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HCI 571 Assignment Grading Guidelines Project ideas are available here. Version 23 September 2012 The coursework involves:
Throughout, it is assumed that you have writing competence at the level of a graduating undergraduate. If you feel that you need to address weaknesses in this area (and I may aid you in pointing this out), then now is a good time to do so. The Writing Center on campus is an excellent starting point for helping with this. You will be spending much of your time writing annotated bibliographies, which are essentially reflections on and brief summaries of articles that you have read. Annotated bibliographies will be part of both the project you turn in, as well as the writing portfolio. This page is still under construction and will contain more guidelines on the assigned coursework. Annotated Bibliography Guidelines As mentioned previously, the annotated bibliography consists of two main parts: a summarization of the assigned paper, as well as an analysis portion that gives comments, concerns, questions raised, and evaluations of the paper. Note that there is no exact format required; the summarization and analysis maybe interspersed. However, use plain prose, not bullets or numbered lists in your bibliography. The audience for your annotated bibliography should be the typical ISC graduate student who may not have read the paper. Thus, you should provide brief one sentence descriptions of any terms that you use that may not be understandable to the typical ISC grad student. You will have to use your own judgment as to what terms people will generally know about, and what terms need to be defined. For the summarization portion of the annotated bibliography, aim to provide a description of the results and/or the purpose of the paper, as well as a brief overview of the ideas, implemented algorithms, case studies, and/or logical arguments on which the paper is based. Since this is a summary, not every single idea need be presented. As a guideline, aim to present several of the main ideas in the paper in just enough detail that they are understandable by someone who has not read the paper. Explanation of the ideas in the paper is more important than defining actual terms. Take the term UDDI for example. UDDI is a protocol for describing and storing directory information for web services. Instead of saying "this paper studies several different ways to implement UDDI" and then defining UDDI, you could instead say "this paper studies several different methods for storing directory information for web services" and not mention UDDI at all. For the analysis portion of the project, you are trying to judge the quality of the paper, as well as talk about the paper in a broader context than just the what the authors presented in the paper. For the purposes of evaluating the paper, consider the following questions:
On some papers, it may also be appropriate the credentials of the author. For example, on opinion pieces, knowing whether the author is biased on the given topic is one way to evaluate the paper. You may also wish to evaluate the writing style, or the way the paper is structured, and the accessibility of the paper. This includes questions such as "How much technical background do you need to understand it?", "Could the paper be rewritten so that more of it is understandable by a lay person?", and "Who was the audience for this particular paper?" For papers which you do not understand fully, comment on which concepts and/or ideas you did not understand, why you did not understand them (if you can pinpoint why), and what sort of background you think you would need in order to understand the paper fully. The annotated bibliographies are partly for you to reference in the future. Thus, you may also wish to keep additional information with your annotations, such as the date when you read the bib entry, where this reference was first cited (i.e. how you heard about it in the first place), other works in your bibliography that it cites, as well as similarities to other works in your bibliography. You also may want to list some keywords associated with the entry for later searching and retrieval. You do not have to answer all of the questions in order to get full credit on the analysis/reflection portion of the annotated bibliography. You only need to show a significant amount of thought and clarity of reasoning in the comments that you provide. Annotated Bibliographies will be given two integer scores between 0 and 4. One score is for the analysis portion reflecting your comments, reactions, questions on the paper. The other score is for everything else, including the summary, having complete bibliographic information, grammar, and good writing style. The overall score will be the average of the two scores. I expect the average score to be a 3. Thus, do not expect to get a 4 unless you have perfect grammar, good writing style, excellent summaries, and a large amount of good, quality comments on the paper. For writing style guidelines, see this page. Here is an example of an annotated bibliography receiving full credit. The paper is here.The annotated bibliography is here. It was written by Josh Tenenberg and then slightly edited by Ed Hong and Isabelle Bichindaritz. An example of some entries from Josh Tenenberg's annotated bibliography is located here. Note that his bibliographies are fairly light on the summary of the papers but they do an extremely good job at the analysis/reaction/comments. Some of these bibliographies would not receive full credit on the summary portion. Other Assigned Writings Guidelines The assigned papers will be graded on an integer scale between 0 and 4. The levels of good writing presented on the writing hints page can be mapped to the integer score roughly as follows:
Your comments should be given in well-written prose (do not provide a list of bullet points). The critiques are expected to be fairly short, at most a few paragraphs, although I will not penalize length. They will be graded on a 0 to 2 scale, with the following meanings:
Project Guidelines Your final project will consist of a description of a central topic of interest that you may plan to investigate during your time as an HCI student, a proposal on a research idea or implementation project related to this topic of your choice, an annotated bibliography of preliminary readings on this topic, and a plan for how you would further this investigation during your HCI studies. Each of these four milestones is described in more detail below. You will receive an "indicative" grade on each milestone when you first hand it in, but it is for advisement purposes only and will not count toward your course grade. Your grade on the project will be based on your final turn-in. Project topic description The project topic description will be graded on an integer scale from 0 to 4. This score will be based on how well written and how understandable the content is, as well as how well it fulfills the criteria given in the syllabus for the project topic description. See the writing hints page to see how writing quality is judged. The project topic description is meant to give a background overview to your chosen area and to describe what you plan to learn about in the future. In overviewing your area, you need to address several types of questions:
