ECE 260 — Continuous-Time Signals and Systems

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Table of Contents

  1. Showing Support for Open-Access Learning Resources for Students
  2. Other Courses Offered by Instructor
  3. Accessing Course Materials
  4. Instructor
  5. Teaching Assistants (TAs)
  6. Course Outline
  7. General Teaching Strategy
  8. Brightspace Site
  9. Online Meetings
  10. Lecture Sessions
  11. Office Hours
  12. Tutorial Sessions
  13. Video Lectures
  14. Required Texts/Materials
  15. Optional Texts/Materials
  16. Course-Materials Bug-Bounty Program (CMBBP)
  17. Feedback on Course/Teaching
  18. Assignments
  19. Exams
  20. MATLAB
  21. Miscellany

Showing Support for Open-Access Learning Resources for Students

Textbook and Lecture Slides. The instructor invested a very substantial amount of time developing the textbook and lecture slides used in the course. If you find the textbook and lecture slides to be valuable resources for learning, the instructor would very much appreciate if you could show your support of them by posting reviews of them online. Reviews can be posted using the following links:

(Information about posting reviews can also be found in the document Showing Your Support for Affordable Learning Resources for Students.)

Video Lectures. If you find any of the videos prepared for the course to be particularly helpful for learning, the instructor would appreciate very much if you could "like" some of them on YouTube or subscribe to his YouTube channel:

Additional Remarks. Since the textbook, lecture slides, and video lectures are all publically available, you are also most welcome to tell people outside the course about these learning resources.

Other Courses Offered By Instructor

Some other courses offered by the instructor are briefly described in the sections that follow. These courses are not necessarily offered every year. Refer to the ECE Department web site for a list of upcoming courses.

SENG 475 — Advanced Programming Techniques for Robust Efficient Computing (With C++)

SENG 475. Do you want to learn the C++ programming language at a more advanced level or further develop your programming skills? If so, you might be interested in this course. For more information on this course (including when it is likely to be offered next), visit the course web site, which can be found at http://www.ece.uvic.ca/~mdadams/courses/cpp. Also, a detailed set of lecture slides on C++ and some corresponding lecture videos can be found on the companion web site for this course, which is located at http://www.ece.uvic.ca/~mdadams/cppbook. All of the lectures for the 2019-05 offering of SENG 475 are available in video format from YouTube via the links given at http://www.ece.uvic.ca/~mdadams/cppbook/#2019_05_seng475_videos.


ECE 486 — Multiresolution Signal and Geometry Processing With C++

ECE 486. Are you interested in digital signal processing (e.g., audio, image, video processing or 3-D computer graphics? Do you want to learn the C++ programming language or improve your C++ programming skills? Do you want to learn OpenGL, the industry standard library for high-performance 2-D and 3-D computer graphics (which is used on everything from mobile phones and notebook computers to high-end graphics workstations)? If you answered "yes" to any of the preceding questions, then you may be interested in taking this course as an elective. For more information on this course (including when it is likely to be offered next), visit the course web page, which can be found at http://www.ece.uvic.ca/~mdadams/courses/wavelets. Various reference materials for this course are also available from the two companion web sites for this course, namely, http://www.ece.uvic.ca/~mdadams/cppbook and http://www.ece.uvic.ca/~mdadams/waveletbook.


Accessing Course Materials

Some of the course materials associated with this web page (such as assignment solutions and exam papers/solutions) may be stored in a protected area. In order to access protected course materials, you will need to know the appropriate username and password to use for the web server. (Note that the username and password are not the ones for your Netlink/faculty/departmental account.) The username and password can be found in a post in the Announcements section of the Brightspace site for this course. See the Brightspace Site section for more information.

Instructor

Dr. Michael Adams
E-Mail: mdadams (append "@ece.uvic.ca" for the complete address)
Office: EOW 311

More sordid details about the instructor can be found on his personal page.

Teaching Assistants (TAs)

The teaching assistants (TAs) for the course will be posted as soon as they are known.

Course Outline

The course outline is available through the following links:

Hardcopies of course outline. In order to reduce paper waste, hardcopies of the course outline are not normally provided. A hardcopy can be printed from the electronic copy if desired.

General Teaching Strategy

This course employs a flipped classroom approach to teaching. With this approach, students are first introduced to the course materials through prerecorded video lectures prepared by the instructor. Then, students are given the opportunity to engage with the course materials in interactive lecture sessions held by the instructor during the lecture time slots. For more details on how the lecture sessions will be run, refer to the Lecture Sessions section.

Brightspace Site

In addition to the web site currently being viewed, the course also has a Brightspace site. A direct link to the Brightspace page for the course is as follows:

Although the course has a Brightspace site, the primary online source of information for the course is the web site that is currently being viewed, not the Brightspace site. Brightspace is only used in a limited capacity for the course. In particular, Brightspace is used only for the following:

Students are responsible for reading all announcements posted on the Brightspace site in a timely fashion. For this reason, it is strongly recommended that students enable notifications (via email) for new announcements and other events on the Brightspace site.

