Introduction

Welcome Message

Hello students, and welcome to CIS 642/643 - Software Engineering Project I & II. This is the two-semester capstone course for the Bachelor of Computer Science at Kansas State University. In this course we will learn about software engineering by engaging in the development of real-world software projects supporting the mission of Kansas State University:

The mission of Kansas State University is to foster excellent teaching, research, and service that develop a highly skilled and educated citizenry necessary to advancing the well-being of Kansas, the nation, and the international community.

My name is Nathan Bean, and I will be your instructor for this course.

Course Structure

This course is primarily a project-based experiential course, where you will learn about software engineering through engaging in the practices of software development. You will be working in small teams of 3-5 students to develop open-source software to meet the needs of a customer assigned to your team. These customers are primarily drawn from the research, extension, and education communities of Kansas State University, and the software you develop for them may potentially impact the lives of many people.

In addition to the software you will develop, we also have several additional components to the course, including a brief introduction to many common practices of software engineering and the opportunity to meet and speak with alumni actively engaged in industry, to learn about the software engineering practices used in their companies.

Lectures, Activities, and Quizzes

The first few weeks of CIS 642 focus on learning both the history and processes of software engineering. In covering this material, we will have a series of lectures, followed by discussions and activities implementing these processes during the normal class period. These will lead into some group homework activities you’ll be responsible for as well. Once we shift to the group projects, you’ll be responsible for employing the practices, so you should endeavor to develop a strong understanding of them.

Software Engineering Projects

However, the bulk of the course will focus on building a software solution to support the needs of your customer. We will engage in an Agile development process based on the SCRUM methodology, which consists of iteratively developing software in two-week sprints. Before each sprint, you will meet with your customer and negotiate what are the most important aspects to focus on, and over the two weeks you will develop those features into your software, along with documentation and testing. At the end of the two weeks, you will present your prototype to your customer to solicit feedback, and begin planning your next sprint.

Weekly Check-ins

Each week your team will have a brief check-in meeting with the instructor to report your progress and discuss any issues you have encountered. This is also an opportunity to solicit advice or address any questions you might have about your project. These meetings will be held during the class period, and you are required to attend.

Customer Reviews

Your customers will review your progress, communication skills, respectfulness, and professionalism periodically through the semester. You will be provided with feedback so that you can learn and improve your efforts in this area. This is the practical soft skills that many software developers lack, and which your future employers keep telling us students need to better develop. Hence, you should see this as an opportunity to develop a suite of very necessary, but often overlooked skills. Doing so will make you a far better job candidate, and can provide you with some powerful lived experiences to draw upon in job interviews.

Peer Reviews

Additionally, you will be asked to review each of your team members each of your peers on 1) their participation in group discussion, 2) helping keep the team focused and on-task, 3) contribution of useful ideas, 4) quality of work done, and 5) quantity of work done. These results will be anonymized and shared back with you so that you can strive to improve yourself as a team member. Also, team members who are not “doing their share” of the work will find that they are penalized based on the scores they receive from their team. Remember that there are almost no opportunities to be a “solo” developer left in the world of software development - you need to develop strong teamwork skills if you want to succeed as a programmer in the modern world.

Presentations

You will also be charged with presenting your work to a broader audience - in the form of final presentations at the end of each course, as well as presenting to the general public at Open House in the Spring for CIS 643. You will be evaluated for your presentation skills for the various audiences involved (technically sophisticated peers at the end-of-semester and general audiences at Open House).

Grading

As an experiential course intended to prepare you for the transition to industry, grading operates a bit differently in this class. We will be employing criterion grading. With criterion grading, your work is either deemed “acceptable” or “unacceptable”. Acceptable work earns a 100%, while unacceptable earns 0%. Note there is no partial credit in criterion grading!

While this may seem harsh at first, it parallels what you can expect on the job. If you regularly turn in “almost-there” work in a professional setting, you can expect to be looking for a new job in short order. Your work must be of acceptable level. Of course, you should strive to do exceptional work rather than just acceptable - so there is a possible 5% bonus on criteria-graded assignments for exceptional work.

Sprint Release Grades

Given the use of criterion grading, each Sprint Release must meet all of these requirements:

• Code Quality Code should compile and run, not suffer from unhandled errors, and perform as described in the user documentation.
• Coding Style A consistent and understandable coding style should be employed throughout the code base. Variable names should be consistent and descriptive of their roles. Indentation should be used consistently to delineate nested code bodies.
• In-Code Documentation Code should contain detailed in-line descriptions of each class, property, method, and function at their point of declaration. An auto-document style appropriate to the language should be used for inline comments. Non-obvious sections of code should be commented with a description of their operation and purpose. The documentation should be legible, grammatically correct, and profanity free.
• Licensing Full text of the license should be included in the repository, and each file should contain a copyright statement referring to it.
• Developer Documentation The documentation should be sufficient to orient a new programmer to the codebase and describe where the important aspects of the code are located. The programmer documentation should include diagrams of the code structures and how they interact (i.e. class diagrams, database diagrams, use-case diagrams) where appropriate. The documentation describe how to set up the development, testing, and production environments. The documentation should be legible, grammatically correct, and profanity free.
• User Documentation User documentation may be integrated into the project GUI or provided as a separate document or website. The documentation should give currently correct instructions on how to use the software. It should be written appropriately for the target user’s background. It include screenshots, diagrams, or video to enhance understanding. The documentation should be legible, grammatically correct, and profanity free.
• Test Suite The release should include an appropriate test suite that performs unit and integration tests on the existing code base, and all tests should pass. If an automated test suite is not possible, the release should include a written test plan and documentation of its outcome for the release.

Attendance Grades

Rather than taking attendance every day, which cuts into our class time, I instead record absences as negative points in the corresponding categories. You can find two assignments in the Absences module:

• Team Meeting Absences will be used to record absences from regular team meetings, i.e. the stand-ups and check-ins. These are held during the class period, so there is no reason to miss them.
• Formal Meeting Absences will be used to record absences from the formal team meetings - i.e. Sprint Planning and Sprint Review meetings. These are the meetings where you present your work and plan future work with your customers so absences here are a big deal. Each absence will deduct points equivalent to a drop of a letter grade in the course.

If you are experiencing illness, including symptoms of COVID-19 or have a positive COVID-19 test result, you should not attend the meeting in person. Instead, please arrange to join your team for these meetings remotely via Zoom, Discord voice channel, or other means. Repeated absences due to illness will be referred to the Office of Student Life for verification.