In addition to the overview description above, the requirements include comments on learning objectives, which explain what concepts, ideas, aspects, or specific subareas of your topic you wish to gain further understanding of in the future. Adding in the learning objectives to the 3 points enumerated above, there are 4 required components. In terms of the grading scheme, the integer scores are given according to the writing level table given above (in the guidelines for assigned writings). However, each required component not adequately addressed may result in a penalty of up to one point. Project proposal The project proposal will also be graded on an integer scale from 0 to 4. This score will be based on writing quality as well as fulfillment of the syllabus criteria. However, the grade will depend more on the content of (meaning the ideas in) the proposal than on the other aspects of the proposal (such as writing quality and having a good list of references.) The requirements for the content include a well-defined scope for the proposal, as well as an evaluation of merit of the proposal. To help define your scope, you should think about the end products for your project. Are you going to perform case-studies and pass out surveys and tabulate them? Are you writing a research report based on reading about different ways people have implemented a certain concept? Are you doing some implementation work and creating software to solve some particular problem? A well-defined scope means that the nature of the project you wish to do is clear, and it is possible to roughly estimate the amount of work necessary to complete your project. Thus, you should also answer questions like: How do you know when you are done with your research reading or with your implementation? If you are doing an implementation, are you starting from scratch, or building off of some existing project? How will you evaluate the success of your project after you have completed it? The merit of the proposal should address both technical merit (such as amount of new CS, IS, or IT concepts learned and applied, significance and novelty of the proposal, describing why the problem is technically difficult), as well as broader context benefits. You are trying to convince the reader that this proposal is significant in its impact to the scientific community. Your proposal should also be of a scope that could be expected to be accomplished in a graduate project. Scores of 4 will be given to proposals of the proper scope that clearly have merit. Scores of 3 will be given to proposals of the proper scope which seems plausibly significant (in terms of merit) but whose arguments for merit are not completely convincing or are somehow deficient. Scores of 2 and below will be given to proposals without proper scope (or ill-defined scope) or to projects whose scope is clear but whose merit is lacking or not evident. In addition to the scores just mentioned, mediocre writing quality or lack of quality references may result in a one point penalty. Note that having quality references is very important; however, the quality of your references will be judged primarily in the grade for the project annotated bibliographies. A portfolio of all written work should be submitted at the end of the term as indicated in the schedule. This should include your complete annotated bibliography of class readings not related to your project, essay writings, if any, as well as paper/presentation critiques. Please submit each assignment separately (i.e. do not combine everything into a single document). Details of the assignments will be listed on the homework page; the schedule also contains an overview of all due dates. You are encouraged to revise any assigned writings that receive low grades. The early deadline for revisions is one week after the writings are handed back to you. Revisions after the one week deadline are no longer eligible for full credit, but will instead count as part of your participation grade. Annotated Bibliography You will need to write an annotated bibliography, in the previously defined format, for most of the readings on the schedule. These bibliographies will be due on the day the reading is to be discussed. Bring a hardcopy of these entries to class (i.e. don't print out your entire annotated bib each class session, just those for the readings assigned for that day). Be prepared to read your abstracts in class. All annotated bibliographies should be submitted in your portfolio at the end of the term. It is very important that you include both the marked-up version of documents that I return to you and the final version of each document in the portfolio. This allows me to examine the progress you have made. Assigned Essays You will be periodically given a number of questions reflecting on some theme that is related to the assigned readings or the topic discussion of the day. For each theme, you will be responsible for writing a (400-800 words) position essay. Questions on each theme will be posted on the website as the course progresses. Each essay should be focused and coherent on one particular topic. These writings are to be completed prior to the class in which they are due. Each of these should also be submitted in your portfolio. Critiques As a professional, you may often be asked to critique or review other people's work. To simulate this peer review process, you will be asked to critique the writing or the presentation of your classmates, as well as some of the assigned readings. In a critique, you should comment on the presentation style in addition to giving your thoughts about the topic. Think about what changes could be made to make stronger conclusions. Try to write 3-5 thought-provoking questions about the work. These critiques may be collected at the end of each class period, and should be included in your portfolio. Participation is a subjective grade that is an attempt to measure effort put into this class. It is based on the following:
You should let me know if you cannot make it to class for a valid reason. Salience of annotated bibliography, and suggestions for its form and use, stem from those made by Marian Petre and Sally Fincher during the 2002 Bootstrapping workshop, and encapsulated in one of the handouts given during the workshop. The basic structure of assignments (writings related to readings, portfolio, term project) were inspired by the Evidence and Action course TIBCG 503 offered at UWT Winter 2002 and developed by Michael Forman, as were a host of other suggestions related to seminar-style courses that will find expression in the classroom. Josh Tenenberg developed the original syllabus and conception for this course as TCSS 598, and numerous instructors later modified the content of the term project to more accurately reflect the research goals of the course.
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