CPSC 355 810, 811 & 19H, Fall 2025 Syllabus

General Information

Instructor:
Dr. Dylan Schwesinger
Office:
Old Main 250; Phone: (484) 646 - 4389
email:
schwesin@kutztown.edu
Web URL:
https://faculty.kutztown.edu/schwesin
Office Hours:
MoTuWeTh 10:00am – 11:00am, Mo 4:30pm – 5:30pm
Meeting Time & Place:
Section 810: MoWe 11:00am – 11:50am, OM 283
Section 811 & 19H: MoWe 12:00pm – 12:50pm, OM 283

Course Description:

This is the second course in a two semester capstone sequence. This course presents the advanced principles of software engineering. Coverage will include the professional responsibilities of the software engineer, implementation, testing, configuration management, and project management. Students will be introduced to different development and testing approaches.

Prerequisite: Completion of CSC354 with a grade of C or better AND a GPA of 2.25 in the CPSC courses

Books (Optional)

Essentials of Software Engineering, Frank Tsui, Orlando Karam, Barbara Bernal, Addison-Wesley, 2014, 4th Edition, ISBN: 978-1449691998

Peopleware: Productive Teams and Projects, Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister, Addison-Wesley Professional, 2014, 3rd Edition, ISBN-13: 978-0321934116

UML Distilled, Martin Fowler, Jones & Bartlett Learning, 2013, 3rd Edition, ISBN: 978-0321193681

Course Objectives

Course Organization

Your participation in the course will involve the following activities:

Regular attendance and class participation are expected. Students are responsible for all material covered in class.

Policies

Final Grade Assignment

There are no letter grades associated with your assignment work in this class. The group work is divided into several two-week sprints. At the beginning of each sprint the group will decide what goals to work on and who is responsible for each task. At the end of each sprint you will evaluate your peers and yourself with respect to the sprint goals. You will receive an individual progress report for each sprint based on your contribution to the given sprint. The final grade assessment will be based on the progress reports. The University Scale will be used in determining letter grades.

Assignments

All assignments are due by the specified day and time. Late assignments will not be accepted. All assignments must include the following information: your name, the course (CPSC 355), semester, year, and assignment number. Programming assignments must follow the Computer Science Documentation Standards.

Project Documents

An essential part of Software Engineering is understanding the client’s requirements and clearly communicating them to the client and your team members. We will develop the following documents: Software Development Plan, Requirements Specification, User Interface Design, Architecture Specification, and Test Plan. Since this is considered a writing intensive course, each student is required to write and revise a portion of each document. The university has a writing center as a free service for students where you can get advice and assistance with writing assignments from any course or subject.

Team Collaboration

You will be working in teams of 3-4 students for CPSC 354 and CPSC 355 to experience team dynamics similar to the work environment. Team presentations, peer evaluations and team evaluations will be part of the process.

Academic Dishonesty

All students should familiarize themselves with the Computer Science Academic Integrity Policy

Assignments will be closely monitored for plagiarism. All infractions will be reported to the department chair. The penalty for cheating will be determined on a case-by-case basis, but it will always be worse than having not turned in the assignment.

Email Correspondence

The preferred method of course communication is email. When sending email, please indicate the course number in the subject line by placing it within square brackets, for example, “[CPSC 355] Need help on Assignment 1”. All email correspondence must sent from your Kutztown University email address. You can expect a response to an email with a properly formatted subject line within 24 hours. An email with an improperly formatted subject line may get no response at all.

Classroom Etiquette

Consideration for your classmates, instructor, and class is expected. Please come to class on time and prepared to learn. There should be no classroom conversations, sleeping, cell phone usage, or other disruptions to the class.

Instructor Assistance

If a student solicits assistance from the instructor and behaves in a disrespectful manner, the instructor reserves the right to refuse assistance until the student can behave in a respectful manner.

Accreditation

Any course work submitted to the instructor (including but not limited to assignments, tests, and projects) may be photocopied and retained for the purpose of assessment, accreditation and quality improvement, after removal of any information identifying the student.

Kutztown University Class Handout Information

Supplemental information from university offices for class handouts and syllabi is located here: Class Handout Information

Note: This syllabus is subject to change at the discretion of the instructor.