( Latest revision 02/09/2007 )

Team Project Assignment for Communication Networks: CS 3000

You will form two-person teams for the class projects.

There is a list of topic suggestions in the document called projectIdeas.html I will make additions to the list as ideas occur to me.

YOUR SOURCES

You may use high-quality publications and high-quality sites on the web as sources of information for your project.

Look here to find many sources of information on which to base projects.

YOUR TOPIC

You must choose a topic with a strong relation to networking and you must present an in-depth report on your topic.

If you wish, you may choose to do a project with a considerable hands-on component. For example, some students using our textbook at a different college built a client-server application that allows a client to play a game such as tic-tac-toe over a network.

On the other hand, you may choose to do a project without a significant hands-on component.

YOUR GRADE

Three things will determine your project grade: Both people on your team will receive the same grade.

DUE DATES

Finalize your project idea as early as possible. You must have a finalized project idea by the beginning of the seventh week of instruction. See the course schedule for the deadline. You must obtain my approval for your idea before 5:00 p.m. on this day. Between now and then, keep me posted on what you are considering to do for your project so that I can give you necessary feedback.

We will do the oral presentations at the end of the semester. See the course schedule for the exact dates. The entire class is required to attend all the presentations.

THE CONTENT OF YOUR PRESENTATION

Your presentation must be between 15 and 25 minutes in length. (You lose credit if it is too short or long.) In your presentation, tell what your topic is and what is important about your topic. Report what you did, what your sources of information were, what you hoped to learn, what you actually did learn, and what you feel remains for you to learn. Report on any other interesting outcomes. Be imaginative and original. Include some helpful audio/visual aids. Your presentation will be judged by the depth of your research, the quality of your content, and the effectiveness with which you communicate. Be prepared to take a few questions from the course instructor and the rest of the audience after you complete your presentation.

THE CONTENT OF YOUR HANDOUT

The body of your handout must be longer than two full pages and shorter than five full pages. It must contain more than 800 words. It must summarize what you want your audience to know about the topic and help them with their note-taking.

Attach a list of references to the handout. This list must contain complete citations of all sources of information you used to assemble your project. See the document howToCite.html for important additional information.

THE TIMING OF YOUR HANDOUT

You must distribute the handout to all members of the class, including me, at the beginning of the presentation. Otherwise you lose all the points for that component of the project. You must also e-mail me a copy of the handout before the end of the day of your presentation.

TIMING AND CONTENT OF YOUR WEB PAGE

See the class schedule for the due date near the end of the term, by which you must make available a web page containing the core material of your presentation. We will arrange to publish the pages on the CS department web server. See the files homepagePattern.html and links.html for some help getting started on making web pages. Also, please bring this topic up in class where we can take care of the rest of the details. For full credit on your web page, be sure to appropriately exploit links to relevant web sites related to your topic.