This class does not follow a conventional assignment structure, but rather uses a weekly work schedule with progress spot checks at the end of each week.

Relative to the credit hours offered, capstone design classes such as this one in almost all engineering programs at almost all universities have the most unfavorable balance of work required to credit given of any course you will take. The capstone design class asks you to design a mine and analyze its economics in one semester. Such an undertaking requires a constant heavy paced work load throughout a semester. To make sure that students do not commit what would be a fatal error of putting the work off till the end of the semester a network of spot checks is used to make sure that work is being done on a regular basis. On the First day of the each week (except as announced otherwise) the Project Evaluation for the last weeks work will be done.  There are a total of 12 spot checks scheduled of which the best 10 will be used for grading (the two others allow for class slippage or individual problems).  These work completion spot checks are worth 4% each. You should be cautioned that while missing 4% of your grade every now and then will probably not cause you to flunk, but the work being checked is accumulative and still part of your interim report reviews and your final report and that failure of the material to appear will result in deductions against the 60% of your grade that hinges on the progress and completion of your final report.  You should also be warned that the work schedule for this class is very ambitious and that "making it up later" will not be realistic for most students. There are some weeks where other activities supersede the need for a weekly spot check. These weeks include the week where you will give oral presentations, the week where you will submit your partially completed final report for interim review, and one week during SME.