Peer and Customer Reviews

Not all assignments are criterion-graded. Specifically, the peer review and customer review assignments are based on a survey given to your team members and customers, respectively. This survey asks them to evaluate you on a scale of 1 to 10 across several categories. Instead of translating directly to a grade, we use the following calculation:

Base score = 100 points
-10 points for each category averaging 6 or 7 points
-20 points for each category averaging 4 or 5 points
-30 points for each category below 3 points

This means that a category score of 8, 9, or 10 is “acceptable” and does not impact your grade. However, a score of 8 does suggest you have room to improve in this category, and should strive to do so. Keep this in mind when you fill out peer reviews for your teammates - you can rate them at an 8 or 9 to indicate that you see room for improvement without hurting their grade.

Course Textbooks

This course does not have a required print textbook. The resources presented in the modules are also organized into an online textbook that can be accessed here: https://textbooks.cs.ksu.edu/cis642-643/. You may find this a useful reference if you prefer a traditional textbook layout. Additionally, since the textbook exists outside of Canvas’ access control, you can continue to utilize it after the course ends.

O’Riley for Higher Education

As the teams in this course will be engaging in developing software for a variety of platforms and languages, I would recommend that you look to the O’Riley For Higher Education digital library offered through the Kansas State University Library for texts to support your effort. The resources available include electronic editions of thousands of popular textbooks as well as videos and tutorials covering the breadth of computer science and software engineering, along with a focus on current technologies and libraries.

If you were to read any book that comes out of our introductory content and appearing in the O’Riley library, I would highly recommend:

“The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering” probably the most influential book on software engineering practices.

The O’Riley library is a great resource for all your CS coursework. It costs you nothing (technically, your access was paid for by your tuition and fees), so you might as well make use of it!

Course Software

As each development team’s project may use different technologies and require different development tools, it is difficult to say exactly what software you’ll need ahead of time. However, there are a couple of programs everyone in the course will be using:

Git and GitHub

We’ll be using Git and either GitHub or the departmental GitLab server for version control of all the team projects. You will want to install Git on your development machine. It can be downloaded from https://git-scm.com/downloads.

Microsoft Teams

We’ll be coordinating the individual teams, as well as the entire class, using Microsoft Teams. Kansas State University has paid for access to Teams as part of our Office 365 subscription. You can either use the online web app or install a local client; both are free when you log in with your K-State email. Both options are available from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/microsoft-teams/group-chat-software

Microsoft Visio

You will also be asked to create architectural diagrams of your project, i.e. UML class diagrams, database diagrams, etc. Microsoft Visio is one tool you can choose to employ to do this. You can obtain a student copy through Azure Portal; follow the directions on the CS support page: https://support.cs.ksu.edu/CISDocs/wiki/FAQ#MSDNAA.

Remote Desktop Access

Instead of installing software on your own machine, you may optionally employ department or college machines using remote desktop. To use a remote desktop, you must first install a remote desktop client on your computer. Microsoft supplies a client for most platforms, which you can find links to and information about here.

The remote desktop server is behind a network firewall, so when accessing it from off-campus, you must be using the K-State Virtual Private Network (VPN). It has its own client that also must be installed. You can learn about K-State’s VPN and download the client on K-State’s VPN Page

For remote desktop servers, you can use either those maintained by The Department of Computer Science or the College of Engineering.

Where to Find Help

As you work on the materials in this course, you may run into questions or problems and need assistance. This section reviews the various types of help available to you in this course.

Microsoft Teams

First and foremost, anytime you have a questions or need assistance in the course, please post in the course group on Microsoft Teams. It is the best place to go to get help with anything related to this course. Before you post on Teams, take a minute to look around and make sure the question has not already been posted before. It will save everyone quite a bit of time.

The major reason we’ve chosen to use Teams for this course is that many companies have adopted it or a similar system to help drive their own development efforts. Thus, in asking you to adopt it for your team communications, it prepares you for using it effectively in the future. Additionally, it provides the instructors a chance to see where you are in your projects. And since the development teams will all be using the platform already, it makes sense to have a group for the overall class as well.

Other Resources

Beyond MS Teams, there are a few resources you should be aware of. First, if you have any issues working with K-State Canvas, K-State IT resources, or any other technology related to the delivery of the course, your first source of help is the K-State IT Helpdesk. They can easily be reached via email at helpdesk@ksu.edu. Beyond them, there are many online resources for using Canvas, all of which are linked in the resources section below the video. As a last resort, you may also want to post in MS Teams, but in most cases we may simply redirect you to the K-State helpdesk for assistance.

If you run into issues with either the ‘soft’ skills or the technical content you are asked to tackle in the course, please reach out to the instructors or TA. Each of us has a significant amount of practical industry experience and will happily mentor you, much as you will be mentored by more experienced developers when you start your first job. Please do not keep quiet about your struggles - what we are asking you to do in this course is very different than your prior courses, as there is little instructional support for what you must do.

Of course, as another step you can always exercise your information-gathering skills and use online search tools such as Google to find help for your question. Programming resources such as language and library documentation are going to be an invaluable assistance.

Next, we have grading and administrative issues. This could include problems or mistakes in the grade you received on a project, missing course resources, or any concerns you have regarding the course and the conduct of myself and your peers. You’ll be interacting with us on a variety of online platforms and sometimes things happen that are inappropriate or offensive. There are lots of resources at K-State to help you with those situations. First and foremost, please DM me on MS Teams as soon as possible and let me know about your concern, if it is appropriate for me to be involved. If not, or if you’d rather talk with someone other than me about your issue, I encourage you to contact either your academic advisor, the CS department staff, College of Engineering Student Services, or the K-State Office of Student Life. Finally, if you have any concerns that you feel should be reported to K-State, you can do so at https://www.k-state.edu/report/. That site also has links to a large number of resources at K-State that you can use when you need help.

Finally, if you find any errors or omissions in the course content, or have suggestions for additional resources to include in the course, DM the instructors on MS Teams. There are some extra credit points available for helping to improve the course, so be on the lookout for anything that you feel could be changed or improved.

So, in summary, MS Teams should always be your first stop when you have a question or run into a problem. For issues with Canvas or Visual Studio, you are also welcome to refer directly to the resources for those platforms. For questions specifically related to the projects, use MS Teams for sure. For grading questions and errors in the course content or any other issues, please DM the instructors on MS Teams for assistance.

Our goal in this program is to make sure that you have the resources available to you to be successful. Please don’t be afraid to take advantage of them and ask questions whenever you want.

