My experience tells me that in a course like this an active (i.e. design, code test, etc.) is better than a passive one (read the literature and regurgitate). There are always exceptions, but I have seen many cases in past courses where “literature search” papers tend to be enumerations of facts read, with little of the student’s own analysis and “putting himself in it.” Overall, my experience is that the ones who really get involved in it do the better work and end up with the better grades.

The project has to relate, somehow, to the main topic of the course, namely realtime systems and programming languages.

“Scoping” the project is always difficult. You don’t want something absolutely trivial, but you don’t want a doctoral dissertation either. You're trying to satisfy roughly one 3-credit course, so don’t try to solve all the world’s problems at once. I don’t play silly games myself, though; if you propose something and run into a snag or it leads you into something more interesting, I won’t hold you to deliver exactly what you propose. If the outcome of a project is entirely well-defined at proposal time, it’s probably not a very interesting project, right?You must keep in close touch with me on this, though.

Proposals have to be reasonably well thought out, not just “spun off” the top of your head. This is one reason why we have public proposals. Think in terms of five to ten minutes and five foils for your public proposal. Allowing for slippage and interesting questions for the proposers, this gets us done in one evening. Write up in a brief report (2-3 double-spaced pages is fine) what you’re planning to work on, for my benefit and your own.

A project need not be individual. If a small group wants to work together, and the whole will be greater than the sum of the parts, I will go along with it.

If you are taking another project course and can find a way to tie the two projects together, this is fine as long as both teachers agree.

Your public progress report must be ready for your report day. I will consider requests for incompletes, but only if you have finished the programming exercises, are making obvious progress on your project, and there is clear and persuasive evidence that another couple of weeks will turn an already satisfactory project into an outstanding one. I will usually refuse incompletes in cases where the student has let the project go until the end of the term and gets into a “crunch.”