COMP SCI 4414A - Software Engineering Research Project A

North Terrace Campus - Semester 1 - 2024

This project-based course is aimed at providing students with an opportunity to apply Software Engineering processes, knowledge, understanding, skills, and research to an industrially sourced project. The projects are jointly supervised by academic supervisors and the external clients, who propose projects. The students are assigned to different small teams that are expected to work collaboratively on the assigned project that will involve aspects of researching state-of-the art technologies and their application, as well as prototype development. Students are expected to demonstrate the application of software engineering principles and practices by following defined processes, which are tracked using online repositories and communication tools.

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Course Details

Course Code	COMP SCI 4414A
Course	Software Engineering Research Project A
Coordinating Unit	Computer Science
Term	Semester 1
Level	Undergraduate
Location/s	North Terrace Campus
Contact	Up to 3 hours per week
Available for Study Abroad and Exchange	N
Prerequisites	ENG 3304, COMP SCI 2201
Restrictions	BEng (Software) students only
Assessment	Assignments and/or project

Course Staff

Course Coordinator: Professor Ali Babar

Course Timetable

The full timetable of all activities for this course can be accessed from Course Planner.

Learning Outcomes

Course Learning Outcomes

At the conclusion of the course, the students are expected to be able to:
1. Apply software engineering principles and research to industry projects.
2. Gain exposure to state-of-the-art research and technologies in an area of software engineering.
3. Learn to interpret and assess literature related to a current area of research.
4. Learn to present work to an audience, both in written form and orally.
5. Apply security and privacy principles to a specific industry project.
6. Apply an ethical lens to the software engineering practice within a specific industry project and reflect on the broader ethical issues raised by the project. [new]
7. Learn to work and plan in groups following ICT professionalism principles.

University Graduate Attributes

No information currently available.
Learning Resources

Online Learning

All the learning material will be provided through Canvas (MyUni). please check that site for the material regularly.

GitHub will be used for artefacts management and project management.

Slack will be used for adhoc commuincation among all the stakeholders.
Learning & Teaching Activities

Learning & Teaching Modes

The teaching and learning activities are carried out in face to face sessions. The online participation is avaiable based on the need/request.

The teaching and learning material is made avaiable via MyUni, GitHub and Slack.

Workload

The information below is provided as a guide to assist students in engaging appropriately with the course requirements.

Course workload

As a guide, each student is expected to work on the project between 10-12 hours per week as expected for a 3 Units course.

Learning Activities Summary

Course Activities

Given the nature of the course, it does not contain lectures/ workshops. Yet, at the beginning of the semester there is an introduction session scheduled to discuss the course logistics. We will also be organizing a few training workshops for imparting the knowledge and skills needed for supporting the engineering aspects of the project.
The rest of the semester, the team members are expected to participate in the fortnightly Client Meetings.
The groups will be informed about the dates/time of the meetings.

The Meetings (dates, timetables, venue, contacts) will be announced soon this week.

Each group will have to participate in (45 min) meetings every two weeks, starting from Week 2.

The Meetings are participated by Clients and Academic Supervisors.

5 Meetings scheduled for each group.

The proposed time-slots are:

Thursdays
Fridays

Specific Course Requirements

It is expected that the students would be leveraging the learning from the following courses of the BE (Software) degree.

Engineering Software as Services I (ESS I)

Engineering Software as Services II (ESS II)

Software Engineering Workshop I - (Requirements Analysis, Modelling, Specifications)

Software Engineering Workshop II - (Software Design)

Research Methods in Software Engineering and Computer Science
Assessment
The University's policy on Assessment for Coursework Programs is based on the following four principles:
1. Assessment must encourage and reinforce learning.
2. Assessment must enable robust and fair judgements about student performance.
3. Assessment practices must be fair and equitable to students and give them the opportunity to demonstrate what they have learned.
4. Assessment must maintain academic standards.
Assessment Summary

Assessment Components

• Project proposal (20) – Group (G) and Individual (I)
– Report – 75% – G - Week (W) 6
– Presentation – 25% - I – W6 – 7
• Prototyping (30) – Group (G) and Individual (I)
– Work process – G - (25%)
– Work process – I - (25%)
– Project quality – G - (25%)
– Project quality – I - (25%)
• Final Report – (30) – Group (G) and Individual (I)
– Ethical Principles and Practices in the final report – I – (5%) – W 12
– Rest of the sections in the final report – G – (25%) – W 12
• Final Presentation - 10 - I - W 12
• Meeting contributions - 5 - I – week 12
• Weekly report – 5 - I – week 12
• 2 Quizzes on the material presented in training workshops – 5 - I – weeks 5-8

Hurdle Requirement: If your overall mark for the course is greater than 44 F but, your mark for the individual work process and project quality component is less than 40%, your overall mark for the course will be reduced to 44 F.

