Course Web for Spring 2012 Visualization Class

One person sent me a P2 self evaluation, which reminded me that I didn’t give you instructions for them.

I will not look at self-evaluations until after we have graded the project (after reading it, we may adjust your grade if you were at a borderline). So, you can turn it in until Wednesday, 5/13 at 5pm.

Using the questions from P1 is fine. They are:

1. How happy are you with the outcome?
2. What went right/wrong in your project? What would you do the same/different?
3. What will you do the same/differently on the next project?
4. What advice would you give to someone else proposing to do this project in the future?
5. The cliché is to ask about what you learned from the experience. This is good self-reflection practice, but may already be described above.

However, #3 doesn’t make as much sense. Instead, I would prefer if you consider the following questions:

1. How happy are you with the outcome?
2. What went right/wrong in your project? What would you do the same/different?
3. What advice would you give to someone else proposing to do this project in the future?
4. If you worked in a group, how did you split the workload?
5. What could we have done to better connect the class content to projects? What could we (the course staff) have done to have made this project a better experience for you (or students in general)?
6. The cliché is to ask about what you learned from the experience. This is good self-reflection practice, but may already be described above.

In general, we are really interested in getting feedback on the course. It’s still a work in progress. So if you have thoughts on what we could do better or differently (or what you think works and shouldn’t be changed), please let us know. If you want to do it anonymously, please put a printed page in my mailbox.

On Friday, May 4, the “handin plan” is due. The project page says little more than “expect instructions.” Well, this is it.

There are two goals here:

1. We need to predict what you will be delivering to us, so that we can figure out how you should transmit it to us.
2. We want to get an idea of what to expect, so we can have the opportunity to catch problems where projects aren’t going to meet expectations early.

So, on Friday May 4th (preferably before noon), please send the instructor and TA a note saying:

1. What you expect to have to turn in. Will it just be a big PDF? Will it be a ZIP with code and an excutable? Is there a lot of data? How big? (it’s not practical for you to deliver more than a few MB by email). Do you have some mechanism for putting it on the web?
2. Will you have a demo to run? If so, will you be able to put it on the web so we can try it? Even if we can try it, we will probably want to schedule a time to look at it and discuss it with you. (we want to get a sense of how many demos to schedule).
3. How is the project progressing? Give us a sense of where you’ve gotten to and where you expect to get to. (a few sentences – maybe 2 paragraphs – just enough so we get a sense).

As far as when things are due: according to University policy, things must be due the last day of class. However, we will have an “email blackout” between Wednesday May 9th at noon and Monday, May 14th at 10am. Anything sent during this time will be considered as handed in at May 9th, but won’t be looked at until the 14th. In fact, we’d prefer that you didn’t send us things until Sunday the 13th (since we’ll both be traveling).

So, the deadline for us to receive your project materials is really Monday, May 14th at 10am. This is a pretty firm deadline, since we need to grade it quickly.

You will at least need to send us your written report by email (if it’s a small enough PDF, otherwise send a web link) by this time, and have some arrangement for us to get other files.

Overall, everyone who submitted something did at least a good job.

There was variance. Some are more insightful than others. Some more directly addressed the question (how does the research utilize class concepts), while others critiqued the tool itself. Still others decided to praise the tool (sometimes in ways that didn’t necessarily add). I will account for at least some of the variance by the way the question was phrased.

But, Almost all the things were (at least) good. There were a few (4) that were just OK (and one that might have been a little less than OK). But since I am not sure I can objectively qualify why things fell into these different bins, I think its more fair just to say that those who didn’t do “good” legitimately had different ideas about the assignment.

So, everyone who turned it in gets “100%.” We’ll count this as a “written participation” – but emphasize it more than the individual Piazza assignments.

To the person who did a visual critique of the paper: you are totally right! I can’t tell you how hard it was to cram everything in to 10 pages. And it really does show (the paper is way too dense).