Resources

• K-State IT Help Desk - Email: helpdesk@ksu.edu
• K-State Online Canvas Help
• Instructure Canvas Guides
• K-State Libraries
• K-State CS Support
• K-State CS Advising
• K-State Engineering Student Services
• K-State Office of Student Life
• K-State Report It

CIS 642 Syllabus

Syllabi from prior semesters can be accessed here

CIS 642 - Software Engineering Project I (Fall 2024)

Instructor Contact Information

• Class Times & Location: MWF 9:30am-11:20am DUF 1092
• Instructor: Nathan Bean (nhbean AT ksu DOT edu)
• Office: DUE 2216
• Phone: (785)483-9264 (Call/Text)
• Website: https://nathanhbean.com
• Office Hours: M 2:00-3:30
• Virtual Office Hours: By appointment via Zoom or MS Teams. Schedule a meeting via email or MS Teams Direct Message.
• Teaching Assistant: Pavan Kumar Reddy Lakkireddy (lakkipa1 at ksu.edu)
• Office Hours: TBD

Preferred Methods of Communication:

• Chat: Quick questions via MS Teams are the preferred means of communication.   Questions whose answers may benefit the class I would encourage you to post in the course Team, as this keeps a public history your classmates can review. More personal questions should be direct messaged to me.
• Email: For questions outside of this course, email to nhbean@ksu.edu is preferred.
• Phone/Text: 785-483-9264 Emergencies only! I will do my best to respond as quickly as I can.

Prerequisites

• CIS 308
• CIS 501

Students may enroll in CIS courses only if they have earned a grade of C or better for each prerequisite to these courses.

Course Overview

The first semester of a two-semester capstone course. Current practices of software development, requirements, design, prototyping, measures and evaluation. Specification, design, and prototyping of a software system.

Course Description

You will be creating professional-grade software to tackle a real-world application that will be released as an open-source project to the public. This includes:

• Starting from an existing code base. Very rarely will you have the luxury of starting a real-world project from scratch. Almost always, you’ll have to start from an existing program, framework, or API specification, and adapt it to your customers’ needs. Existing code bases are often poorly or incorrectly documented, under- or completely non-tested, and full of spaghetti code.
• Working as a team. You will very likely never work on a solo project in industry - modern software engineering involves teams of tens if not hundreds of programmers, plus many non-technical contributors as well. Good software development therefore involves tools and strategies to minimize code collisions and endure productive and healthy working relationships.
• Working directly with customers to understand what the software needs to do and how it can be most useful to them. This includes usability design and testing, feature negotiation, and human relations.
• Documenting the software as you develop it in a way that supports future maintenance and feature additions.
• Creating test frameworks or applying validation frameworks to ensure your code does exactly what it is intended to do without any errors.
• Refactoring spaghetti code and poor designs for greater efficiency and maintainability.
• Using prototypes to explore new feature ideas for usability and functionality.
• Employing a staged design, testing, and deployment process to ensure that only the highest-quality, functional, and well-tested code ever appears in front of regular users.

This bulleted list captures the course objectives - by the completion of the course you will need to have demonstrated mastery of each point through developing your software engineering project to earn an A.

Major Course Topics

• Software Engineering
• Requirements Gathering
• Feature Estimating
• Testing and Verification
• Continuous Deployment
• Waterfall Development Model
• Agile Development Models

Course Structure

This course is primarily a project course – you will be grouped into teams by the instructor and assigned a specific, real-world software application to develop. Each project also comes with real-world customers who will provide guidance and design priorities, judge usability, negotiate development schedules, and determine how well your software meets their needs. Your projects will be released as open-source projects and hosted on a public Github repository. You should realize that this project will be one of the criteria by which your future employers will judge your suitability, as well as the recommendations of both your instructor and customers.

Lectures, Readings, Class Discussions, and Activities

While the core focus of this course is learning by doing, carrying out the principles of good software engineering while creating or expanding upon an open-source software project to meet society’s needs, understanding the process begins with studying engineering practices. This will be done through video lectures, assigned readings, class discussions, and other class activities.

Software Projects

Software projects will cover a wide range of uses as well as base technologies/development languages. The instructor will endeavor to match you to a project in your interest area, but this will not always be possible. In all cases, these are real-world projects that will go on to be used by hundreds or thousands of real-world users. Good design is essential and serves to support both these eventual users and to build your reputation as a software engineer.

Software project development will proceed using an Agile methodology with a two-week iterative development cycle. At the end of each cycle, you will release a tagged prototype version of your software using Git’s tagging functionality. This prototype will be graded for: 1) code quality – focusing on readability, maintainability, and efficiency, 2) documentation – focused on accuracy and coverage, 3) testing/verification processes – focused on depth and correctness of coverage.

You will conduct a stand-up meeting, a sprint review meeting, or a sprint planning meeting (or any combination of the above) during the assigned class period. As such, it is vital to the success of your project that you attend these meetings!

Development Teams

You will be assigned to a development team of 3-4 students. Each student is expected to contribute to all aspects of the development process. This means that you will not have a documentation guru or a testing guru who only writes documentation or tests. Every member should carry part of the responsibility for writing code, tests, and documentation, as well as working with customers. However, you can divide duties in such a way for a specific design iteration – but by the end of the project each member should have contributed equally in each area.

Every two weeks you will have a formal review and planning meeting with some or all of your customers, at which point they will evaluate your iteration’s prototype for how well it meets their needs. This meeting will be scheduled during the course lab time to facilitate coordination of schedules. It is a mark of respect and professionalism to be on-time, well-prepared, and well groomed for these meetings. Missing a meeting (with the exception of emergency circumstances) will result in an automatic lowering of your grade by a full letter (1 on a 4-point scale). The customers’ evaluations, along with a survey of how well they felt the team interacted with them during the design iteration, will be the basis of your customer relation grade. This grade will be adjusted by the instructors if the team members arrive late, are ill-prepared, appear in inappropriate attire (for these meetings, you should be in business casual).

Process Fidelity

Each team will also be responsible for making adequate usage of the many tools developed to enhance and expedite the software development process. At a minimum, the development team should be using 1) a code repository to manage the sharing of team code (Git publicly hosted through GitHub or the departmental GitLab server is required) 2) a feature planning and bug tracking system like GitHub or GitLab issues, and 3) a documentation wiki (Use the Github or GitLab built-in Wiki). Each of these is a tool you should be using throughout the development cycle, not simply something you throw data into right before your next meeting. You will be graded on how regularly and effectively you utilize these tools.

In addition, Agile software development utilizes a set of artifacts – physical and visual representations of the project’s goals and progress. These help teams and managers quickly assess what needs to be done on a project and how far along the process is. Your team will also need to make appropriate and regular use of these artifacts, including: 1) velocity chart, and 2) burn-down chart.

Grading

This course uses a different approach to grading than you are probably used to, criterion grading. In criterion grading, there is no concept of a ‘partial score’; instead your work is either acceptable (and you earn full points), or unacceptable (and you earn no points). This is reflective of industry practice - if you fail in your job, you will get fired.

Each activity you are tasked with is worth a certain number of points, and the guidelines for what is acceptable will be spelled out in the assignment description, so read them carefully!

In addition, exceptional work may be rewarded with a bonus of 5% of the points set for the assignment.

