EECS16B, Designing Information Devices and Systems II

Spring 2024

Policies

Course Information

The goal of the EECS 16 series is to introduce students to the various topics in the broad world of EECS while strengthening core mathematical principles to analyze linear systems as engineers. The EECS 16 series labs aim to provide students with real, hands-on applications of the concepts they learn in lecture and develop design-thinking skills.

EECS 16B will first walk students through more advanced circuitry; this first module of the class introduces students to the frequency domain, a tool critical in circuitry and analyzing many real-world systems. In the next module, students will understand stability and controllability of systems, pertinent concepts for robotics. In the final module, students will develop fundamental linear algebra building blocks, like SVD, to set them up to implement classification via PCA, a prominent algorithm in machine learning.

Simultaneously, in lab sections, students will apply these theoretical concepts to a real-world project: S1XT33N, a voice-controlled car. S1XT33N implements all the key system components students learn in lecture: analog sensor interface, control, and classification of collected data. Labs enable a deeper conceptual understanding of the course material, while improving students' physical intuition and confidence with problem-solving skills: critical thinking, design thinking, and tenacity via debugging.

EECS 16B is a followup course to EECS 16A and can be considered a precursor to many upper division EECS courses. Below is an example of a high level system consisting of these upper division courses that the EECS 16 series is an essential precursor to.

Grading

This class is graded using the bins and category breakdown below; the class is not curved, which means that you are not competing with your classmates by any means. For instance, if the entire class scores above 93%, everyone will receive an A.

Grade weighting:

Grade bins by percentage of points earned:

		A	[93, 100)	A-	[90, 93)
B+	[87, 90)	B	[83, 87)	B-	[80, 83)
C+	[77, 80)	C	[73, 77)	C-	[70, 73)
D+	[67, 70)	D	[63, 67)	D-	[60, 63)
F	[0, 60)

Note that if you choose P/NP grading you must get a C- or above to be able to pass the class. If you take the class for a letter grade, you must get a D- or above to pass. The cutoff for an A+ is determined by the professors and is not limited strictly to score.

Good Citizenship and Professionalism

The classroom is a professional environment, and we expect that students treat each other and staff with respect. We reserve the right to apply negative points to a student's grade for inappropriate or unprofessional behavior. Any rude, dishonest, unhelpful, or otherwise unprofessional behavior either online or in person can result in negative points.

Lecture and Discussion Policies

We have lectures every Tuesday and Thursday from 9:30 AM - 11:00 AM in Pimentel 1. We will also have discussions that will go over some problems that the lecture covers every Monday and Wednesday (see the course calendar for section times). Note that Monday sections cover different material than Wednesday sections, so we encourage you to attend both! Although attendance is not mandatory, lecture and discussion will be your main source for information used in labs and exams. Students who participate in these score much higher in our course overall.

Homework Policies

Turn in a single .pdf file to Gradescope consisting of your written (or typed) solutions and, if applicable, a pdf “printout” of any .ipynb code. Homeworks are due on Saturday night at 11:59 PM Pacific Time. However, we understand that assignment submissions can be accompanied by last-minute technical difficulties or other unforeseen circumstances. So there is a grace period until the following Sunday morning at 6:00 AM Pacific Time. Any submissions after this that have not been granted an extension will NOT receive credit. Once you've submitted your pdf, you must select the relevant pages for every problem on Gradescope - any problems without pages selected will receive zero credit. If you forget to select pages, please submit a regrade request for each subpart where this applies and we will consider a one-time accommodation. Any coding questions that do not have the corresponding pages of your code “printout” selected will receive zero credit. 3 days after the homework has passed, i.e. Wednesday morning, solutions will be released.

Homework Grading

After the homework deadline has passed, a subset of the homework problems will be graded by our readers. Reader grades will be released on Gradescope about one week after solutions are released. Homework regrade requests are typically due on Gradescope within 72 hours of reader grades being released. If a regrade request is submitted for a part of a question on the homework, the grader reserves the right to regrade the entire homework.

