CPSC 363 19H & 810, Fall 2026 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:
MoWe 10:00am – 11:30am, TuTh 4:30pm – 5:30m

Meeting Time & Place:
Section 19H & 801: MoWe 12:00pm – 12:50pm, OM 158

Course Description:

This course combines students from computer science and information technology programs with students taking a course offered by another academic department into interdisciplinary teams that solve a problem or create a prototype product within the domain of that application discipline or disciplines. Student teams analyze problems or opportunities in the disciplinary application domain. They use rapid prototyping techniques that combine off-the-shelf software and custom software to create a prototype software system, and they present or exhibit this system to an audience interested in the domain.

Prerequisite: Completion of 18 CSC credits, numbered 120 or higher AND a GPA of 2.25 in the CSC courses AND Junior status.

Course Objectives

Policies

Grading

When you work in a professional setting, your manager does not grade each assignment. Instead, your performance is typically reviewed once a year. During this process, you prepare a written self evaluation, and then you and your manager meet to discuss your performance, potential compensation increases, and your longer term career path.

To prepare you for the professional setting, this course is run as an industry style project. Your assignments will not receive traditional letter grades, and there is no separate attendance or participation grade. Instead, you will receive ongoing feedback from both your peers and me on your work in progress, final submissions, project contributions, attendance, and participation. Throughout the semester, you will be asked to submit brief reflections on the course activities and provide feedback for yourself and your peers.

At the end of the semester, we will meet individually to discuss your learning and evaluate your overall performance based on your mastery of the software engineering learning objectives. Final course grades will follow the University’s grading scale, and plus/minus grading may be applied

Participation

Showing up prepared and ready to engage in the work of the course is assumed as part of your responsibility, and you will find that you will need to be prepared and present to do well with the project assignments.

It is my job to guide you as well as I know how, and it is your job to learn as deeply as you can, including participating actively with your project team and applying the product development theory to your projects.

Team Collaboration

To experience team dynamics similar to the work environment, you will be working in teams of 3 - 5 students. We will scrum at the beginning of each week (or class as needed). Team presentations as well as peer and team evaluations will be part of the process.

Project Documents

Understanding the client’s requirements and clearly communicating them to the client and your team members is an essential part of product development . We will develop streamlined documentation to design, build, test and deploy your projects.

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 363), semester, year, and assignment number. Programming assignments must follow the Computer Science Documentation Standards.

Final Exam

You will participate in the Demo Day December ?th 2026 , afternoon poster session. The final exam will be a presentation of your project and delivery of the product.

All students MUST take the final exam at the scheduled time. Exceptions will be on an individual basis and only for university excused reasons

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 363] 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.

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.