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Catalog Description

Course Objectives

Prerequisites

Class Location

Grading

Assignments

Additional Information

Schedule of Assignments and Events

Contact Information/Office Hours

Texts

• Refactoring (2nd ed.) by Fowler, Pearson (2019) ISBN 978-0134757599 (Required).
• Head First Design Patterns by Freeman, Ingram/O'Reilly (2004) ISBN 978-0596007126 (Required).

Software

• A software development environment for your language of choice (C++, C#, Java, Python). Code for this course must be object-oriented. (Required, but your choice.)
• General software requirements are described on the Online Learning page.
• All students who meet the prerequisites for this course will already have software development experience, and will therefore already be familiar with some software development environment. Students are welcome to use the environment of their choice, but if they wish suggestions, they are welcome to contact the professor.

Other Resources

• One reference for Test-Driven Development (TDD) is the Wikipedia. Additional references and external links are included with this web page.
• You will need a suitable computer. The University's Computer Recommendations are appropriate for this course for Windows and macOS. If you use the Linux operating system for this course, the recommendations for Windows computers will also be suitable for Linux.
• Please see the Online Learning page for more information regarding expected student student access to the Internet, and corresponding software.
• Please see the Mercer's Distance Learning page for more information regarding expected student student access to the internet, and corresponding software.
• TBD

Course Description

• Evaluation of design quality and the impact of design quality on software maintenance and incremental development. Improvement of design quality in existing code. Advanced topics in object-oriented design, including the reuse of successful designs via design patterns..
• This Online Learning course begins on August 18, 2020 at 8:00 am Eastern time. All assignments are due by the end (11:59:00 pm) of the specified calendar day in the Eastern time zone. This course ends at 11:59:00 pm on December 8, 2020, in the Eastern time zone.

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Course Objectives

Breadth and Depth in Defining, Analyzing, and Solving Complex Problems:

• After successfully completing this course, you should be able to demonstrate a basic capability to apply refactoring and design patterns to solve complex problems.

Communicate Technical Aspects of the Solution for Complex Software Engineering Problems to a Technical Audience:

• After successfully completing this course, you should be able to demonstrate a basic ability to communicate regarding the application of refactoring and design patterns to a technical audience.

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Prerequisite(s)

• SSE 550 Object-Oriented Design I
• This prerequisite provides one graduate-level 3 semester hour course in C++ or Java or C#.
• Please see the Online Learning page for more information regarding expected student abilities and aptitudes.

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Class Location

• This course is entirely online.
• Please see the Canvas page for information regarding access to Canvas, Mercer's online learning system. Please note that the Canvas contents for this course are in addition to this syllabus, and do not substitute for this syllabus.

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Grading

Item	Percent of Term Grade
Project 1	25
Project 2	25
Project 3	35
Project 4	10
Canvas Discussion Contributions	5

• More information about project grading is contained in the General Project Rubric .

• Canvas Discussion Contributions are graded as follows:
• They must be substantive technical contributions, useful and informative to people in the course, on topic with the course material.
• They must be posted in Canvas while the course is in session (August 18 - December 8, 2020).
• They must be at least six in number.
• Credit will be given only for original work.
• The Office of the Provost's "Academic Integrity page includes a link to the Graduate Honor Code, which covers issues such as plagiarism. Please take a good, careful look at the Graduate Honor Code. Plagiarism is not acceptable in this, or any, course.

• Project reports are to be submitted complete, not as incremental partial submissions.
• Instruction Time
• All course work time is categorized as either Direct or Non-Direct (but not both). More information about the Direct and Non-Direct categories is contained in the Direct and Non-Direct and Report Logs. Please read these pages very carefully.
• The SACSCOC (our accrediting agency's) standard (minimum) for a three credit course such as this is 2250 minutes of direct activity and 4500 minutes of non-direct activity per semester. These minima add up to 6750 minutes of activity per semester.
• Please begin logging your time as specified on these pages, starting wherever you are in the course when you receive this notice (via Canvas). These logs will not be deliverables for this course.
• These reports are not deliverable.
• All deliverables are due on their assigned dates .
• Deliverables submitted no more than one day late may be graded, but with a 10 point penalty .
• Deliverables submitted more than one day (24 hours) late will receive a grade of zero.
• Manage your time and keep on schedule. You should schedule your work evenly throughout the term.

If you have a question about any of this, please ask.