Grades will be issued on a 4-point scale, with 4=A and 0=F. Grades will be issued for each category according to this breakdown:

Each category is equally important for your preparation for becoming a software engineer - remember, it isn’t only about writing good code, it’s about making that code useful to society!

Late Work

Late work is considered unacceptable, and as such will result in no points earned on the assignment. As Seniors you should have developed sufficient time management and planning skills to keep on top of your due dates.

For your sprints, remember that in your sprint planning, you are setting your commitments by what you add to your sprint backlog - don’t overcommit! At the same time, you need to be making enough progress to keep your customer happy while ensuring your software is of sufficient quality and adequately documented and tested.

Dress Policy

As indicated in the customer relations section, students are expected to wear at a minimum business professional attire for the bi-weekly review and planning meetings with their customers. For other meetings with customers. Career and Employment Services publishes guides to professional and casual attire for men and women on their site (https://www.k-state.edu/careercenter/students/apply_interview/attire/dresstoimpress.html). These will be used as the grading rubric within this area, so be sure to familiarize yourself with the expectations!

For obtaining inexpensive business wear options, there are many opportunities available to you:

• CES offers the career closet every Monday-Friday, 8am - 5pm at the Berney Family Welcome center to find gently-used professional wear. Students can typically take up to three articles. Monetary donations will go to the Manhattan Emergency Shelter.
• Several thrift stores in Manhattan carry business professional and casual attire at affordable prices (listed by proximity to campus):
  • Goodwill, 421 E. Poyntz Avenue
  • Grand Old Trunk, 1304 Pillsbury Drive

Subject to Change

The details in this document are not set in stone – there may need to be adjustments made throughout the semester. If this occurs, changes will be posted to the K-State online page and emailed to student’s K-State email addresses.

Standard Syllabus Statements

Academic Honesty

Kansas State University has an Honor and Integrity System based on personal integrity, which is presumed to be sufficient assurance that, in academic matters, one’s work is performed honestly and without unauthorized assistance. Undergraduate and graduate students, by registration, acknowledge the jurisdiction of the Honor and Integrity System. The policies and procedures of the Honor and Integrity System apply to all full and part-time students enrolled in undergraduate and graduate courses on-campus, off-campus, and via distance learning. A component vital to the Honor and Integrity System is the inclusion of the Honor Pledge which applies to all assignments, examinations, or other course work undertaken by students. The Honor Pledge is implied, whether or not it is stated: “On my honor, as a student, I have neither given nor received unauthorized aid on this academic work.” A grade of XF can result from a breach of academic honesty. The F indicates failure in the course; the X indicates the reason is an Honor Pledge violation.

For this course, a violation of the Honor Pledge will result in sanctions such as a 0 on the assignment or an XF in the course, depending on severity. Actively seeking unauthorized aid, such as posting lab assignments on sites such as Chegg or StackOverflow, or asking another person to complete your work, even if unsuccessful, will result in an immediate XF in the course.

This course assumes that all your course work will be done by you. Use of AI text and code generators such as ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot in any submission for this course is strictly forbidden unless explicitly allowed by your instructor. Any unauthorized use of these tools without proper attribution is a violation of the K-State Honor Pledge.

We reserve the right to use various platforms that can perform automatic plagiarism detection by tracking changes made to files and comparing submitted projects against other students’ submissions and known solutions. That information may be used to determine if plagiarism has taken place.

Students with Disabilities

At K-State it is important that every student has access to course content and the means to demonstrate course mastery. Students with disabilities may benefit from services including accommodations provided by the Student Access Center. Disabilities can include physical, learning, executive functions, and mental health. You may register at the Student Access Center or to learn more contact:

• Manhattan/Olathe/Global Campus – Student Access Center
  • accesscenter@k-state.edu
  • 785-532-6441
• K-State Salina Campus – Julie Rowe; Student Success Coordinator
  • jarowe@k-state.edu
  • 785-820-7908

Students already registered with the Student Access Center please request your Letters of Accommodation early in the semester to provide adequate time to arrange your approved academic accommodations. Once SAC approves your Letter of Accommodation it will be e-mailed to you, and your instructor(s) for this course. Please follow up with your instructor to discuss how best to implement the approved accommodations.

Expectations for Conduct

All student activities in the University, including this course, are governed by the Student Judicial Conduct Code as outlined in the Student Governing Association By Laws, Article V, Section 3, number 2. Students who engage in behavior that disrupts the learning environment may be asked to leave the class.

Mutual Respect and Inclusion in K-State Teaching & Learning Spaces

At K-State, faculty and staff are committed to creating and maintaining an inclusive and supportive learning environment for students from diverse backgrounds and perspectives. K-State courses, labs, and other virtual and physical learning spaces promote equitable opportunity to learn, participate, contribute, and succeed, regardless of age, race, color, ethnicity, nationality, genetic information, ancestry, disability, socioeconomic status, military or veteran status, immigration status, Indigenous identity, gender identity, gender expression, sexuality, religion, culture, as well as other social identities.

Faculty and staff are committed to promoting equity and believe the success of an inclusive learning environment relies on the participation, support, and understanding of all students. Students are encouraged to share their views and lived experiences as they relate to the course or their course experience, while recognizing they are doing so in a learning environment in which all are expected to engage with respect to honor the rights, safety, and dignity of others in keeping with the K-State Principles of Community.

If you feel uncomfortable because of comments or behavior encountered in this class, you may bring it to the attention of your instructor, advisors, and/or mentors. If you have questions about how to proceed with a confidential process to resolve concerns, please contact the Student Ombudsperson Office. Violations of the student code of conduct can be reported using the Code of Conduct Reporting Form. You can also report discrimination, harassment or sexual harassment, if needed.

Netiquette

Online communication is inherently different than in-person communication. When speaking in person, many times we can take advantage of the context and body language of the person speaking to better understand what the speaker means, not just what is said. This information is not present when communicating online, so we must be much more careful about what we say and how we say it in order to get our meaning across.

