CS 889

Spring 2019

Overview

Announcements

1. Join the class's Piazza list. You can submit your assignments and paper synopses there.

Topics Schedule

Exercises

Exercise 1: Touchscreen typing

Find 2 friends per group member and ask them to type four different paragraphs as follows:

• One paragraph in their native language on a computer keyboard.
• One paragraph in their native language on a touch screen keyboard.
• One paragraph in a language they do not speak on a computer keyboard.
• One paragraph in a language they do not speak on a touch screen keyboard.

Calculate typing speed in words per minute (where 1 word = 5 characters) and error rate ((word errors)/(total words) * 100) for each of the devices and languages. Enter these values into a Google Spreadsheet (posted next week).

Exercise 2: TCPS2 Tutorial.

Log into the TCPS2 tutorial via the University of Waterloo Office of Research Ethics website. Complete the tutorial and email your completion certificate to me by Wednesday, May 29th.

Exercise 3: Qualitative Analysis

Your goal is to examine profiles on the popular professor rating website rate my professor. Select four professors from the university of Waterloo, but NOT from computer science, two male and two female professors. Anonymize both professor identity and poster identity. Select at least 5 comments for each professor, yielding 20 comments. Code these comments. Look for themes that correlate with quality. Also note any instances of commentary on appearance, dress, sexism, or other issues that crop up in your comments as harvested. To submit, perform an intial qualitative analysis to group by themes. Present those themes on two or three slides (total) with some example statements quoted from slides to justify your analysis of categories.

Paper Presentations

• Try to select a paper that contains either a methodology or that represents the research area in which you are working.
• You are aiming for 7 to 10 minutes talking about the paper.
• Please post paper presentations early. There are quite a lot of papers, and people need to reach each one.

  Project Details

  Step 1: TCPS2 Training. See Exercise 2, above.

  Project proposal

  For June 19th, please post a less than 2-page description of your project on piazza. The project description should include the following sections:
  1. Research Question: Describe your problem domain and research question. Include a synopsis of what you would like to do.
  2. Methodology: Describe how you will answer your research question, specifically your experimental methodology. You can also include any figures, lists of topics, or other information that may be necessary to understand how you will answer your research question.
  3. Participants: Describe from where you will recruit participants and your participant profile.
  Please post so that your project is visible to the entire class.

  Between June 19th and June 24th, pick two projects in the class to comment on. Project comments are first-come. Maximum of three commentators for each project. The goal of these comments should be to make suggestions and improve other projects in the class. Think carefully before posting, write the comment to yourself first, and reread your comment to make sure it is constructive. Ask yourself:

  • What do you like about the project idea?
  • What seems good about the experimental design?
  • In what ways could the experimental design be improved, expanded or enhanced?
  • Is there anything in the project description that is incomplete? For example, is there an obvious aspect of the experiment or study that should be expanded upon, or that was overlooked?

  There is a technique to making constructive suggestions. Always start with what you like, what is positive. Then, when you move to constructive suggestions or gaps that you see, the idea is to phrase any suggestions as suggestions: "I was wondering if you had considered whether ...". Also, asking for additional information or something to be expanded upon can also be phrased in the personal: "I didn't exactly understand how you were ...". If you start with what you like, and then phrase suggestions and requests for detail in the personal, it difuses tension because it doesn't point out what is wrong with something proposed, but instead with what you don't understand.

  Project recruiting materials have been posted here.

  July 22, 24, you will have a chance to present your final project. Think of this like a 15 minute conference talk with 5 minutes for questions. Please sign up for a presentation slot here.

  August 10th, final project write-ups are due.