Wed, 25th Oct 2017, 01:57 An experimental offering of courses in the Spring
My students, This is something that I think you should be aware of. Professors Valvano and Gligoric, with the strong approval of the faculty, are going to do a coordinated treatment of EE319K and EE312 in the Spring. Normally, the follow-on to EE306 is EE319K, our first embedded systems course, and the first programming course (EE312) is taken in the sophomore year. There is an attempt among the faculty to try to coordiate courses to show that concepts learned in one course can shed light on concepts learned in other courses. That is, the courses in our curriculum are not islands unto themselves. The dept will undertake a pilot program this Spring with one of the EE319K sections (taught by Professor Valvano) and one of the EE312 sections (taught by Professor Gligoric) coordinating their lectures to show the linkages between the two. Students wishing to take advantage of this experiment would be taking both EE319K and EE312 in the Spring, instead of waiting until next year to take EE312. The workload will be heavy, but you will learn a lot. Both Professors are serious teachers. I will spend a couple of minutes on this at the start of class tomorrow. Meanwhile, I am including here a message from Professor Valvano. See you in class tomorrow. Yale Patt ============================= EE312/EE319K Combined Experience During the Spring 2018 semester, Professors Milos Gligoric and Jonathan Valvano will teach special sections of EE312 and EE319K in an integrated manner. To join the adventure you must register for both sections for the Spring 2018 semester. EE306 is the only prerequisite. There are two goals for this experience: A) Because many topics of the two classes overlap, we believe teaching them during the same semester will be more effective. Topics introduced in one class can be reinforced in the other; B) Taking EE312 earlier in your academic career will improve chances for internships. For more information, see http://users.ece.utexas.edu/~valvano/CombinedExperience.htm Reasons for joining our adventure 1) If you are interested in internships in the computer or software fields, taking EE312 earlier will provide an advantage 2) If you plan to select Computer Architecture/Embedded Systems or Software Engineering as your primary tech core, this experience willspeed your entry into advanced classes in these cores. It is not, however, a requirement for you to be interested in CAES or SE to participate in the pilot; all ECE students are invited. Reasons for not joining our adventure 1) You do not like to develop software 2) You are really struggling in EE306. If you find the whole software development process a complete mystery, you may find the two-semester sequence (instead of the pilot) easier to handle. If you are interested in this experiment, please provide your name, EID on the following Qualtrics survey at https://utexas.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_b2ByHMOXiRxtNOJ. If more than 75 students apply we will select 75 students in a random lottery. -Jonathan Valvano