Homework Accommodations & Exceptions

We will automatically drop the lowest homework score from your final grade calculation. This drop is meant for emergencies. In addition to the one-drop policy, we will automatically approve extensions for up to 2 homeworks, each with an extension period of up to 3 days. Please note that these extensions are meant to be used in emergencies only. Please submit your extension requests using this Google Form. If solutions are released before your post-extension deadline, we expect you to maintain integrity and avoid looking at the solutions until after completing and submitting the assignment.

These extension requests are reserved for regular homework submissions only. You must submit the extension request prior to the homework deadline for it to be approved.

Lab Policies

For all lab policies, please see the lab syllabus, which includes information on lab grading, logistics, schedule, and more.

Exam Policies

We will have two midterms and one final. Midterm 1 will be held on Monday, February 26th, and Midterm 2 will be held on Monday, April 8th. We plan to administer Midterm 1 from 8:00 - 10:00 PM and Midterm 2 from 7:00 - 9:00 PM on each respective day (unless a student has DSP, in which case the exam will start earlier but end at the same time at 9:00 PM). The final will be held on Wednesday, May 8, 11:30 - 2:30 PM Pacific Time.

The exams are planned to be in-person on the Berkeley campus at those times. Exams will be completely open-note and open-book – you are allowed to bring any hard-copy resources with you to help you on the exam. However, while you can bring other materials with you to the exam, you are strongly encouraged to make a condensed cheat sheet of only one or two pages ahead of the exam, as the process of creating a cheat sheet can be a great way to study for an exam.

Exam regrade requests will be released on Gradescope soon after exam scores are released. Late regrade requests will not be considered. If a regrade request is submitted for a part of a question on the exam, the grader reserves the right to regrade the entire exam and could potentially take points off.

Note: We will be offering an alternate exam time for each of the midterms that will take place either directly before or directly after the main exam time for those who have a conflict with another class. However, we will NOT be offering an alternate time for the final.

Exam Clobber

The midterms and final will test your understanding of course material. We want to reward improvement, so we will offer a clobber such that if you do better on a particular subject on the final, then we will use that to clobber the respective midterm. Suppose for example you received a 70% on Midterm 1, and that accounting only for questions on the Final pertaining to Midterm 1 content, you received a 85%. We would then replace your Midterm 1 score with 85%. However, to qualify for these clobber policies, you will have to complete a midterm redo assignment (logistics will be announced via Ed), no exceptions will be made. Skipping the midterm entirely is not permitted.

Student Support

Homework Party / Office Hours

Collaboration is an essential, symbiotic skill for any engineer; to these ends, we will only answer homework-related questions coming from a group. We will also be providing individual support for non-lab conceptual or administrative questions. Please use the EECS 16B OH Queue tool for individual questions. You can find our office hour schedule on our main page in the calendar section.

Student Support OH

We will also be offering student support office hours for you to get additional advice on how to succeed in this course or for you to tell us about anything that may be affecting your performance or sense of belonging in this class. We will not be answering content-related questions in these office hours. We typically offer these near exams or at the end of the semester; further details will be released on Ed around these times.

Ed

We will support all student questions (except for lab debugging questions) over Ed, our official course forum. We will also be releasing announcements through Ed, so please keep up to date with its happenings!

Anonyous Feedback

It can be challenging for the instructors to gauge how smoothly the class is going. We always welcome any feedback on what we could be doing better. If you would like to send anonymous comments or constructive criticism, please fill out the anonymous feedback form. Non-anonymous feedback can be provided through private Ed posts. Public posts are not an appropriate way to give feedback or make bug reports.

Study Group Formation and Expectations

Course staff will be facilitating the formation of study groups this semester—we will make an Ed post with the complete information. Our goal is to make sure that everyone who wants a study group can have one where they are treated professionally and expected to behave as such.

Email

For more private concerns, you are welcome to contact us over email at eecs16b-sp24@berkeley.edu

Extensions and DSP Accommodations

If you encounter what you believe will become an ongoing emergency over the course of the semester, please contact eecs16b-sp24@berkeley.edu or the DSP office to discuss accommodations extending beyond individual assignments. Note that these exceptions are less common and typically require more documentation than exceptions for individual assignments.

