CIS 497: Senior Capstone Project
University of Pennsylvania
2024-2025

Course Resources

Important documents, links, and resources for CIS497.

Important documents

  • Project Design Document Due (Submit via Canvas):
          Project Design Document Template
  • Project List: Sugguested Project Idea List
          (Handout)
  • Introduction Slides (Fall 2009) :
           PDF | PPT

Frequently Asked Questions:

  • How do I find an idea? The project should be something you were not able to do before you entered the Digital Media Design Program. There must be a 'coding' component and the project cannot be entirely 'art based'. We have supplied a project suggestion hand-out see what is both interesting AND not-interesting on the list. Supply a couple novel ideas. Send this to the instructors (Dr. Badler and Joe Kider) who will help brain-storm and refine your ideas.

  • Are team projects allowed? Teams with 1 - 2 members are most desirable. Larger team projects are not likely to be approved.

  • Can I have a project advisor from outside the Norm and CG@Penn? Yes, but we will likely require an additional advisor within the CG@PENN who can evaluate your work from a CIS and graphics perspective.

  • How often and what should I put on my blog? We have invited a variety of industry experts, CG@Penn faculty and graduate students to read your blogs. They should be professional, short, and result driven. Please post (at least) 1x a week by 11:59PM Thursday. Movies and screenshots are HIGHLY encouraged to show your progress. If something does not work out the way you expect it, post it with questions or your solution idea. We want to see the work progress. See examples below.

  • What is a buddy blog? This year we are encouraging you to read and post comments on each other's blogs. We expect you to post a comment to help your peers. We will encourage a buddy, similar project to yours where applicable; however feel free to comment on anyone's blog. We read the comments /questions as well.

Example Blogs

Here are some examples of recent senior design blogs. They are exceptional and show what you should be striving for in your posts. Notice the examples, summary of what happened, what the problems were, example movies of problems, etc. This shows us how your project has progressed week by week over the course of the semester. Remember this is a full semester project and you should work (at least) 10-12 hours on it weekly.


Subversion:

Please take measures to backup your code. This is a large project and you should get in the habit of good programming practices now. Subversion is a version control system, which allows you to keep old versions of files and directories (usually source code) and keep a log of who, when, and why changes occurred, etc. It is similar to CVS or RCS. CETS has a great tutorial "How do I use Subversion?" on your eniac accounts.


Find References / Related Work:

Your proposal document should introduce your topic and the associated key concepts. Motivate your ideas and summarize what has been done previously. Always, use respected and academic resources whenever possible - but make sure they are relevant to your project domain. So if your writing a game, you should cite work from previous games from the "Game Developer Conference", etc. SIGGRAPH is a great starting spot. Add resources as deemed necessary. TIP: use a reference manager to track everything for yourself, both references and notes on the work. We suggest a tool like JabRef, websites like ACM and Xplore give you the BIBTEX source to make the addition very easy. Always check what the paper cites itself, and who cites the paper. ACM, Google Scholar give you links to search these quickly online.


Academic Misconduct

Academic misconduct such as cheating will not be tolerated.! Always cite and be up front if you use and build off other's work or code. Starter code, specialized libaries, OBJ loaders.. are acceptable when cited. If you are unsure - check. Plagiarism - What it is and how to avoid it. The work you submit in this class is expected to be your own. If you submit work that has in part or in whole been copied from some published or unpublished source (including current or former students), or that has been prepared by someone other than you, or that in any way misrepresents somebody else's work as your own, you will face severe discipline by the university.

General Information

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