Here are a few general rules to help us all communicate online in this course, especially while using tools such as Canvas or Discord:

• Use a clear and meaningful subject line to announce your topic. Subject lines such as “Question” or “Problem” are not helpful. Subjects such as “Logic Question in Project 5, Part 1 in Java” or “Unexpected Exception when Opening Text File in Python” give plenty of information about your topic.
• Use only one topic per message. If you have multiple topics, post multiple messages so each one can be discussed independently.
• Be thorough, concise, and to the point. Ideally, each message should be a page or less.
• Include exact error messages, code snippets, or screenshots, as well as any previous steps taken to fix the problem. It is much easier to solve a problem when the exact error message or screenshot is provided. If we know what you’ve tried so far, we can get to the root cause of the issue more quickly.
• Consider carefully what you write before you post it. Once a message is posted, it becomes part of the permanent record of the course and can easily be found by others.
• If you are lost, don’t know an answer, or don’t understand something, speak up! Email and Canvas both allow you to send a message privately to the instructors, so other students won’t see that you asked a question. Don’t be afraid to ask questions anytime, as you can choose to do so without any fear of being identified by your fellow students.
• Class discussions are confidential. Do not share information from the course with anyone outside of the course without explicit permission.
• Do not quote entire message chains; only include the relevant parts. When replying to a previous message, only quote the relevant lines in your response.
• Do not use all caps. It makes it look like you are shouting. Use appropriate text markup (bold, italics, etc.) to highlight a point if needed.
• No feigning surprise. If someone asks a question, saying things like “I can’t believe you don’t know that!” are not helpful, and only serve to make that person feel bad.
• No “well-actually’s.” If someone makes a statement that is not entirely correct, resist the urge to offer a “well, actually…” correction, especially if it is not relevant to the discussion. If you can help solve their problem, feel free to provide correct information, but don’t post a correction just for the sake of being correct.
• Do not correct someone’s grammar or spelling. Again, it is not helpful, and only serves to make that person feel bad. If there is a genuine mistake that may affect the meaning of the post, please contact the person privately or let the instructors know privately so it can be resolved.
• Avoid subtle -isms and microaggressions. Avoid comments that could make others feel uncomfortable based on their personal identity. See the syllabus section on Diversity and Inclusion above for more information on this topic. If a comment makes you uncomfortable, please contact the instructor.
• Avoid sarcasm, flaming, advertisements, lingo, trolling, doxxing, and other bad online habits. They have no place in an academic environment. Tasteful humor is fine, but sarcasm can be misunderstood.

As a participant in course discussions, you should also strive to honor the diversity of your classmates by adhering to the K-State Principles of Community.

Discrimination, Harassment, and Sexual Harassment

Kansas State University is committed to maintaining academic, housing, and work environments that are free of discrimination, harassment, and sexual harassment. Instructors support the University’s commitment by creating a safe learning environment during this course, free of conduct that would interfere with your academic opportunities. Instructors also have a duty to report any behavior they become aware of that potentially violates the University’s policy prohibiting discrimination, harassment, and sexual harassment, as outlined by PPM 3010.

If a student is subjected to discrimination, harassment, or sexual harassment, they are encouraged to make a non-confidential report to the University’s Office for Institutional Equity (OIE) using the online reporting form. Incident disclosure is not required to receive resources at K-State. Reports that include domestic and dating violence, sexual assault, or stalking, should be considered for reporting by the complainant to the Kansas State University Police Department or the Riley County Police Department. Reports made to law enforcement are separate from reports made to OIE. A complainant can choose to report to one or both entities. Confidential support and advocacy can be found with the K-State Center for Advocacy, Response, and Education (CARE). Confidential mental health services can be found with Lafene Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS). Academic support can be found with the Office of Student Life (OSL). OSL is a non-confidential resource. OIE also provides a comprehensive list of resources on their website. If you have questions about non-confidential and confidential resources, please contact OIE at equity@ksu.edu or (785) 532–6220.

Academic Freedom Statement

Kansas State University is a community of students, faculty, and staff who work together to discover new knowledge, create new ideas, and share the results of their scholarly inquiry with the wider public. Although new ideas or research results may be controversial or challenge established views, the health and growth of any society requires frank intellectual exchange. Academic freedom protects this type of free exchange and is thus essential to any university’s mission.

Moreover, academic freedom supports collaborative work in the pursuit of truth and the dissemination of knowledge in an environment of inquiry, respectful debate, and professionalism. Academic freedom is not limited to the classroom or to scientific and scholarly research, but extends to the life of the university as well as to larger social and political questions. It is the right and responsibility of the university community to engage with such issues.

Campus Safety

Kansas State University is committed to providing a safe teaching and learning environment for student and faculty members. In order to enhance your safety in the unlikely case of a campus emergency make sure that you know where and how to quickly exit your classroom and how to follow any emergency directives. Current Campus Emergency Information is available at the University’s Advisory webpage.

Student Resources

K-State has many resources to help contribute to student success. These resources include accommodations for academics, paying for college, student life, health and safety, and others. Check out the Student Guide to Help and Resources: One Stop Shop for more information.

Student Academic Creations

Student academic creations are subject to Kansas State University and Kansas Board of Regents Intellectual Property Policies. For courses in which students will be creating intellectual property, the K-State policy can be found at University Handbook, Appendix R: Intellectual Property Policy and Institutional Procedures (part I.E.). These policies address ownership and use of student academic creations.

Mental Health

Your mental health and good relationships are vital to your overall well-being. Symptoms of mental health issues may include excessive sadness or worry, thoughts of death or self-harm, inability to concentrate, lack of motivation, or substance abuse. Although problems can occur anytime for anyone, you should pay extra attention to your mental health if you are feeling academic or financial stress, discrimination, or have experienced a traumatic event, such as loss of a friend or family member, sexual assault or other physical or emotional abuse.

If you are struggling with these issues, do not wait to seek assistance.

• Kansas State University Counseling and Psychological Services offers free and confidential services to assist you to meet these challenges.
• Lafene Health Center has specialized nurse practitioners to assist with mental health.
• The Office of Student Life can direct you to additional resources.
• K-State Family Center offers individual, couple, and family counseling services on a sliding fee scale.
• Center for Advocacy, Response, and Education (CARE) provides free and confidential assistance for those in our K-State community who have been victimized by violence.

For Kansas State Salina Campus:

• Kansas State Salina Counseling Services offers free and confidential services to assist you to meet these challenges.
• The Kansas State Salina Office of Student Life can direct you to additional resources.
• The Kansas State Salina Campus offers several services for students, including health services, counseling, and academic assistance.

For Global Campus/K-State Online:

• K-State Online students have free access to mental health counseling with My SSP - 24/7 support via chat and phone.
• The Office of Student Life can direct you to additional resources.

University Excused Absences

K-State has a University Excused Absence policy (Section F62). Class absence(s) will be handled between the instructor and the student unless there are other university offices involved. For university excused absences, instructors shall provide the student the opportunity to make up missed assignments, activities, and/or attendance specific points that contribute to the course grade, unless they decide to excuse those missed assignments from the student’s course grade. Please see the policy for a complete list of university excused absences and how to obtain one. Students are encouraged to contact their instructor regarding their absences.

Copyright Notice

©2021 The materials in this online course fall under the protection of all intellectual property, copyright and trademark laws of the U.S. The digital materials included here come with the legal permissions and releases of the copyright holders. These course materials should be used for educational purposes only; the contents should not be distributed electronically or otherwise beyond the confines of this online course. The URLs listed here do not suggest endorsement of either the site owners or the contents found at the sites. Likewise, mentioned brands (products and services) do not suggest endorsement. Students own copyright to what they create.

