Contents

The Plan

We have a few mechanical bits to perfect for our "flowers".  We also need to make sure the code is stable and loaded on all nodes that we will use in our demonstration the next day.  Finally, I want to discuss the class for a few minutes and try to get any advice, thoughts, and reflections on how we might improve such a class for next year. 

Discussion

The discussion this week is focused on how we can better organize future courses to further allow the students to develop the constraints and design goals for a project target that is attainable in a 10-week period. 

This class has proven interesting and fun but can always be improved.  Part of the challenge in teaching the course is to let the students define and constrain the problem, rather than the instructor just handing out a neatly arranged set of tasks that work towards a pre-determined goal. 

This course did follow a path of investigation and implementation in an area that has never been done before.  That was the goal and we succeeded to a large degree in accomplishing that goal. 

We will discuss how future classes could further this effort or benefit from our experiences in this course. 

Lab

This week we will mount the BrainStems to the stalks of our flowers, mount the servos to the tips, and then build up the flowers themselves and mount them along with the light and ultrasonic sensors in the head.  We should have completed nodes by the end of this class.  If not, we need to meet later in the day or stick around to complete them for the demonstration the next day. 

Any coding changes should probably wait until we have completed nodes to work with so we can make changes to the final design, not an intermediate. 

Assignment

The assignment this week is to finish up each node and get the demonstration completed. 

Your final for this course is pretty simple.  I need some feedback on the following questions via email.  Please copy both Steve and Art on this email and answer the following questions:

1.  Overall, how would you rate this course on a scale of 1 to 10?

2.  Given the level of participation by you and your peers, what grade do you think you deserve in the course based on your contribution?

3.  Was the notion of a message board for questions and the course outline in web form different than you have seen in the past? Was it helpful? How could it be improved? Please don't focus on how the forums are coded or the layout of the website...  stick to the notion of these as tools for teaching. 

4.  What was the best part of the class?

5.  What could be improved?

6.  Any other comments?

Revision History:

• 2009-03-11: Initial Post

Related Links:

Main page for the University of Oregon Winter 2009 407/507 course