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Syllabus
AAE 551 Design Theory and
Methods for Aerospace Systems
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SYLLABUS [Reading Assignments, Discussion and Projects] [Collaboration
and
Academic Integrity] |
AAE
551 WEB PAGES |
Policies
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Attendance
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The University Regulations Handbook reads: "Students are expected to be present for every meeting of the classes in which they are enrolled." If you must miss a class, you are responsible for the reading material, discussion, assignments and/or announcements made. Because the course has a strong in-class discussion component, excessive absence from the class will negatively affect the participation portion of the grade. For class participation purposes, the instructor may also examine student activity on the Blackboard site for the course. |
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Campus
Emergencies
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In
the event of a major campus emergency, course
requirements, deadlines and grading percentages are subject
to changes
that may be necessitated
by a revised semester calendar or other circumstances. Information about these changes
will be available
from the public
website for this course, the Blackboard
Learn
page, via my e-mail (crossley (at) purdue.edu) or my
office phone (765-496-2872). |
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Reading
Assignments, Discussion and Projects
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The
course
format is that of a reading / discussion / project course. During most class periods,
the students and instructor will discuss the related
reading
assignments. The Blackboard
Learn
page shows the reading assignments for the days they will be discussed.
Check the Blackboard Learn
page often, as the schedule and assignments will change as
the semester
progresses. Access
to Blackboard Learn is restricted to students currently
enrolled in the
course. AAE 551 will not have traditional exams. |
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Discussion and Notebooks |
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During
each class period, the students and instructor will
discuss the
assigned reading material. The
timing
of these papers appears in the calendar on the Blackboard
Learn
page. Students are
expected to read the papers BEFORE the
class period and must be prepared to participate. All
class
members should be prepared to contribute on points like
the following.
The
majority of the discussion should focus on assisting the
entire class
to bring themselves to a level at which they can
evaluate the topics. This evaluation may include how the
topics relate
to previous class discussions, how and where they fit into
aerospace
design and the aerospace design process, how the topics
may improve the
design process, and the practicality of the topics.
Keep in
mind that not everyone will share the same point of view.
Because
class discussions will comprise a major portion of
knowledge
acquisition for this course, it is important for all class
members to
be prepared to participate during class. Maintaining a
dedicated
notebook will help facilitate good class discussions. Use the
following guidelines in preparing your notebooks:
This
instructor will collect your notebooks during the semester
as part of
evaluating student participation in the class discussions. Depending upon the
feasibility, the instructor may transition this to a
journal or similar
tool on Blackboard. |
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Projects
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Students will complete five projects during the semester; one corresponding to each major design “theme”. These projects will provide students with the opportunities to practice some of the design methods and work with some of the design tools encountered during the semester. While small teams of students will conduct the work needed for each project, students in the course must submit their own, individually written document. The project assignments will be available from the Blackboard Learn page for viewing, but students will submit their written reports via Purdue's Gradient tool. Gradient allows for peer evaluation of the written assignments and includes a self assessment; these features provide advantages for the course. The reports will be due at 11:50pm on the due date. The calibration, peer evaluation, and self assessment steps will begin at 12:00am, 10 minutes after the due date. Students will have approximately one week to complete these additional steps in Gradient. Should students wish to use the SafeAssign tool to check their projects for issues about properly citing references, etc., the project reports can be uploaded to Blackboard, but reports uploaded to Blackboard will not be graded. |
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Final
Project
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A final project concludes the course. In the spirit of this replacing the final examination of everything you learned in the course, this final project allows students to demonstrate knowledge gained in the class and how the various themes and methods covered in the course are linked in a design cycle sequence. |
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Late
Submittals
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AAE 551 will use Gradient to facilitate peer
evaluation of the written projects, so late projects
cannot be submitted. If
there are extenuating
circumstances beyond the student’s control (e.g., illness,
family
emergency, bereavement, etc.), the instructor will
determine an alternative way to accept late project
reports. |
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Collaboration
and
Academic Integrity
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Collaboration with other students for most of the AAE 551 projects will be a necessity. Most engineering design activities take place with teams of engineers, and most of the methods covered in class include features or aspects to foster the “social” aspect of team-based design. However, each student is responsible for completing his / her own project report. All submitted work must be demonstrably independent from that of other students (e.g., have the same tables, design matrices, concept sketches, etc. as your teammates is expected, but the discussion text for each student needs to demonstrate that student’s individual thought about the topic covered in the project). Plagiarism of other available literature – or copying from reports of students enrolled in previous offerings of AAE 551- in the projects is not acceptable. The instructor will use plagiarism detection software to screen work submitted by the students. Students may often find that they need to cite and / or use statements from available published work in their AAE 551 project reports; in these cases, the student should use a proper citation format. If copying and / or plagiarism is detected, this will result minimally with a failing or zero grade for that particular assignment and, at the instructor’s discretion, may result in a failing grade for the course. Additionally, as recommended by the Provost’s office, all incidents of academic misconduct will be forwarded to the Office of Student Rights and Responsibilities (OSRR), where university penalties, including removal from the university, may be considered. Students may report issues of abuse of or violation of academic integrity that they observe through the Office of the Dean of Students (http://www.purdue.edu/odos/) by calling 765-494-8778 or by email to integrity@purdue.edu |
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Course
Grades
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Because
this course will be a reading / discussion / project
class, grades will
be based on your ability:
Computation
of
final course grades will use the following distribution:
(NOTE: Per
the in-class discussion on Thu 22 Mar 2017, the grading
scheme has been updated to reflect four projects and the
discussion / participation / notebook as five equally
contributing parts to the final grade. There will
be no separate final project for the Spring 2017
semester) The
projects
here involve using design methods to address problems with
no
single correct answer and providing an assessment of these
methods with
no single correct perspective, so the grading of the
course will
account for this. The course will use
the peer-evaluation tool Gradient to assign scores for
each project. While the intent is to use the
Gradient score directly as the project score, the
instructor retains the right to override the Gradient
score in situations where this is appropriate. The
instructor
will not award “numerical points” for
each project or for the participation / notebook score;
rather, he
will assign a letter grade based on your participation in
class and on the assessment of your notebook. Each of
these grades will
then be converted to a numerical score, as shown in the
table below. For
grades below C-, the same interval concept will apply.
Using
the
converted numerical scores for course participation and
the projects
following the distribution given above, final letter
grades for the
course will use the table below. The
total numerical score will be rounded to the nearest
integer percent.
For grades below C-, the same interval will apply.
Grade
assignment will use a criterion (straight-scale) approach,
but the
instructor reserves the right to curve the grades if
appropriate. Under no
circumstance will
the scale be more stringent than the criterion given below
(e.g. 93% or
above will always earn an A), and the curve will never
span more than
one grade scale (e.g. the lowest A possible when grades
are curved is
83%). A total score
of 50% or lower will always fail. If students have a concern about a grade on their report, they should bring it to the attention of the instructor as soon as possible. Students must make requests for reconsideration / regrading within one week of when the project score becomes available to the students. |
Course
Materials
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There is
no required textbook for the course.
Students will receive several papers and excerpts
from books for assigned reading. Reading
material
will be available from the Blackboard
Learn
site;
access is limited to students currently enrolled in the
course. Students
are to read this material BEFORE the material is discussed.
All students should be prepared to participate in
the class discussions; please see the discussion
description
above
for additional information. |