Original content in the course textbook at https://textbooks.cs.ksu.edu/cis642-643/ is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-SA license by Nathan Bean unless otherwise stated.

CIS 643 Syllabus

CIS 643 - Software Engineering Project II

Instructor Contact Information

• Instructor: Nathan Bean (nhbean AT ksu DOT edu)
• Office: DUE 2216
• Phone: (785)483-9264 (Call/Text)
• Website: https://nathanhbean.com
• Office Hours: Wednesday 1:30pm-3:30pm
• Virtual Office Hours: By appointment via Zoom or MS Teams. Schedule a meeting via email or MS Teams Direct Message.

Preferred Methods of Communication:

• Chat: Quick questions via Discord is the preferred means of communication.   Questions whose answers may benefit the class I would encourage you to post in the course channel, as this keeps a public history your classmates can review. More personal questions should be direct messaged to me.
• Email: For questions outside of this course, email to nhbean@ksu.edu is preferred.
• Phone/Text: 785-483-9264 Emergencies only! I will do my best to respond as quickly as I can.

Prerequisites

• CIS 308
• CIS 501

Students may enroll in CIS courses only if they have earned a grade of C or better for each prerequisite to these courses.

Course Overview

The second semester of a two-semester capstone course. Current practices of software development, requirements, design, prototyping, measures and evaluation. Specification, design, and prototyping of a software system.

Course Description

You will be creating professional-grade software to tackle a real-world application that will be released as an open-source project to the public. This includes:

• Starting from an existing code base. Very rarely will you have the luxury of starting a real-world project from scratch. Almost always, you’ll have to start from an existing program, framework, or API specification, and adapt it to your customers’ needs. Existing code bases are often poorly or incorrectly documented, under- or completely non-tested, and full of spaghetti code.
• Working as a team. You will very likely never work on a solo project in industry - modern software engineering involves teams of tens if not hundreds of programmers, plus many non-technical contributors as well. Good software development therefore involves tools and strategies to minimize code collisions and endure productive and healthy working relationships.
• Working directly with customers to understand what the software needs to do and how it can be most useful to them. This includes usability design and testing, feature negotiation, and human relations.
• Documenting the software as you develop it in a way that supports future maintenance and feature additions.
• Creating test frameworks or applying validation frameworks to ensure your code does exactly what it is intended to do without any errors.
• Refactoring spaghetti code and poor designs for greater efficiency and maintainability.
• Using prototypes to explore new feature ideas for usability and functionality.
• Employing a staged design, testing, and deployment process to ensure that only the highest-quality, functional, and well-tested code ever appears in front of regular users.

This bulleted list captures the course objectives - by the completion of the course you will need to have demonstrated mastery of each point through developing your software engineering project to earn an A.

Course Structure

This course is primarily an experiential learning (i.e. project-centric) course – you will be grouped into teams by the instructor and assigned a specific, real-world software application to develop. Each project also comes with real-world customers who will provide guidance and design priorities, judge usability, negotiate development schedules, and determine how well your software meets their needs. Your projects will be released as open-source projects and hosted on a public Github repository. You should realize that this project will be one of the criteria by which your future employers will judge your suitability, as well as the recommendations of both your instructor and customers.

Software Projects

Software projects will cover a wide range of uses as well as base technologies/development languages. The instructor will endeavor to match you to a project in your interest area, but this will not always be possible. In all cases, these are real-world projects that will go on to be used by hundreds or thousands of real-world users. Good design is essential and serves to support both these eventual users and to build your reputation as a software engineer.

Software project development will proceed using an Agile methodology with a two-week iterative development cycle. At the end of each cycle, you will release a tagged prototype version of your software using Git’s tagging functionality. This prototype will be graded for: 1) code quality – focusing on readability, maintainability, and efficiency, 2) documentation – focused on accuracy and coverage, 3) testing/verification processes – focused on depth and correctness of coverage.

You will conduct a stand-up meeting, a sprint review meeting, or a sprint planning meeting (or any combination of the above) during the assigned class period. As such, it is vital to the success of your project that you attend these meetings!

Development Teams

You will be assigned to a development team of 3-4 students. Each student is expected to contribute to all aspects of the development process. This means that you will not have a documentation guru or a testing guru who only writes documentation or tests. Every member should carry part of the responsibility for writing code, tests, and documentation, as well as working with customers. However, you can divide duties in such a way for a specific design iteration – but by the end of the project each member should have contributed equally in each area.

Every two weeks you will have a formal review and planning meeting with some or all of your customers, at which point they will evaluate your iteration’s prototype for how well it meets their needs. This meeting will be scheduled during the course lab time to facilitate coordination of schedules. It is a mark of respect and professionalism to be on-time, well-prepared, and well groomed for these meetings. Missing a meeting (with the exception of emergency circumstances) will result in an automatic lowering of your grade by a full letter (1 on a 4-point scale). The customers’ evaluations, along with a survey of how well they felt the team interacted with them during the design iteration, will be the basis of your customer relation grade. This grade will be adjusted by the instructors if the team members arrive late, are ill-prepared, appear in inappropriate attire (for these meetings, you should be in business casual).

Process Fidelity

Each team will also be responsible for making adequate usage of the many tools developed to enhance and expedite the software development process. At a minimum, the development team should be using 1) a code repository to manage the sharing of team code (Git publicly hosted through GitHub or the departmental GitLab server is required) 2) a feature planning and bug tracking system like GitHub or GitLab issues, and 3) a documentation wiki (Use the Github or GitLab built-in Wiki). Each of these is a tool you should be using throughout the development cycle, not simply something you throw data into right before your next meeting. You will be graded on how regularly and effectively you utilize these tools.

In addition, Agile software development utilizes a set of artifacts – physical and visual representations of the project’s goals and progress. These help teams and managers quickly assess what needs to be done on a project and how far along the process is. Your team will also need to make appropriate and regular use of these artifacts, including: 1) velocity chart, and 2) burn-down chart.

Grading

This course uses a different approach to grading than you are probably used to, criterion grading. In criterion grading, there is no concept of a ‘partial score’; instead your work is either acceptable (and you earn full points), or unacceptable (and you earn no points). This is reflective of industry practice - if you fail in your job, you will get fired.

Each activity you are tasked with is worth a certain number of points, and the guidelines for what is acceptable will be spelled out in the assignment description, so read them carefully!

In addition, exceptional work may be rewarded with a bonus of 5% of the points set for the assignment.

Grades will be issued on a 4-point scale, with 4=A and 0=F. Grades will be issued for each category according to this breakdown:

Each category is equally important for your preparation for becoming a software engineer - remember, it isn’t only about writing good code, it’s about making that code useful to society!

Late Work

Late work is considered unacceptable, and as such will result in no points earned on the assignment. As Seniors you should have developed sufficient time management and planning skills to keep on top of your due dates.