Accommodations will be provided to students who have letters of accommodations from DSP services and students facing hardships. Please refer to our extension form for extension requests.

Collaboration and Academic Misconduct

Everyone in this class is expected to adhere to the UC Berkeley Honor Code: “As a member of the UC Berkeley community, I act with honesty, integrity, and respect for others.”

Collaboration during exams or other designated assessments is strictly forbidden, subject to the Berkeley Honor Code, Code of Conduct, and the parameters of the specific assessment. Make sure the work you turn in is your own. Do not plagiarize course content, another student's work, or allow another student to plagiarize your work.

EECS 16B will have a zero tolerance academic dishonesty policy. Any misconduct will immediately be reported to the Office of Student Conduct without warning and can result in negative points.

Policy on Course Content

You are free and encouraged to study from course materials to further your personal or professional goals (in collaborations with other students, in your research, etc.). You may NOT post HW/Exams/Solutions anywhere on the web because this could encourage cheating down the road. You are expressly prohibited from uploading course materials to websites such as coursehero.com or chegg.com, which distribute and monetize content without compensation to the University. Course material, including all video, is copyrighted and reposting to third party sites or any other form of redistribution is prohibited. We treat this as unprofessional conduct and/or academic dishonesty.

Inclusion

We are committed to creating a learning environment welcoming of all students that supports a diversity of thoughts, perspectives, and experiences, and respects your identities and backgrounds (including professional goals, race/ethnicity, nationality, gender identity, socioeconomic class, sexual orientation, language, religion, ability, etc.). As a participant in this class, recognize that you can be proactive about making other students feel included and respected.

If something is said in class (by anyone) that makes you feel uncomfortable, disrespected, or excluded, please report the incident so that we can work to address the issue and create a more supportive and inclusive learning environment. Some options include:

• EECS 16B anonymous feedback form
• Email communication with course instructors or TAs
• Student Climate and Incident Reporting Form

Should external factors affect your academic performance, we ask you to inform us promptly.

Campus Resources

Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) - offers a variety of mental health services and resources in order to support your academic success and self-development as a student at UC Berkeley.

Disabled Student’s Program - serves students with disabilities of all kinds. Services are individually designed and based on the specific needs of each student as identified by DSP's Specialists.

Office for the Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination (OPHD) - takes reports alleging discrimination and harassment on the basis of categories including race, color, national origin, gender, age, and sexual orientation/identity, which includes allegations of sexual harassment and sexual violence.

Ombudsperson for Students - provides a confidential service for students involved in a University-related problem (academic or administrative), acting as a neutral complaint resolver and not as an advocate for any of the parties involved in a dispute.

PATH to Care Center - a 24/7, confidential, free, campus-based resource for urgent support around sexual assault, sexual harassment, interpersonal violence, stalking, and invasion of sexual privacy.

The Student Advocate's Office (SAO) - helps and advocates for students, providing free and confidential casework for issues related to the university in Academic, Financial Aid, Conduct, and Grievance divisions.

Technology Needs (STEP) - provides laptops and other technologies for free and is for undergraduate, graduate, and professional students.

UC Berkeley Food Pantry - aims to reduce food insecurity among students and staff at UC Berkeley.

Land Acknowledgment

We recognize that Berkeley sits on the territory of Huichin, the ancestral and unceded land of the Chochenyo Ohlone, the successors of the historic and sovereign Verona Band of Alameda County. This land was and continues to be of great importance to the Ohlone people. We recognize that every member of the Berkeley community has, and continues to benefit from the use and occupation of this land, since the institution’s founding in 1868. Consistent with our values of community and diversity, we have a responsibility to acknowledge and make visible the university’s relationship to Native peoples. By offering this Land Acknowledgment, we affirm Indigenous sovereignty and will work to hold University of California Berkeley more accountable to the needs of American Indian and Indigenous peoples.