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Assignments

• Purpose of projects:
• Use the projects to develop your capabilities, and
• Use the projects to demonstrate your capabilities.
• Deliverables for all projects:
• Projects shall be delivered via Canvas.
• Project reports should each be a single, standalone .pdf document, with the Bookmark feature used to support easy document navigation. Note that both MS Word and LibreOffice Write (which is free open-source software) support bookmarks, and will carry the bookmarks over into the pdf document when they convert your .docx, .odf, or whatever file type to PDF.
• Project reports should focus on the development and/or maintenance that you actually do. Reports should not focus on summarizing or explaining the text or other materials.
• Inclusion of screenshots demonstrating your work, such as showing test execution and results, is appropriate. But code must not be presented in screenshots. Code must be presented as text which can be searched using the "find" or "search" capability of the app (e.g., Acrobat Reader) that will be used to read your report. Long code listings can be placed in appendices if doing so does not interfere with you presenting your work on that code in the body of the text.
• Your report should be organized in such a way as to make the topics that you want credit for covering easy to find, and demonstrate your capabilities clearly and convincingly. Everything you want considered for credit, including code and tests (including test results), should be included in the report.
• Each project can be a single, integrated project that tries to actually do something, or a collection of exercises that demonstrate your capabilities but don't accomplish anything else, or any combination of these two alternatives that you find convenient, unless otherwise specified in the assignment.
• You may include other material outside of the report, if you wish, but this material may or _may not_ be considered in evaluating your work.
• For each capability that you demonstrate within a report or major section of that report, you may present only the final result of your work; you need not demonstrate every step in the development of that result.
• Use IEEE standards to cite references How to Cite References: IEEE Documentation Style. Careful attention to this will help you to avoid plagiarism.
• Some suggestions for doing a project are contained in the One Way to Do a Project page.
• You may arrange the teamwork pretty much as you please. The team members should develop a single deliverable report.
• Project 1 (Team)
  • Form your team.
  • Two member teams are strongly preferred. Each team member is to report to me, privately, via email, their estimate of the percentage of them team's work done by each team member at the end of the term. Estimates are to be independent.
  • You may form your own teams. Announce your team's composition via email.
  • Each team member will use the same version control system, so choose it carefully!
  • Each team member will use the same programming language. (Teams programming in .NET languages may mix C++ and C#, both based on .NET, if they wish.)
  • In parallel:
  • Each individual should get their own version control software (the same version control software as their team mates) working for them. That is, they should start developing software using that system.
  • Each individual should study the TDD references listed at Other Resources.
  • After getting version control working and studying TDD, each individual should develop one or more example apps using version control and TDD. Many IDE's support TDD tools (e.g, JUnit for Java, others for Python). Each individual can choose the TDD unit test tool they prefer. Choose carefully! Some, such as CppUnit, are reportedly not well supported now. For C++, Google Test may be a better alternative.
  • The team portions of this project are the selection of team members, programming language, and DVCS. Each individual will develop his/her own example apps, and write and submit her/his own Project 1 report.
• Project 2 (Team)
  • Find some code in your selected language (Java, C#, Python, or C++) that you can refactor for this project. (Hint: the source code for Junit, Nunit, or CppUnit would not be an appropriate choice. Otherwise, open source software may be a good source of code to refactor.)
  • Develop and demonstrate your capabilities in the topics covered in Fowler.
  • Use an automated tool such as Junit or another to implement your test-first testing as part of refactoring.
• Project 3 (Team)
  • Demonstrate the six design patterns (not including Singleton) covered in the assigned readings in "Head First Design Patterns".
  • If you include a pattern that is partially or wholly included in a programming language (such as Observer or Iterator in Java), then do and present your own implementation of that pattern (those patterns); don't just apply what someone else has already programmed (such as Java's event handling capabilities for Observer).
  • For each design pattern, explain in detail what your alternative design would be, and what problem with that design the use of this pattern solves (if it does).
  • Explain in detail what is good about your Design Pattern (DP)-based design, and what is problematic about your DP-based design.
  • Create implementations for your designs, and test them in such a way that you clearly demonstrate the success of your design.
  • Presume that you are writing your report to convince a hiring manager with whom you will otherwise have no contact that you are competent in the topics covered in this assignment. Assume that this manager is an experienced and intelligent software developer, but has not read our text. Presume that this manager is skeptical, and that your report will have to be clearly convincing in supporting your claim that you are competent (in the topics covered in this assignment). Clarity, completeness, and correctness count, as does your coverage of design patterns. You probably can't cover all of the DPs in the text, so make a judicious selection from among them.
  • As a check on how well you are doing with regard to convincing that hypothetical manager of your competence, try to reverse roles in your own mind. Imagine that you are the manager, and your success/raise/continued employment depend on you hiring someone who does this job well. How well does the report convince you that the person who wrote it really can "do patterns" well?
  • If you create new designs for an existing piece of code, include this code in your report.
  • If you create new designs for an existing piece of code, you may use any piece of code that you wish, subject to conformance to any legal requirements (e.g., don't release anyone's proprietary code), and the dictates of morality, ethics, and good taste.
  • Manage the scope; don't try to do something too big or too small.
• Project 4 (Team)
  • Perform a Production Quality Review of another team's Project 3 report code.
  • Create your own review criteria, including the quality pointers in your refactoring and design patterns textbooks.
  • Be constructively critical. Do find problems, and document them, including your proposed resolutions to those problems. We find problems, and report them, to help our peers to improve the product.

