cse240c: Assignments

Assignment 1: Paper summaries

Due: 1 hour before every class meeting

This course is discussion-based, so it is essential that you read the papers and come to class prepared to discuss. The purpose of these summaries to ensure that you do so and provide some structure to how your approach the papers.

Reading research papers critically is an essential skill that you need to develop in graduate school. It will serve you will regardless of what kind of job you end up with. There have been several articles written about how to about this. As your first excercise (in this course, anyway) in reading and synthesizing several articles on a subject, take a look at these three: one, two, three.

You will submit your paper reviews via this form.

You do not need to submit summaries for papers that you present as part of assignment 2.

Deliverable
(Due: 1 hour before every class meeting)

Your paper review submitted via the web form.

Assignment 2: Class presentations

In place of a mid term and final exam, you will prepare a presentation for two of the subjects we will be covering in class. There are several motivations for this:

Preparing and presenting presentations is a very important skill. Ideas do not propogate themselves. If you want your ideas to have an impact, you must be able to convey them clearly to others.
Preparing the presentation will give you in-depth exposure to one of the topics we cover. You should choose the topics you present to match your own interests
By replacing the exams with presentations, you can decide where your work for this class occurs during the quarter. For instance, you can work around conference deadlines and exams in other classes.

Since your presentation will cover an important part of the course's material, it is important that you do a good job. To help you accomplish this, the presentation is broken down into several parts spread out over several weeks.

A note about the deadlines. Once you have been assigned a day, it is your job to track the deadlines for the milestones that precede your presentation. I am not going to track you down asking to see your slides. If you do not get them to me by the deadline, your grade will reflect it.

Attendence during classes with a student presenter is extremely important (very nearly mandatory).

Important: The goal here is to provide you experience in becoming an expert on a topic. This is a difficult task, and this is a learning experience. If you get stuck looking for some key piece of information, come talk to me. I can probably point you in the right direction.

Part 1: Topic selection

Due: First week of class

Look at the course schedule and select a day/topic you would like to present. Assignments are first-come, first serve.

Deliverable
(Due: First week of class)

none.

Part 2: Meet with me to discuss your topic.

Due: Two weeks prior to your presentation

Make an appointment with me no more less than two weeks before your presenation day to discuss the topic. I will point you in the direction of extra readings, etc. that you should look at.

To ensure that we meet early enough, you should drop me a line about the meeting at least several days in advance.

Deliverable
(Due: Two weeks prior to your presentation)

none.

Part 3: Draft of your slides

Due: One week before your presentation

To prepare your slides, you should become an expert on the subject you are presenting. This means you should read papers in addition to the ones listed on the course web site and in addition to the ones I give to you during our meeting.

A goal to strive for is to be able to answer any question that someone might ask after reading the assigned papers. At the very least, this means you should have tried to find answers to all the questions that arose in your mind while reading those papers. You should also have good answers to most of the questions suggested in the guides to reading papers that you read at the beginning of the quarter.

Once you have become an expert on the subject, you need to condense all the information about the papers into about 45 minutes worth of slides. Typically, slides take about 1-2 minutes each. Use that value as a guide, but also practice presenting the slides to see if that guideline holds for you.

Spend time thinking about the slides and pay attention to the following issues:

Do they tell a story? You should takes us on a little journey from motivation, to approach, to data, to conculsions, to your critiques of the paper overall.
Are they well-organized? If I fell asleep for 2 minutes how long would it take for me to figure out what is going on after I woke back up? "Roadmap" slides can be useful for this.
Are you getting lost in the details? What are the most important things to know about this paper? How does it relate to the other papers we have read? What is the most exciting thing about it?
Don't spend too much time bashing the paper. All papers have problems, but they often also contain a kernel of an interesting idea. Understanding that that kernel is more important than dwelling on the paper's flaws.

Deliverable
(Due: One week before your presentation)

Your slides in either PowerPoint (OpenOffice is fine), Keynote, or pdf format.

Part 4: The Presentation

Due: The day of your presentation

You will present your presentation during the second half of class. As usual, we will collect a set of questions about the material that you will look into and present answers to during the next class meeting.

Deliverable
(Due: The day of your presentation)

A copy of your final slides emailed to me.

Part 5: Questions answered

Due: The class period following your presentation

Find answers to as many of the questions we raise in class as possible. This may mean reading some extra papers.

Deliverable
(Due: The class period following your presentation)

A copy of the slides covering the answers you present.