The instructor takes these courses very seriously. These are 3 credit hours courses, and he expects 3 credits worth of work. For the instructor's graduate students, the requirements are usually more.
The instructor prepares students toward their thesis in these courses. He identifies what the student needs, and asks the student to study necessary materials with instructor's direction.
The following is an average requirement that is needed for this course:
Read the papers, reports, book chapters etc. that your instructor asks. Then, prepare a half page or at least one paragraph summary of the material that he/she read. Instructor expects from a student to read at least 30 papers (or reports) per semester. Often instructor asks student to do a literature search on some area(s), and student reads the papers that he feels important and provide a summary to the instructor.
Attend technical seminars, meetings that the instructor requested. Then, prepare a one page summary of the seminar topic. Instructor arranges "Friday seminars" for his students almost every week. Attendance of all his students to these seminars is compulsory, unless an excuse is given. The students that take the independent study/directed research should consider these as part of seminar series that they need to attend. Also, occasionally, instructor will request his students to attend some other seminars that others are organizing. Expect one seminar per week.
Perform a high quality project study. Expect to do system analysis, algorithm development, computer simulations etc.
Procedure:
At the beginning of the semester, student and instructor meet and discuss about the scope of the study. Then, student prepares a study plan.
Student and instructor meet every week on a specified time to discuss the progress of the student.
Student prepares a detailed final report on the course, including his/her accomplishments etc.
Each student should be able to prepare a paper quality report at the end of the study. The report needs to be prepared according to IEEE format and IEEE paper standards.
Outcomes:
Failure of accomplishing one of the above requirements will end up getting an "Incomplete" from the course. Student is asked to complete the work within a time frame that the instructor asks.
Failure of accomplishing many of the above requirements will end up getting an "Unsatisfactory" from the course.