General Course Information

Lecture Hours: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 2:30-4pm
Room: Park 337

Lab Hours: One of the following:  Th 12:30-2:30pm; Fri 9-11am; Fri 2-4pm
Lab room: Park 232

Website:  http://cs.brynmawr.edu/cs380/

Contact Information and Office Hours

Professor: Eric Eaton
Office:  Park 249
Office Phone:  610-526-5061
E-Mail:
WWW: http://cs.brynmawr.edu/~eeaton

E-mail is the best way to reach me, and I make a concerted effort to respond to all e-mails within 24 hours on weekdays and 48 hours on weekends (often, much less!).

Office hours: Mondays 2-4pm, Fridays 2-4pm and by appointment

Textbooks & Software

Course Policies

Communication

Attendance and active participation are expected in every class. Participation includes asking questions, contributing answers, proposing ideas, and providing constructive comments.  In addition, you will be required to keep a weekly journal of your experience, thoughts and reactions to the material in this course.  While the journal will be private, you will be expected to contribute considerably to the direction of this course by sharing those ideas and reactions recorded in it.

As you will discover, I am a proponent of two-way communication and I welcome feedback during the semester about the course. I am available to answer student questions, listen to concerns, and talk about any course-related topic (or otherwise!). Come to office hours! This helps me get to know you. You are welcome to stop by and chat. There are many more exciting topics to talk about that we won't have time to cover in-class.

Whenever you e-mail me, please use a meaningful subject line and include the phrase "CS380" at the beginning of that line. Your e-mail will catch my attention and I will respond quicker if you do this. I make an effort to respond to e-mails within 24 hours on weekdays and 48 hours on weekends.

This course will require a substantial amount of teamwork, so good communication will be essential!


Grading

Your final grade will be composed of :

Class/Seminar Work (60% total)
Journal -- 15%  (5% for each submission)
Reading Summaries -- 15%  (5% for each submission)
Topic Presentation and Discussion -- 20% (10% each)
Class Participation -- 10% (including peer reviews on project participation)

Project (40% total)
Initial proposal -- 5%
Specification/design report -- 10%
Presentation and poster -- 10%
Final report and project submission -- 15%

Incomplete grades will be given only for verifiable medical illness or other such dire circumstances.

Throughout the semester, I will give you feedback as to how the various scores map to letter grades.

Submission and Late Policy

All work must be turned in either in hard-copy or electronic submission, depending on the instructions given in the assignment.  E-mail submissions, when permitted, should request a "delivery receipt" to document time and date of submission.  Extensions will be given only in the case of verifiable medical excuses or other such dire circumstances, if requested in advance.

Late submissions will receive a penalty of 10% for every 24 hours it is past the due date and time.  Submissions received more than one week late will not be accepted.

In many cases (such as on the presentation/discussions and project), late submissions will adversely affect your classmates, since they are depending on receiving these materials on-time.

Journals

Each student will maintain a journal to document your reactions to class discussions and your individual work.  It is good and standard practice to maintain such a journal for research projects, and my hope is that this course will get you into the habit of doing so.  You should use the journal to document your reactions, ideas, criticisms, reflections on related work, outside sources of reading, meeting notes, formal and informal experiments, and any other information of relevance to your project.  While I recommend you keep the journal in hard copy, be aware that you will be required to hand in the journal (or copies of it) throughout the semester for feedback.  Pages should be numbered and titled with clear subject headings and important items should be flagged.

Reading Summaries

For each required reading, you will write a two-thirds to one page summary of the reading, including proper bibliographic formatting.  These summaries may be kept either as part of your journal, or separately.  If you keep them as part of your journal, be certain to clearly mark the differences between the summaries and journal entries.

The content of the summary will vary depending on the article, but in general your reading summary should include:

• A brief summary of the paper's content that describes the problem, the focus of the study, their methods, and their conclusion.
• A list of 2-4 strengths of the paper (e.g., How was the problem interesting?  Was the solution particularly elegant or novel?  Did the research have a strong impact?  Was it clearly written and compelling?)
• A list of 2-4 weaknesses of the paper (e.g., Did the paper lack sufficient motivation?  What were the shortcomings of the methods?  Where there instances where the developed methods would not apply or require modification?  Were any parts of the paper unclear?)
• Several discussion questions for class or points that you want to make about the paper.
  

I also encourage you to find and comment on other related readings in your journal.

Presentations

You will present and lead the discussion for two topics during the semester, one on computational sustainability and the other on assistive technologies.  You may choose to partner with one other person for each of presentations (if you choose to partner, you are encouraged to have two different partners).  You will prepare a 20 minute presentation on the topic and then lead the class in a discussion based on a set of questions you've prepared on the topic.  You should also find and read 3-5 other related articles beyond the assigned readings and summarize these articles for your classmates during your presentation.  The first presentation will take place around weeks 4-6 and the second presentation will take place around weeks 10-12.  We may need to adjust these times based on invited speakers and other events; however, you will have at least one week to prepare in each case.

Project

Depending on the enrollment, there will be either several large group projects, or a class project on computational sustainability or assistive computing.  Details will be discussed and finalized within the first few weeks of class.  There will be several deliverables required as part of the project:

• Initial proposal -- The initial proposal will describe the problem your group plans to address, the motivation behind the project, your initial approach, its expected impact, and a bibliography of intended readings and related projects.
  
• Specification/design report -- This report will provide significant details on the project, including details on the solution, breakdown of work, a timeline to completion, an annotated bibliography, and will demonstrate significant progress toward being able to carry out the project
• Presentation and poster -- Each group will present their project to the class in a 30 minute presentation, which will be followed by question and discussion periods.  Each group will also prepare a poster on this project to be displayed around campus at a forum to be determined in the future.
  
• Final report and project submission -- The final report will describe the project in detail, analyze its predicted or actual impact, and reflect on lessons learned.
  

On many of these components, you and your groups members will be required to document the breakdown of work for assignment of credit.  This will also include peer reviews of your work from your other group members.

Exams

There will be no exams in this course.

Study Groups

I want to encourage you to discuss the material and work together to understand it. Here are my thoughts on collaborating with other students:

• The readings and lecture topics are group work. Please discuss the readings and associated topics with each other. Work together to understand the material. Although we will discuss the readings in class, I encourage you to have outside discussions about the material, both people within and outside of the class!
• Reading summaries, your journal, and the final project report are all individual work.
• While you can discuss the material of your topic with others, you must do all of the preparation work for the presentation yourself (or in conjunction with your partner).
• This will be a highly discussion-oriented class, so prepare to get active!
  

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Additional Resources

Thanks to Doug Turnbull and Carla Gomes for making their course materials available.  Many of the course materials and readings have been adapted from those sources.