Assessment Related Requirements
Asssessment Guidelines:
- GitHub Flow: all feature development should happen in branches and only be merged into the master branch via pull requests once code review has been completed.
- Two-week sprints: After the initial weeks of getting up to speed (e.g., up to proposal week), you should have a milestone every two weeks. This pattern continues to SERP B.
- Commit messages, issues and pull requests: Make sure you write good commit messages (some ideas: http://chris.beams.io/posts/git-commit/) and that your issues and pull requests are understandable by somebody from outside your project (some ideas: https://wiredcraft.com/blog/how-we-write-our-github-issues/).
- Linking of artifacts: Each commit should be linked to an issue (feature or bug) or pull request (if it's a merge).
- Distribution of work: We'll be looking at your GitHub issues and who they are assigned to (and who made the corresponding commits).
- Testing: Depending on the technologies you use different testing frameworks might be able to help with that. By the end of the semester, most of your code should be covered by test cases.
- Deployment: Also depends on the technologies you use. There might be tools that can do this for you automatically, e.g., by taking the latest version from your GitHub's master branch and running it on some server.
- Client management: Make sure you're on time and well-prepared for all client meetings. The expectation is that you're able to demonstrate your latest version in each meeting to gather feedback from the client. It is your responsibility to plan these meetings.
Assessment Detail

No information currently available.

Submission

No information currently available.

Course Grading

Grades for your performance in this course will be awarded in accordance with the following scheme:

NOG (No Grade Associated)

Grade Description

CN Continuing

Further details of the grades/results can be obtained from Examinations.

Grade Descriptors are available which provide a general guide to the standard of work that is expected at each grade level. More information at Assessment for Coursework Programs.

Mark Scheme

Fail:0–49

Pass: 50 – 64

Credit: 65 – 74 Distinction: 75 – 84

High Distinction: 85 – 100

Final results for this course will be made available through Access Adelaide.
Student Feedback

The University places a high priority on approaches to learning and teaching that enhance the student experience. Feedback is sought from students in a variety of ways including on-going engagement with staff, the use of online discussion boards and the use of Student Experience of Learning and Teaching (SELT) surveys as well as GOS surveys and Program reviews.

SELTs are an important source of information to inform individual teaching practice, decisions about teaching duties, and course and program curriculum design. They enable the University to assess how effectively its learning environments and teaching practices facilitate student engagement and learning outcomes. Under the current SELT Policy (http://www.adelaide.edu.au/policies/101/) course SELTs are mandated and must be conducted at the conclusion of each term/semester/trimester for every course offering. Feedback on issues raised through course SELT surveys is made available to enrolled students through various resources (e.g. MyUni). In addition aggregated course SELT data is available.
Student Support
Policies & Guidelines
This section contains links to relevant assessment-related policies and guidelines - all university policies.
Fraud Awareness

Students are reminded that in order to maintain the academic integrity of all programs and courses, the university has a zero-tolerance approach to students offering money or significant value goods or services to any staff member who is involved in their teaching or assessment. Students offering lecturers or tutors or professional staff anything more than a small token of appreciation is totally unacceptable, in any circumstances. Staff members are obliged to report all such incidents to their supervisor/manager, who will refer them for action under the university's student’s disciplinary procedures.

NOG (No Grade Associated)
Grade	Description
CN	Continuing

The University of Adelaide is committed to regular reviews of the courses and programs it offers to students. The University of Adelaide therefore reserves the right to discontinue or vary programs and courses without notice. Please read the important information contained in the disclaimer.

Authorised by:	Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Vice-President (Academic)
Maintained by:	Course Outlines Administrator