6.1800 Learning Objectives

After 6.1800, students are able to design their own distributed systems to solve real-world problems. The ability to design one's own distributed system includes an ability to justify one's design choices and assess the impact of their systems on different stakeholders.

This primary objective is supported by a few others:

• The students will be able to evaluate and critique existing systems, as well as their own system designs. As part of that, students will learn to recognize design choices made in existing systems.
• The students will be able to apply the technical material taught in lecture to new system components. This implies an ability to recognize and describe:
  • How common design patterns in computer system—such as abstraction and modularity—are used to limit complexity.
  • How operating systems use virtualization and abstraction to enforce modularity.
  • How the Internet is designed to deal with scale, a diversity of applications, and competing economic interests.
  • How reliable, usable distributed systems are able to be built on top of an unreliable network.
  • Common pitfalls in the security of computer systems, and how to combat them.

Because 6.1800 is a CI-M class, students will also learn to communicate in forms that are common in the field of computer systems. This includes written design reports, oral presentations, and peer review. The communication instruction also supports the primary learning objective of designing systems. In the real world, we design systems in teams, and communication of many forms (written, oral, etc.) is part of that process.

Grading

6.1800 consists of three components: technical material, communication/system design and analysis, and participation. Each of these components comprises roughly one third of your grade, according to the following breakdown:

Grade Components

Each assignment supports the objectives of 6.1800 in various ways.

Technical Material

Exams: Exam 1 is held during the term. Exam 2 will be scheduled during finals week. Each exam will focus on half of the class' material, but keep in mind that later topics in 6.1800 build heavily upon the earlier topics. The exams will test material from lectures, recitations, and the assigned reading, and let us test whether students have mastered the technical material.

Hands-ons: During some weeks, you will be expected to complete a hands-on experiment that requires a computer and sometimes the Internet. These assignments reinforce some of the abstract concepts from the lectures or papers that week, and let you find out how things really work.

Communication + System design and analysis

The 6.1800 staff have worked with the MIT Writing, Rhetoric, and Professional Communication (WRAP) program for more than ten years to design 6.1800 writing and speaking assignments. We have chosen assignments that are similar to the kinds of writing you will do in the engineering workplace: preliminary reports, final reports, and presentations. Communication assignments are designed to help you conceptualize and develop the design project.

Design Project

The primary assignment in 6.1800 is the design project (DP). This project is where the students get to design their own system, which is the primary objective of this course.

The DP requires you to develop a detailed system design to solve a real-world problem. This project will extend over most of the semester, and will be done in teams of three students, all of whom attend the same writing tutorial (with exceptions only for extenuating circumstances). Real-world systems are not built individually; it's always a team effort. Part of the DP is to learn to work productively and effectively in this setting. We will give you tools for doing so in the writing tutorials.

Recitation Participation

Our recitations are discussion-based, and we expect you to be engaged and participate. Participating in a recitation means:

• Coming prepared to recitation (doing the reading, turning in the pre-reading question etc.)
• Asking questions
• Paying attention when the instructor is speaking (you can't participation in a discussion if you don't know what it's about)
• Participating (verbally) in pair-/group-work
• Volunteering to answer questions when the instructor asks them. (Note that you may not get called on each time. That's okay; our class sizes prevent that. Statistically, if you're raising your hand frequently, you'll get called on with some frequency.)
• Responding to other student's comments with an opinion of their own.

Recitation + Tutorial Schedule

Recitation Schedules

All recitation sections meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Tutorial Schedules

All tutorial sections meet on Fridays at the specified time (1:00pm or 2:00pm).

Teaching Teams

Recitations and tutorials are set up in 6.1800 such that all of a recitation instructor's students are spread across a single WRAP instructor's tutorials (or, in some cases, two different WRAP instructors). For reference, here are the teaching teams this year:

Staff