Information on Brightspace. Some links regarding Brightspace that are likely to be helpful to students are as follows:

Online Meetings

Some meetings in the course are either held exclusively online or have the provision for online attendance. So, it is important for students to know how to attend online meetings. Detailed information on how to attend online meetings in the course can be found in the following document:

Meeting IDs and Passwords. The meeting IDs and passwords needed to join online meetings in the course can be found at the following password-protected link: (Refer to the course outline for information on where to find the username and password required for accessing password-protected areas of this web site.)

Lecture Sessions

The lecture time slots (that are not used for the purposes of administering exams) will be used by the instructor to hold interactive lecture sessions that are intended to assist students in learning the course materials more effectively. The lecture sessions will employ one of the following two formats:

  1. face-to-face with provisions for online attendance;
  2. face-to-face only (i.e., no provisions for online attendance).
If the instructor has the hardware and software necessary in order to accommodate online attendance, the first of these formats will be used. Otherwise, the second format will be employed as a fallback. (If online attendance is supported, details on how to attend online meetings can be found on the Online Meetings section. How exactly the lecture sessions will be utilized will depend on the needs, interests, and preferences of the students. Some of potential uses of these sessions include (but are not limited to):

First Lecture Session. The first lecture session will be used to provide an overview of the course and address many administrative matters. All students are required to attend this first lecture session.

Lecture-Session Attendance. Since the core course content is delivered through prerecorded video lectures, students are not required to attend the lecture sessions, except when explicitly indicated by the instructor. This said, however, each student is strongly encouraged to attend at least some of the lecture sessions, as this will very likely lead to an improved understanding of the course materials.

Recording of Lecture Sessions. Normally, the lecture sessions will not be recorded by the instructor. There are several important reasons for this:

Office Hours

Office-hour sessions will be held by the instructor in order to provide extra help with the course materials as well as discuss other course-related matters with students. These sessions will be offered online only. (For details on how to attend online meetings, see the Online Meetings section.) Any private/confidential matters will be discussed one-on-one with the student in a breakout room. Any questions about course materials will be answered in the main room (i.e., not one-on-one) so that all students can benefit from the questions asked.

Determination of Schedule for Office Hours. The time slot to be used for the office-hours sessions will be determined based on the results of Brightspace survey. This survey can be accessed through the "Office-Hours Survey" on the Brightspace site for the course. After the survey period is complete, the schedule for office-hours sessions will be posted here.

Other Remarks on Office Hours. The instructor's office hours are cancelled during reading break. Also, the above office hours only apply up until the last day of classes. So, these office hours do not apply during the final exam period. Since all of the exams for this course are scheduled prior to the final exam period, no office hours will be held during the final exam period.

Tutorial Sessions

The tutorial time slots will be used by the tutorial TAs to hold sessions in order to help students with course materials. These sessions are to be held face-to-face. A TA may also provide an option for online attendance of tutorial sessions, if feasible to do so. (In most cases, however, it is likely that this will not be feasible.) If a particular tutorial section provides an option for online attendance of the tutorial sessions, the online meeting information (i.e., meetings IDs and passwords) will be included along with the information for online meetings in the Online Meetings section. The names and contact information for each of the tutorial TAs can be found in the Teaching Assistants section.

Attending Sessions for Different Tutorial Sections. Sometimes a student may be unable to register in a tutorial section in a manner that is free of scheduling conflicts. If this situation arises, it is okay for the student in question to attend a session for a tutorial section different from the one in which the student is registered as long as this does not prevent students who are registered in the tutorial section from having a seat in the tutorial classroom. In general, it is okay to attend the sessions for other tutorial sections as long as the tutorial classroom has sufficient space. If the tutorial classroom does not have sufficient space, priority must be given to those students who are registered in the tutorial section.

Video Lectures

The core instructional material for the course is delivered via prerecorded videos that are available on YouTube via the instructor's YouTube channel (i.e., https://www.youtube.com/iamcanadian1867). Although these video lectures can be accessed through a playlist on YouTube, it is strongly recommended that they instead be accessed through the catalog found in the video-lecture information package (described below). This information package allows for much easier navigation of the lecture material than the YouTube playlist.

Video-Lecture Information Package

As mentioned above, all of the core instructional material for the course is available as prerecorded videos on YouTube. In order to help students better utilize the video lectures, an information package is provided that includes:

This information package is available in the form of the following Zip archive: A short video describing the contents of this package can be found at:

Extracting the Zip Archive. When extracting the above Zip archive, it is important to preserve the directory/file layout and naming used by the archive (i.e., do not rename the extracted directories/files or move them relative to one another). If the layout and naming are preserved, the hyperlinks in the slide deck that point to the external documents in the slides_supplemental directory should be able to be used to jump directly to those documents (assuming the use of a reasonable PDF viewer).