For your sprints, remember that in your sprint planning, you are setting your commitments by what you add to your sprint backlog - don’t overcommit! At the same time, you need to be making enough progress to keep your customer happy while ensuring your software is of sufficient quality and adequately documented and tested.

Dress Policy

As indicated in the customer relations section, students are expected to wear at a minimum business casual attire for the bi-weekly review and planning meetings with their customers. For other meetings with customers. Career and Employment Services publishes guides to professional and casual attire for men and women on their site (http://www.k-state.edu/ces/students/dresstoimpress.html). These will be used as the grading rubric within this area, so be sure to familiarize yourself with the expectations!

For obtaining inexpensive business formal and casual wear options, there are many opportunities available to you:

• CES offers the career closet every Monday-Friday, 8am - 5pm at the Berney Family Welcome center to find gently-used professional wear. Students can typically take up to three articles. Monetary donations will go to the Manhattan Emergency Shelter.
• Several thrift stores in Manhattan carry business professional and casual attire at affordable prices (listed by proximity to campus):
  • Salvation Army, 310 Poyntz Avenue
  • Goodwill, 421 E. Poyntz Avenue
  • Grand Old Trunk, 1304 Pillsbury Drive

Subject to Change

The details in this document are not set in stone – there may need to be adjustments made throughout the semester. If this occurs, changes will be posted to the K-State online page and emailed to student’s K-State email addresses.

Standard Syllabus Statements

Academic Honesty

Kansas State University has an Honor and Integrity System based on personal integrity, which is presumed to be sufficient assurance that, in academic matters, one’s work is performed honestly and without unauthorized assistance. Undergraduate and graduate students, by registration, acknowledge the jurisdiction of the Honor and Integrity System. The policies and procedures of the Honor and Integrity System apply to all full and part-time students enrolled in undergraduate and graduate courses on-campus, off-campus, and via distance learning. A component vital to the Honor and Integrity System is the inclusion of the Honor Pledge which applies to all assignments, examinations, or other course work undertaken by students. The Honor Pledge is implied, whether or not it is stated: “On my honor, as a student, I have neither given nor received unauthorized aid on this academic work.” A grade of XF can result from a breach of academic honesty. The F indicates failure in the course; the X indicates the reason is an Honor Pledge violation.

For this course, a violation of the Honor Pledge will result in sanctions such as a 0 on the assignment or an XF in the course, depending on severity. Actively seeking unauthorized aid, such as posting lab assignments on sites such as Chegg or StackOverflow, or asking another person to complete your work, even if unsuccessful, will result in an immediate XF in the course.

This course assumes that all your course work will be done by you. Use of AI text and code generators such as ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot in any submission for this course is strictly forbidden unless explicitly allowed by your instructor. Any unauthorized use of these tools without proper attribution is a violation of the K-State Honor Pledge.

We reserve the right to use various platforms that can perform automatic plagiarism detection by tracking changes made to files and comparing submitted projects against other students’ submissions and known solutions. That information may be used to determine if plagiarism has taken place.

Students with Disabilities

At K-State it is important that every student has access to course content and the means to demonstrate course mastery. Students with disabilities may benefit from services including accommodations provided by the Student Access Center. Disabilities can include physical, learning, executive functions, and mental health. You may register at the Student Access Center or to learn more contact:

• Manhattan/Olathe/Global Campus – Student Access Center
  • accesscenter@k-state.edu
  • 785-532-6441
• K-State Salina Campus – Julie Rowe; Student Success Coordinator
  • jarowe@k-state.edu
  • 785-820-7908

Students already registered with the Student Access Center please request your Letters of Accommodation early in the semester to provide adequate time to arrange your approved academic accommodations. Once SAC approves your Letter of Accommodation it will be e-mailed to you, and your instructor(s) for this course. Please follow up with your instructor to discuss how best to implement the approved accommodations.

Expectations for Conduct

All student activities in the University, including this course, are governed by the Student Judicial Conduct Code as outlined in the Student Governing Association By Laws, Article V, Section 3, number 2. Students who engage in behavior that disrupts the learning environment may be asked to leave the class.

Mutual Respect and Inclusion in K-State Teaching & Learning Spaces

At K-State, faculty and staff are committed to creating and maintaining an inclusive and supportive learning environment for students from diverse backgrounds and perspectives. K-State courses, labs, and other virtual and physical learning spaces promote equitable opportunity to learn, participate, contribute, and succeed, regardless of age, race, color, ethnicity, nationality, genetic information, ancestry, disability, socioeconomic status, military or veteran status, immigration status, Indigenous identity, gender identity, gender expression, sexuality, religion, culture, as well as other social identities.

Faculty and staff are committed to promoting equity and believe the success of an inclusive learning environment relies on the participation, support, and understanding of all students. Students are encouraged to share their views and lived experiences as they relate to the course or their course experience, while recognizing they are doing so in a learning environment in which all are expected to engage with respect to honor the rights, safety, and dignity of others in keeping with the K-State Principles of Community.

If you feel uncomfortable because of comments or behavior encountered in this class, you may bring it to the attention of your instructor, advisors, and/or mentors. If you have questions about how to proceed with a confidential process to resolve concerns, please contact the Student Ombudsperson Office. Violations of the student code of conduct can be reported using the Code of Conduct Reporting Form. You can also report discrimination, harassment or sexual harassment, if needed.

Netiquette

Online communication is inherently different than in-person communication. When speaking in person, many times we can take advantage of the context and body language of the person speaking to better understand what the speaker means, not just what is said. This information is not present when communicating online, so we must be much more careful about what we say and how we say it in order to get our meaning across.

Here are a few general rules to help us all communicate online in this course, especially while using tools such as Canvas or Discord:

