How to improve your chance of getting a good grade.
Many students will do well in this class; others may be disappointed in their grade. Yet, a number of students show problems with poor lecture attendance, poor lab preparation, and poor or incomplete work on problem sets. These simple suggestions are offered in the spirit of trying to reduce the number of students so disappointed. Your actions will have great control upon your class grade.
You need to devote a at least 3 hours of studying for each hour of lecture (including time working problem sets). This is in addition to your time attending lectures.
Turn in every problem set. Make sure your answers are correct. Do not work in groups---do the work yourself. Work the problems over until you understand them perfectly and can solve them quickly: the exams are usually very similar. If you skip the problem sets, or if you copy another student's work, you will not learn the material, and you will do badly on the exams. Skipping more than one problem set, or working the problems carelessly, almost always leads to a low grade in the class.
Attend every lecture: It is hard to keep up with the material
if you don't.
Read
each day's on-line lecture notes before you come to class: It will be
hard to follow the lecture if you don't.
Take notes.
These are major independent commitments, and a major component of the class. You are learning independent design. Develop an solid on-paper design before you enter the lab, and make sure that your calculations show that the design will work to specification. Allow plenty of advanced time for building, testing, and de-bugging, as the odds are good that your initial design has problems which you have not anticipated. De-bugging is a central part of design work.
Read the class notes. Read the text. Work problems from the problem sets. Work an old class exam posted on-line. Make sure that you understand the old posted exams. Make sure you can work an old exam for practice in the amount of time you will be given for the class exam.