CS-7470 - Mobile & Ubiquitous Computing

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    Reviews


    Semester:

    It’s an awesome course, though it’s offered first time Online in Spring-22 so there will be some improvements along the way.

    NOTE: The course needs a Hardware Kit “ELEGOO UNO Project Super Starter Kit with Tutorial and UNO R3 Compatible with Arduino IDE” order ahead of time.

    -> Grading Scheme: Project: 50% Exames: 20% (10% each) Individual Assignment: 10% Group Exercises (two): 10% (5% each) Class Participation (exercises): 8% Class Participation: (quizes): 2%

    -> Project: It’s the most weighted and important part of the course. You make teams of 3-4 members and use hardware to create a Ubicomp device. Different projects are suggested by the instructor and student skills are matched to make teams. There 2 checkpoints in the project; In the first checkpoint 2 project teams are engaged in a discussion, to present the project and give feedback on each other team’s project.

    At the end of the project, a final report and/or project code and demo are submitted. Students also create 2 videos one after submitting the proposal and one to demonstrate the final project. All project reports are graded so project grade doesn’t only depend on the final report. Teams must work very efficiently on the project and its demands.

    -> Individual Assignment: It’s an essay that shall be of the same quality as a research paper. The topic is usually available in the 2nd or 3rd week of class. Do start working early on it because one needs to explore some research papers to write it. It must be done individually.

    -> Group Exercises: 1st group exercise will need some data processing tasks, knowledge of Jupiter notebook and sci-kit learn, matplotlib etc can help. However, the main task needs to process signal data. It’s the most challenging part of the course given that it is the first assignment in the course and needs a lot of effort. Start it as early as possible.

    2nd group assignment is based on the hardware kit, having some electronics and Arduino knowledge may help but is not needed. This one can be done on time easily. I suggest do start early.

    Class Participation Quizzes and Exercises: The quizzes are unlimited attempts with unlimited time so a brute-force can be done though it seems to change in the future. Usually, the material from lectures is covered in these.

    -> Exams: Exams are open books and need you to provide a solution for a ubicomp use case. At least a week is provided to solve it. I lack some scores in Exam-1 and didn’t submit a regrade which I should have done.

    -> Professor and TA: Professor Thomas Plotez is very cooperating and mentors projects. He, himself schedules meeting with student groups and is available if you are stuck. Also, if you find yourself interested in doing research in Ubicomp, you must attend this class.

    All TAs are very cooperative and ample attention is given to students. In fact, you feel like an On-Campus student. Though I may not get an A in this course, however, I liked the course.


    Semester:

    Wanted to get this out there before the end of the semester in case people are thinking about taking it. First off I want to state that the TA’s and the prof were fantastic for this course, by far some of the most engaged individuals I’ve had the pleasure to learn from after 6 other courses. With that this class is really high level with very little hands on work. There are two “physically” hands on assignments, one of which is a group assignment so unless you just do it on your own you’re getting nothing from it. There is, so far, only individual assignments that touch on how to actually do some of this stuff in the real world. In it you are using RSSI signal strength to triangulate where your phone is (the script given is super shoddy so you’ll probably have to debug it). The vast majority of the class is undergraduate level lectures, which are fairly interesting if you want high level information, and a giant semester spanning group project. And that’s where this falls apart. To me it feels like a semester of weekly meetings and busy work, which if you already do that for your job gets a bit old. With that, I’m actually frustrated that I wasted a semester just reenacting my day job instead of learning something new. Was really hoping to walk out having done some practical hands on work. Probably great as an on campus course but doesn’t work super great online.