together
classmate videos for a third grade project.
As with semesters prior, groups should submit online via their
group web sites a Final Report, their prior project documents
(e.g. Proposal, Project Summary, Technical Review Papers...),
and other documentation sufficient to reproduce or continue
their project (e.g. CAD, code, schematics, simulation
results...).
Edited Proposal
Without loosing the original, please edit your existing team
Proposal to suit the conditions to which you and your Advisor
have negotiated or are negotiating to facilitate Institute
COVID-19 constraints. While we should like to ask that
they have your Advisor's approval on your updated Proposals by
March 30, please work with the realities of your group's
circumstances to update their Proposals as soon as you
reasonably can. Several teams appear not to need to make
any modifications at all.
ECE Senior Design | Semester Two | ECE4012
Home Page http://ece4012.ece.gatech.edu/
Lecture & Deliverables Schedule http://ece4012.ece.gatech.edu/ECE4012A/schedule/index.html
Sent to all ECE4012A students
wholeclass
On 3/12/2020 12:43 AM, Whit Smith
wrote:
Dear
ECE4012 Students,
Your Design Notebooks are due shortly. If you have not
already, your team immediately needs to register for the 2020 Spring Capstone
Design Expo. Details regarding Notebook submission
and Expo registration are copied below in prior messages.
Regarding COVID-19: As with many other universities,
Georgia Tech is considering whether to close campus following
Spring Break with class content continuing online. Also,
the Expo might be cancelled (but register anyway). Should
the campus be declared closed during or at the end of Spring
Break, you may not be returning from Spring Break anytime soon
probably with the constraints that
faculty cannot ask students to meet together in
person
students cannot come to campus (even if you want to)
campus computer resources will be available remotely (e.g.
Canvas, email...)
Obviously, this poses a bit of a problem for Senior Design
students who are in groups usually working with hardware.
Given our scenario, I am recommending the following to your ECE
faculty Advisors
1. Immediately identify whether any group
you are advising has a possibility of completing their
projects if an individual on one of your teams this week can
take with them before Spring Break sufficient hardware to
attempt to pursue their project at home and with remote
communications with their team members. If you need to
meet live, do it this week.
2. Informed by our scenario, renegotiate with your team the
terms of their Project Proposal to facilitate a reasonable
path to a 2020 Spring Semester final grade submission which
will lead our students towards graduation.
Each team is different, so work with your Advisor to facilitate
a path which can be completed but maintains the challenge in the
spirit of your original project and honors your efforts.
We also need for you to consider in your planning with your team
mates what happens should one of them or you become unavailable
for a couple weeks.
But most of all, we want for you to take care of yourselves.
-Whit Smith
ECE Senior Design | Semester Two | ECE4012
Home Page http://ece4012.ece.gatech.edu/
Lecture & Deliverables Schedule http://ece4012.ece.gatech.edu/ECE4012A/schedule/index.html
Sent to all ECE4012A students
wholeclass