• Use a clear and meaningful subject line to announce your topic. Subject lines such as “Question” or “Problem” are not helpful. Subjects such as “Logic Question in Project 5, Part 1 in Java” or “Unexpected Exception when Opening Text File in Python” give plenty of information about your topic.
• Use only one topic per message. If you have multiple topics, post multiple messages so each one can be discussed independently.
• Be thorough, concise, and to the point. Ideally, each message should be a page or less.
• Include exact error messages, code snippets, or screenshots, as well as any previous steps taken to fix the problem. It is much easier to solve a problem when the exact error message or screenshot is provided. If we know what you’ve tried so far, we can get to the root cause of the issue more quickly.
• Consider carefully what you write before you post it. Once a message is posted, it becomes part of the permanent record of the course and can easily be found by others.
• If you are lost, don’t know an answer, or don’t understand something, speak up! Email and Canvas both allow you to send a message privately to the instructors, so other students won’t see that you asked a question. Don’t be afraid to ask questions anytime, as you can choose to do so without any fear of being identified by your fellow students.
• Class discussions are confidential. Do not share information from the course with anyone outside of the course without explicit permission.
• Do not quote entire message chains; only include the relevant parts. When replying to a previous message, only quote the relevant lines in your response.
• Do not use all caps. It makes it look like you are shouting. Use appropriate text markup (bold, italics, etc.) to highlight a point if needed.
• No feigning surprise. If someone asks a question, saying things like “I can’t believe you don’t know that!” are not helpful, and only serve to make that person feel bad.
• No “well-actually’s.” If someone makes a statement that is not entirely correct, resist the urge to offer a “well, actually…” correction, especially if it is not relevant to the discussion. If you can help solve their problem, feel free to provide correct information, but don’t post a correction just for the sake of being correct.
• Do not correct someone’s grammar or spelling. Again, it is not helpful, and only serves to make that person feel bad. If there is a genuine mistake that may affect the meaning of the post, please contact the person privately or let the instructors know privately so it can be resolved.
• Avoid subtle -isms and microaggressions. Avoid comments that could make others feel uncomfortable based on their personal identity. See the syllabus section on Diversity and Inclusion above for more information on this topic. If a comment makes you uncomfortable, please contact the instructor.
• Avoid sarcasm, flaming, advertisements, lingo, trolling, doxxing, and other bad online habits. They have no place in an academic environment. Tasteful humor is fine, but sarcasm can be misunderstood.

As a participant in course discussions, you should also strive to honor the diversity of your classmates by adhering to the K-State Principles of Community.

Discrimination, Harassment, and Sexual Harassment

Kansas State University is committed to maintaining academic, housing, and work environments that are free of discrimination, harassment, and sexual harassment. Instructors support the University’s commitment by creating a safe learning environment during this course, free of conduct that would interfere with your academic opportunities. Instructors also have a duty to report any behavior they become aware of that potentially violates the University’s policy prohibiting discrimination, harassment, and sexual harassment, as outlined by PPM 3010.

If a student is subjected to discrimination, harassment, or sexual harassment, they are encouraged to make a non-confidential report to the University’s Office for Institutional Equity (OIE) using the online reporting form. Incident disclosure is not required to receive resources at K-State. Reports that include domestic and dating violence, sexual assault, or stalking, should be considered for reporting by the complainant to the Kansas State University Police Department or the Riley County Police Department. Reports made to law enforcement are separate from reports made to OIE. A complainant can choose to report to one or both entities. Confidential support and advocacy can be found with the K-State Center for Advocacy, Response, and Education (CARE). Confidential mental health services can be found with Lafene Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS). Academic support can be found with the Office of Student Life (OSL). OSL is a non-confidential resource. OIE also provides a comprehensive list of resources on their website. If you have questions about non-confidential and confidential resources, please contact OIE at equity@ksu.edu or (785) 532–6220.

Academic Freedom Statement

Kansas State University is a community of students, faculty, and staff who work together to discover new knowledge, create new ideas, and share the results of their scholarly inquiry with the wider public. Although new ideas or research results may be controversial or challenge established views, the health and growth of any society requires frank intellectual exchange. Academic freedom protects this type of free exchange and is thus essential to any university’s mission.

Moreover, academic freedom supports collaborative work in the pursuit of truth and the dissemination of knowledge in an environment of inquiry, respectful debate, and professionalism. Academic freedom is not limited to the classroom or to scientific and scholarly research, but extends to the life of the university as well as to larger social and political questions. It is the right and responsibility of the university community to engage with such issues.

Campus Safety

Kansas State University is committed to providing a safe teaching and learning environment for student and faculty members. In order to enhance your safety in the unlikely case of a campus emergency make sure that you know where and how to quickly exit your classroom and how to follow any emergency directives. Current Campus Emergency Information is available at the University’s Advisory webpage.

Student Resources

K-State has many resources to help contribute to student success. These resources include accommodations for academics, paying for college, student life, health and safety, and others. Check out the Student Guide to Help and Resources: One Stop Shop for more information.

Student Academic Creations

Student academic creations are subject to Kansas State University and Kansas Board of Regents Intellectual Property Policies. For courses in which students will be creating intellectual property, the K-State policy can be found at University Handbook, Appendix R: Intellectual Property Policy and Institutional Procedures (part I.E.). These policies address ownership and use of student academic creations.

Mental Health

Your mental health and good relationships are vital to your overall well-being. Symptoms of mental health issues may include excessive sadness or worry, thoughts of death or self-harm, inability to concentrate, lack of motivation, or substance abuse. Although problems can occur anytime for anyone, you should pay extra attention to your mental health if you are feeling academic or financial stress, discrimination, or have experienced a traumatic event, such as loss of a friend or family member, sexual assault or other physical or emotional abuse.

If you are struggling with these issues, do not wait to seek assistance.

• Kansas State University Counseling and Psychological Services offers free and confidential services to assist you to meet these challenges.
• Lafene Health Center has specialized nurse practitioners to assist with mental health.
• The Office of Student Life can direct you to additional resources.
• K-State Family Center offers individual, couple, and family counseling services on a sliding fee scale.
• Center for Advocacy, Response, and Education (CARE) provides free and confidential assistance for those in our K-State community who have been victimized by violence.

For Kansas State Salina Campus:

• Kansas State Salina Counseling Services offers free and confidential services to assist you to meet these challenges.
• The Kansas State Salina Office of Student Life can direct you to additional resources.
• The Kansas State Salina Campus offers several services for students, including health services, counseling, and academic assistance.

For Global Campus/K-State Online:

• K-State Online students have free access to mental health counseling with My SSP - 24/7 support via chat and phone.
• The Office of Student Life can direct you to additional resources.

University Excused Absences

K-State has a University Excused Absence policy (Section F62). Class absence(s) will be handled between the instructor and the student unless there are other university offices involved. For university excused absences, instructors shall provide the student the opportunity to make up missed assignments, activities, and/or attendance specific points that contribute to the course grade, unless they decide to excuse those missed assignments from the student’s course grade. Please see the policy for a complete list of university excused absences and how to obtain one. Students are encouraged to contact their instructor regarding their absences.

Copyright Notice

©2021 The materials in this online course fall under the protection of all intellectual property, copyright and trademark laws of the U.S. The digital materials included here come with the legal permissions and releases of the copyright holders. These course materials should be used for educational purposes only; the contents should not be distributed electronically or otherwise beyond the confines of this online course. The URLs listed here do not suggest endorsement of either the site owners or the contents found at the sites. Likewise, mentioned brands (products and services) do not suggest endorsement. Students own copyright to what they create.

Original content in the course textbook at https://textbooks.cs.ksu.edu/cis642-643/ is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-SA license by Nathan Bean unless otherwise stated.

CIS 642 Schedule

CIS 643 Schedule

This schedule represents the “idealized” schedule for the semester. For specific dates, refer to the course page on Canvas.