Welcome to CS793! This is a snapshot of the CS793 wiki, which you will get access to once we start the class. In the meantime, you can see the course structure etc below. If you are going to take the class, and want access to the wiki before we start, email me jhoey AT uwaterloo.ca See the wiki for CS793 in Winter 2012 here

Piazza

Please join the Piazza discussion board to get email updates for the class and find out the latest news

People

Jesse Hoey [1]
Private questions can be emailed directly to the instructor - email him jhoey <at> cs.uwaterloo.ca

Location

Math 3 - room 3103

Meeting Time

Wednesdays 14:00–16:50 (2pm-4:50pm)

Textbooks

(these texts are for reference in the course)

Edward H. Shortliffe and James J. Cimino “Biomedical Informatics: Computer Applications in Health Care and Biomedecine”. Third Edition, Springer, 2006

(parts are avaialable online [2])

Ira J. Kalet “Principles of Biomedical Informatics”. Academic Press, 2009.

Structure

The course is structured around a set of topics in health informatics. The topics are a developing set (so new topics can be added, old topics can be split, merged, etc). Each topic will have a group of students responsible for finding and reading relevant literature on the topic, holding discussions about specific key papers, and presenting the topic to the class.

Each week, we will have

(1 hour) an invited lecture by an expert in the field covering one of the topics of interest.
(1 hour) a student-led presentation of their research on a topic, followed by in-class discussion
(1 hour) a set of group discussions (can happen outside regular class hours)

Students will be organised into groups, and each group will be responsible for a topic. Students are encouraged to switch topics/groups throughout the term, but the groups must remain fairly evenly populated with about 5 students/group. Each group has a lead student for each week, whose responsibilities are to

choose a paper to discuss on the topic
organise/schedule the group meeting
lead the paper discussion

Each student must act as lead of their group for two of the 11 weeks of the term. The groups meet once per week for at least a 1-hour meeting (first meetings on Jan 11, 2011), and must submit to the instructor, by Thursday afternoon at 5pm:

a draft update to the wiki page on their topic, including any background material necessary to understand their paper. Use the {+insertion+} markup to highlight your additions.
a draft paper critique by the group lead. You should add this to the wiki as well, in a separate page. Link your critique to your wiki topic update.
Send PDF versions of both the wiki page and the critique to the instructor by email. You can create PDF versions from the wiki using the publish PDF links at the top right.

The instructor will then review all the critiques and wiki topic pages, and select one for in-class presentation the following week. The selected group will be informed by Friday 5pm. If selected, the group must present the work on their topic and lead a discussion in class. The presentation must include the background material. The lead student of each group (including the one selected for in-class discussion) then prepares a final paper critique for evaluation, and does a final update on the wiki page. Note that students have an incentive to prepare a high quality draft critique, because if selected, the in-class discussion can help them prepare a high quality final critique.

Assessment

Written paper critiques (2 per student, 2–3 pages each). Paper critiques are worth 40% of the final mark. A student writes a critique of each paper for which they are the lead. The critique is submitted on the first Friday as a draft, and on the following Friday as a final version.
Wiki topic updates (evaluated for each group, 11 per student, one per week). 10% of final mark.
Group or Solo Project. A written project proposal must be submitted early in the term, and a written report must be submitted in the last week of class. The final class will include short presentations of each project. The entire project is worth 50% of the final mark: (proposal=10%, presentation=10%, final report=30%).
(Effort Adjustment Factor between 0.95 and 1.05) Participation and contribution to the class.

Note that the wiki updates are assessed for the entire group each week, while the critique is assessed for the lead student only, and should be that student’s work alone (although the discussions will help the lead student to formulate the critique) - see next section on academic integrity.