Remark on Lecture Slide Editions. The official edition of the lecture slides for the course (i.e., the edition identified on the course outline) is not the same as the 2020-05-ECE260 edition used in the video lectures. The official edition of the lecture slides is newer and has a few small improvements relative to the edition used in the video lectures. This said, however, in a practical sense, it probably does not matter very much which of these two editions a student chooses to use as they are quite similar in their basic content.

Video-Lecture Catalog. For convenience, the catalog of the slides used in the course video lectures (which is included in the above information package) can also be accessed directly via the following links:

Video-Lecture Examples (With Full Annotations). For convenience, the document containing all of the examples used in the course video lectures (which is included in the above information package) can also be accessed directly via the following link:

Known Errors in the Video Lectures. A list of all known errors in the video lectures (e.g., errors due to typos) can be found in the following document:

Video-Lecture Schedule

The following document provides a schedule for viewing the video lectures:

It is critically important that students follow the guidelines given on this handout. Not following these guidelines will place a student at great risk of a poor outcome in the course (e.g., failing).

Required Texts/Materials

The required texts/materials for the course are listed on the course outline under the "Required Texts/Materials" heading (and consist of a textbook and lecture slides). These items are available from the University Bookstore.

The following handouts relate to the textbook and lecture slides:

Textbook Web Site. The textbook has a web site, which can be found at:

The preceding web site contains resources that are potentially of interest to students in this course. In particular, the web site provides several versions of the textbook (including the most recent version) as e-books in PDF format.

Optional Texts/Materials

If an additional source of information for the material covered in the course is desired, the following optional textbook is recommended:

At least one copy of the optional textbook is available on reserve in the library. Some additional information regarding the optional textbook and its relationship to the material covered in the course is explained in the following handout:

Course-Materials Bug-Bounty Program (CMBBP)

By participating in the Course-Materials Bug-Bounty Program (CMBBP), you can earn extra marks in the course. If you are interested in obtaining extra marks, then read the following document on the CMBBP:

The following document lists all bugs reported to date as part of the CMBBP:

Feedback on Course/Teaching

Feedback on the course and teaching is always most welcome! The instructor will never hold any of your comments against you, but please be constructive in your criticism. Several options are available for providing feedback. You can provide feedback through:

Assignments

Assignment Submission. Assignments are to be submitted via Brightspace. All submissions must be in PDF format.

Assignment Marking Issues. If you have any concerns about the marking of an assignment, please directly contact the TA (or TAs) who marked the assignment. For TA contact information and a list of which TAs marked which assignments, please refer to the Teaching Assistants section.

Assignment Handouts. The assignments problem sets are given on the following handouts:

Other Assignment Materials. Some other assignment-related downloads are as follows:

Assignment Solutions. The solutions for the assignments submitted to date are as follows:

Exams

Exam Schedule. All exams will be held during a lecture time slot. The exams for the course are as follows:

Exam Questions, Solutions, Grading Information, and Other Commentary. The problems and solutions for the exams to date are as follows:

Policy on Missed Exams. The policy on missed exams can be found in the following document:

MATLAB

Access to the MATLAB software is required in order to complete some assignments in the course. Therefore, students should install MATLAB on their computer. For information on how to obtain MATLAB, visit the following web site:

Most computers in the various undergraduate labs in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering allow remote login via Secure Shell (SSH). Since many of these computers also have MATLAB installed, students may also be able to access MATLAB on these computers via SSH.

Some computers in various labs in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering can be accessed using a web browser (via Apache Guacamole) with the following link:

It should also be possible to access MATLAB in this way.

The textbook used for the course has a detailed introduction to MATLAB in Appendix D (titled "MATLAB"). Aside from the textbook, some other potentially helpful references on MATLAB include:

MATLAB Code Examples from Lecture Slides. All of the MATLAB code examples from the lecture slides can be found in the companion Git repository for the textbook. To obtain these code examples packaged as a Zip archive, use the following link:

If you know how to use Git, you can also obtain the repository via Git at:

Miscellany

Course Grade Calculation. The following document provides very detailed information about how the final course grades are calculated:

  1. Detailed description of method used to calcuate final course grades (in plaintext format)

Extra Practice Problems (with Solutions). The following may be helpful as additional sources of practice problems (with solutions), assuming that these web site remain operational for the duration of the course:

Miscellaneous Handouts. Some other handouts include:

  1. Course-Introduction Slides (in PDF format)
  2. Formula sheet (e.g., Fourier transform and Laplace transform tables) (in PDF format)
  3. Tacoma Narrows Bridge Collapse Video.
  4. Wen-Jing Wang's ECE 260 tutorial notes (in Zip format) Note: These notes may refer to problem/example/section/page numbers in an older version of the textbook.

Other Links. The following links may also be of interest: