CIS-332 -- Principles of Operating Systems
Professor: Franz J. Kurfess
Home page:http://www.cis.njit.edu/franz E-mail:franz@cis.njit.edu
Project CIS 332
One of your assignments for the course is a project,
contributing 20% to your overall grade. For your project,
you can choose between three options:
- construction of a World Wide Web page (team project)
- a research paper
- a community service project
These options are described in more detail below.
Those of you interested in community service should
contact the Office of Community and Public Service (Ext. 3642;
please follow the deadlines and format for the research paper.
You have to submit the project in two stages:
first a short outline or draft version in which you describe the structure
of your paper / program / Web page(s), and then the final
version, which is the full paper, complete program, or
complete set of Web pages.
The deadlines are
- Tuesday, October 24, 1997 for the first version
- Tuesday, November 25, 1997 for the final version
The project counts for 20% of your total grade; 10% will come
from the first and 10% from the final version.
In addition to the project documentation, you need to hand
in a signed copy of the
Honor Code for Projects Statement. Violations of the
honor code, in particular copying or use of somebody else's
material without proper acknowledgements, may result in a lower grade
or other sanctions as specified in the NJIT Student Handbook.
World Wide Web Page
In this case, you have to put together material about one particular
operating system topic and arrange it into a collection of WWW pages.
You can have a look at the work of the students from
previous semesters.
The material you collect should be especially useful for
future generation of CIS 332 students.
For each topic, it should have the following structure
- Introduction
- Definitions of terms
- Descriptions and explanations of the concepts or methods for the topic
- Demonstrations and examples
- Exercises and interactive quizes (multiple-choice questions)
- Realizations in real operating systems
like MS Windows 95/NT, Macintosh OS, OS/2, Unix, VMS, MVS, etc
- Bibliographical and historical notes, with pointers/links
to a general references section
This option will be a team effort in groups of approximately 5 students.
Research Paper:
For the research paper, you have to
demonstrate the ability to read one or more article from a professional research
journal (like IEEE Computer or Communications of the ACM),
describe its main ideas in your own words, use the knowledge
you acquired in class, and apply it to the concepts discussed in
the papers you read. Your task is to use the following paper
as a starting point, and discuss the problems that have
to be solved with respect to operating systems:
"The Legion Vision of a Worldwide Virtual Computer"
by Andrew S. Grimshaw, Wm. A. Wulf, and the Legion team in
Communications of the ACM, Vol. 40, No. 1, January 1997, pages 39-45.
It is not sufficient to only read the above paper; you will have
to do some research on the topic, and identify other relevant
sources of information.
A copy of the article can be found in the library
(CIS 332 / Kurfess).
Your paper has to be 7-10 pages long in a font no larger
than 12 points; however, it is not the number
of pages that makes a good paper but the contents.
My evaluation will be based on the following criteria;
the number indicates the points you can get (10 for each version,
20 in total):
- coverage of relevant topics (6)
- presentation and readability (2)
- originality (1)
- bibliography (1)
Some hints:
- Describe the topics you discuss in your own words. Parts of your paper which
are practically identical to your source will not count for coverage
and originality, you risk a bad grade for copying, and you might
violate copyright law.
This is a serious issue, and some students
from previous semesters were not very happy aobut
their grade as a consequence of their copying.
- Have discussions with your fellow students about the paper.
You will have to write your own paper, however.
If you do the Web page team project, the grade will
be for the whole team.
- Use a spellchecker or ask somebody to go over your paper to
eliminate mistakes. Whereas grammar and spelling are not
taken into account for your grade, it might leave a bad impression or
make your paper difficult to understand if there are many mistakes.
- You have to find additional sources of information, e.g textbooks,
Web pages, computer magazines like Byte, or
other journal articles. Don't forget to list them in the bibliography
section!
Here is an example for the structure of such a paper:
Title Page
(Author, Title, Affiliation)
Introduction
(background, history, problem description, overview of the systems)
Main Part
relevant issues for operating systems
relation to operating systems
Conclusion
(advantages, problems, future developments)
Bibliography
(cite all articles and books you have used, including the textbook)
Community Servide
In general, the requirements are similar to the ones described above
for the research paper. An example of a an outline is
here.
World Wide Web Hints
Where to find
further information, e.g. how to install your own
home page on the hertz system (might be a little outdated by now).
CIS 332 Principles of Operating Systems Spring 1997 Franz Kurfess.