Please raise questions and issues via Canvas.

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Additional Information

• Asynchronous Learning Nets (ALNs):
• Self Study: You study the texts and any other course study material on your own.
• Collaborative Projects: After your self-study, you collaborate (communicating via whatever means the team members find acceptable) with your partner(s) to produce a team product. Your collaborative work is substantial, asynchronous, and rapid.

This course is an online learning course. Please read this Online Learning web page regarding online learning in this course and this program.

• What Do I Do?
• Login in to the course on Canvas before the second day of class.
• Study the assigned material.
• Write and read Canvas messages about ideas, problems and solutions to do with the assigned study material.
• Do the assigned work, deliver the assigned deliverables.
• Write and read Canvas messages about ideas, problems, projects, and solutions to do with the assigned homework.

Review the deliverables, which will be made available in the "Files" section of the course on Canvas, produced by other people.

Changes to this Syllabus:

There will be changes to this syllabus, so check back frequently, and don't forget to hit "Reload" or "Refresh".

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Schedule of Assignments and Events (tentative)

Start Date	End Date	Activity/Event
August 18, 2020	December 8, 2020	Course in Progress
	August 18, 2020	Login in to the course on Canvas.
August 18, 2020	September 7, 2020	Work on Project 1
	September 7, 2020	Project 1 due
	October 5, 2020	Project 2 due
	November 9, 2020	Project 3 due
	December 8, 2020	Project 4 due Course ends

Notes: The course begins at 8:00 am on the first day of class (see schedule above), and ends at 11:59:00 pm on the last day of class. Assignments are due at any time during the day specified on the schedule, that is, before 11:59:00 pm on that day. All times are Macon, Georgia (Eastern time zone) times.

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Contact Information

• My Name: Dr. Paul E. MacNeil
• My E-mail: macneil_pe@mercer.edu .
• OfficeHours
• My Office Phone: 478 301-2185
• US Mail:
•  
• Dr. Paul E. MacNeil
• School of Engineering
• Mercer University
• 1501 Mercer University Drive

Macon, GA 31207

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Important Additional Information:

"Disability Statement for Syllabus"

"Students in need of accommodation due to a disability should contact the Access and Accommodation Office to complete the verification process to become approved for services. In order to receive accommodations, each term, students will request accommodation and faculty notification forms through the Access Office online system Accommodate. Students are strongly encouraged to schedule a meeting with each professor in a timely manner to discuss arrangements. Accommodations are not retroactive in nature. Note - Disability accommodations or status are not reflected on academic transcripts. Students with a history of a disability, perceived as having a disability or with a current disability who do not wish to use academic accommodations are also strongly encouraged to complete the verification process with the Access Office.

Students must request accommodations in a timely manner to receive accommodations in a timely manner."

"Mental Health and Wellness Statement for Syllabus"

"Mental Health and Wellness: Mercer University faculty and staff recognize that mental health concerns can impact academic performance and interfere with daily life activities. Please notify your faculty member or academic advisor for academic assistance, as needed. CAPS can also provide support if you’re feeling stressed, overwhelmed, anxious, depressed, lost or are struggling with personal issues. Please call or visit the Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) website for more information. These services are free and confidential, and support non-traditional, graduate, and undergraduate students. Students at Regional Academic Center locations may call a CAPS Office for assistance in finding local services (that may charge for their services) if distance to either campus creates challenges. CAPS locations include: MACON – Linden House (attached to the MEP Residence Hall), 478-301-2862; ATLANTA – 215 Sheffield Student Center, 678-547-6060."

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Accreditation: Mercer University is accredited by SACSCOC.