In order to be officially enrolled for the course each student need to write (and submit) an individual course plan including grading goals and assessments based on this document.
Assignments are mandatory (as detailed in the README.md).
- Each student should for each assigment 2,3,4 comment (make an `issue` and/or `pull request` to one other `git`). Comments should be meaningful and constructive. For the assigment 2, 3, 4 you should comment on different groups. Strive to spread comments so that each group will get at least one comment for each assignment.
- Each student/group should attend `issues`/`pull request`
Projects should aim to further cover the learning goals as stated in the README.md.
## Blooms taxonomy
Blooms taxonomy assess the (increasing) level of understanding as:
- Remember
- Understand
- Apply
- Evaluate
- Create.
(In the original taxonomy Evaluate was set at a higher level than Create.)
Well its not the only one.
## The SOLO taxonomy
The SOLO taxonomy can be summarised:
- Prestructural - Incompetence: fail, incompetent, missing the point
- Multistructural - Several relevant inedendent aspects: combine, describe, enumerate, perform serial skills, list
- Relational - Aspects integrated into a structure: analyze, apply, argue, compare/contrast, critisze, explain causes, relate, justify,
- Extended Abstract - Asprects generalized to new domain: create, formulate, generate, hypothesize, reflect, theorize
The advantage of the SOLO taxonomy is that you have progression towards generalization (while the Bloom taxonomy allows progression in isolation).
How can such "mumbo jumbo" be useful towards setting the goals and assessment criteria for Your project? Project assessment is not an easy task and there is no single correct answer to it, so let's study an example.
---
## Example HW AES Support for cortex-m.
- Grade 5. The project aims to `create` an API and library allowing end user memory safe access to the underlying AES hardware of the target platform. The API will provide the features A, B, C, and D, with correcness argued from the evaluation.
- Grade 4. The API/library will be based on an `evalution` (analysis) or requirements and possible solutions based on the Rust Memory model and the `cortex-m-rtfm` task/resource model.
- Grade 3. Low level access to the AES hardware, by `applying`, provided primitives by the Rust language and the `cortex-m-rtfm` library.
---
## Grading
So basically for grade 3 you show that you understand and can apply known methods and provided material. For grade 4, you show that you can make judgements on designs choices. And for grade 5, you put it all together, practical understaning and theoretical judgements. For the example for grade 5, you will show to combine knowledge and understanding of both software and hardware architecture and the theoretical concerns of a sound implementation.
Assessment/evalutation is individual. If you work together in a group, you should detail the description, e.g., student X will focus on the features A and B, while studen Y will focucs C and D.
## Amount versus quality.
The amount of work required to make a complete solution is VERY hard to predict (even industry stuggles with such questions). However in industry a track record of previous projects serves as a baseline, here we face a much harder problem, You are likely new to the topic.
Thus, if you along the project see that covering a complete solution (in this case features A-D) is out of reach (or that when doing the grade 3 you find that B and D is not possible for some reason) you are free to make restrictions (meaning that its ok to drop features provided a motivation). However quality is not to be compromised. Shortcutting the design/evaluation in favour of more features is NOT getting you a higher grade. Ultimatetely, you can still get a grade 5, even if the project fails to meet its goals (provided that the quality of the work done holds up). This is where industry and academia largly differs!
## Engineering
You are becoming engineers, to that end I believe Bloom's taxonomy to a good fit (simle to apply), you will become experts at engineering in your field. Of course this does not prohibit generalization, but the point here is NOT to show the socioeconamical impact and political issues of AES encryption, but rather to engineer a solution. (Actually, we are subject to political issues regarding AES - due to US export restrictions the Nucleo boards are shipped without HW AES, but thats another story.)
# Instructions, what to turn in
For each student
Create a git with a README.md with
- Course name : "d7018e - special studies in embedded systems"
- name, mail address and personal number
- title of your project
- project description (here you may share text with your partner) and grading goals (individual)
I will give feedback to the git (an issue). When we have an agreement you will print the READE.md as a `pdf` and send to edusrt@ltu.se (with the title "d7018e - special studies in embedded systems", so you can be officially admitted and enrolled.
