Homework: Mid-Semester Review

Learning objective: The goal of this homework is to replace the review function of the mid-semester exam. Mid-semester exams traditionally perform two functions: (1) serving as a basis for course grades, and (2) encouraging combination and perspective of individual topics by reviewing all material in a short period of time. In this course per-lecture quizzes perform (1), and this homework is intended to perform (2). Please take this homework seriously, because this is the part where you put all the pieces together. In particular, please think about the question you want to have answered in class. Think of this as studying for a mid-term without the stress of actually having to take a mid-term exam as we have done in previous course offerings.

This homework is NOT optional -- you must complete this homework to earn a passing grade in this course. Note that you have extra weeks to complete this homework to help you manage mid-semester workload.

20-1: If you had ONE thing out of the entire first half of the course (weeks 1-6) that you want the professor to explain or explain again in class, what would it be? Ask a clear and concise question on a specific point if at all possible. Paste in a screen grab of the relevant slide from the web version of the lectures (or other soruce) on the slide following your answer so it is right there to talk about. We'll cover as many as possible of these in class, so make your question count!
HINT: do this after you do question #2. But we make this question #1 because we need to this on your first hand-in slide for our lecture preparation.

20-2: For the guest speakers, list the FIVE most interesting things you learned. (Ideally, trace the thing back to a particular speaker, but if you're not sure where you heard it then just list the thing you remember.)

20-3: For each primary lecture in the first half of the course (lectures #1-#20) except the administrative lecture lectures, produce a summary of the following points. For this question, your hand-in should have one slide per lecture (even if that leaves empty space on some slides). Skip the AV lectures. Each slide should have both the lecture number and title (e.g., "9. Requirements") at the top of the slide, and then contain the bullets listed below on the rest of the slide:

• Five most important take-away points from the lecture, in your own words (ideally 5 one-line bullets). While it might be tempting to paraphrase from the first/last lecture slides, we instead encourage you to dig a little deeper and really make sure you understand the material as you prepare for the mid-term test. Ask yourself "if I were studying for a test" (which you would otherwise be), "what would be the most important points to remember from this lecture?" You can put in 6 or 7 if you really want to.
• List the one biggest open question you have about the material at this point, taking into account other lectures and project work. (To be clear: we know that sometimes concepts might have been fuzzy during a particular lecture, such as exactly how to create effective statecharts. What we're looking for is what remaining uncertainty or doubts remain now that you've done all the other course activities leading up to the mid-term exam.) If there are two concepts that you really feel are fuzzy it's OK to list more than one, but try to keep it high level. We'd expect that one of these should be what you promote to the One Big Question slide for the first question in this assignment.

Note: Only material from numbered lectures is in-scope for this assignment. You can ask a question about an in-class presentation, AV lecture or other material on the first slide if you prefer, but you do not have to prepare review slides for anything except official numbered primary course lectures. A number of topics in the Toyota UA lecture will appear in the second half of the course (e.g., SIL, MISRA Guidelines, Faults, FCRs, concurrency, use of redundant processors, single points of failure), so we suggest you don't use your one question slide on these topics and don't concentrate on those aspects for that lecture.

Rubric:

• One slide: question you want discussed in class, with supporting material
• One slide: FIVE interesting things you learned from guest speakers.
• Other slides: one slide per lecture #1, #3-#20. Omit admin lecture #2 which is non-technical. Omit the AV lectures numbered 100 and above. EACH of these slides must have five take-away points and a per-lecture question.