July 27, 2020
Resources
Video Script
Good morning and welcome to the last weekly announcements video for CIS 527 for summer 2020. I’m really excited to see the end of the semester and I hope you are too. Here’s a few quick things to keep in mind for this week. First off lab seven was due last Friday. So if you haven’t completed and turned in lab seven, make sure you do that ASAP. If you look on Piazza, there’s information about how to turn in lab seven completely offline so you don’t have to get any live grading done. But if you’re having trouble with it, you can always schedule a live grading time especially if you want us to look at what you’re doing and see if we can give you at least partial credit for it. So please make sure you do that. If you’ve already turned in lab seven, BreAnn went through and graded almost all of it this weekend. So hopefully you should see some notes on Canvas very shortly. If you haven’t heard back from her yet, you should be very soon. If you have gotten an email from her especially about task five on GitLab, please make sure you respond to that ASAP so that we can get the permissions we need so we can test task five of lab seven on GitLab. Also, don’t forget the final project proposal was due Friday, I believe I got a final project proposal from most everybody in the class. So that’s really great. I posted comments and feedback on those so you can check that out on Canvas anytime. Also, don’t forget the week six discussion response for Gary Pratt K-State CIO is due today. So you can go out to Canvas and find the discussion prompt for that. And also, final project presentations are coming up this week. So if you haven’t scheduled your time for your final project presentation, please do so now. My Friday afternoon is already almost completely booked up. So make sure you’re looking at my calendar and planning ahead accordingly. Just because you get it done on Friday doesn’t mean you may have time to present it if you haven’t scheduled a time, so don’t forget to do that. I generally prefer presentations on Thursday and Friday of this week. But if you think you’ll get done sooner you can schedule earlier than that. So check our Calendly availability and see when we’re available. Also, please bear in mind that BreAnn doesn’t have any official availability right; now she started her full time job this week. But she will be doing some stuff in the weekends and generally following up with this class when she has time. So mostly if you need Calendly availability, it will be on my calendar for the rest of this week.
So for the final projects, you should be working on that this week, you’ll need to turn in three different parts of the final project to get a full grade for it. The first part is the written report. In the assignment, I give you a template that you should start with, that’s a good place to start, although you can adjust it a little bit to fit your needs. The big part of the written report is going to be showing me your research describing the system that you’re proposing and then detailing the SWOT analysis as you perform. Generally, I’ve seen the research take a couple pages, the proposal take a couple of pages, and then maybe each item of the SWOT analysis take at least a page, but there is no minimum or maximum limit. It’s however much content you think you need to get your point across. Your written report can include graphics and data as needed, feel free to make it as easy to read as you want. The second part is the live presentation, which will be about 15 to 30 minutes, per person. If you’re on a team of two, it will be twice that long. So schedule about a 30 minute block with me. And that’s when we’ll do your presentation. The big thing about your presentation is: I am your CIO for whatever organization this is situated in. And so you need to convince me that you have done your homework and that you’ve analyzed it well by going through your proposal and your SWOT analysis, and convince me that this is something our company should do. So that’s really the basis of your presentation. And then finally, you should build some small prototype that you can demo during the presentation. The prototype should be very small, the focus is on small here. So generally, I think you should spend about two to four hours building your prototype; anything more than that and it’s probably too much. For example, if your presentation revolves around AWS, your prototype might be building a system very quickly in AWS and installing a web browser on it, or a web server on it. That might be all you need as a small prototype to show that you’ve taken steps in the direction of your presentation just a little bit.
Some other things going on this week - Tevals, I believe everybody in this class should have gotten an email inviting them to complete a Teval this morning. Please take the time to fill out this Teval and send us your honest feedback about this course. Remember, the Tevals are completely anonymous to me, and I don’t even get to read them until after final grades are submitted. So you can say anything that you feel like you want to in there, and I really appreciate that feedback. It’s something that helps us constantly improve this course. And it helps me constantly improve and refine my teaching styles. So if you have any comments, for good or for bad, please put them in the Teval and make sure you get that submitted this week. Lastly, we’re getting toward the end of the semester. So make sure you’re checking Canvas and looking very closely at your grades. If you see anything in there that is incorrect, please email me and let me know ASAP. So I can get that taken care of. There is always a chance that something gets entered incorrectly in the gradebook. And it’s easier to solve that now, then after final grades have been submitted. So if you see any concerns in your gradebook, let me know as soon as possible.
Other than that, as always, feel free to keep in touch. We have great discussions going on Piazza, we have good Zoom discussions, we have our regular tea time office hours, which remember are every Tuesday at 330 and every Friday at 1030. So you’re more than welcome to join those even after this class ends. We’re going to keep tea time office hours going throughout the semesters, so feel free to join in. You can also schedule a one on one office hours with me anytime, even outside of this class, it’s always on my website, it’s always on my email signature. And I will be on the K-State CS Rocket.chat for the foreseeable future. We’ll also probably be implementing Teams at some point. So basically, feel free to keep in touch with me any way that you’d like. I’d love to hear from students in this class. I would love to see where you end up. I like to see how students in this class go in industry and are able to use some of the skills that we cover in this class in industry, it’s really great for me to see that.
Other than that it’s final project season. So it’s time to sit down and do some writing. I was inspired here by Alexander Hamilton to post this gif on the last weekly announcements video. Hopefully working on the final project is enjoyable for you. Hopefully, you’re able to get it done soon this week. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me and let me know. Otherwise, it’s been an honor having you in my class and I look forward to seeing all of you in the future. Have a good day.