May 2010

Final Grades

May 14, 2010

in News

I had to do the final grades in a hurry. Information about how we did them is available here.

We will give you more feedback (for example on the projects) next week.

I want to thank everyone for taking part in this class. It was an interesting adventure for me. I hope you had a good experience as well.

mike

Final Grades

May 14, 2010

in BasicInfo

We had to get grades done quickly. We followed what I said at:
http://graphics.cs.wisc.edu/Courses/Visualization10/archives/1187-how-to-do-grading-in-this-class

We will send more detailed information next week.

Participation:
– A=consistently contributed to class
– B=sometimes contributed to class
– C=contributed only if called upon
(this was done by Michael C and I agreeing subjectively, which
happened to agree with some objective metrics Michael was tracking)

Participation includes extra posts (like the "cool stuff" posts)

Your participation score is hurt by not being in class (since you
can’t contribute if you’re not there).

Readings: There were 12 readings to comment on, but because of
confusion, many people missed 1.
– A = commented on 10 or more
– AB = commented on 8 or 9
– C = commented on at least half
– 0 = commented on less than 1/4

Critiques: Everyone gets an A. The person who didn’t do the critiques
gets a B since they didn’t even offer to make it up.

Design Challenge:
Everyone gets an A for the presentation part (and trying to do
something with it)

Commenting on Others:
– A = 5-7 comments provided
– AB = 4 comments provided
– D = 1 comment provided

Design Challenge Writeups:
OK, I never gave you feedback. Whoops. All the ones we received were
great. Some of them were a bit long. So all the ones we received get
an A (actually that’s everyone).

Final Projects:
I’ve been doing a lot of reading, and intend to give more detailed
feedback. But I need to get grades back to people quickly.

Basically:
In terms of the work, the presentations, and the writeups: I think
everyone did well. Especially given the lack of guidance about
expectations, and the lack of feedback along the way. Basically, all
projects are As, except for places where you didn’t turn in pieces.

Everyone will get a purple crayoned (well, using the pen annotation
tool with a purple pen) version of their writeup back.

While I have some disappointment that some projects didn’t really
reflect what I would have hoped you learned in the class, this would
have been better had we had an iteration of design. So for the project
content (including the writeups), I will give everyone an A.

The postmortems vary, but if you turned one in, you get an A.

Status reports were check/no check – you either sent 0, 1 or
2. (A,C,F)

Reading lists and summaries:
While there was dynamic range here, we’re generally just giving people
check/no check. Or half a check if you turned in a bibliography
without summaries

Scoring
– 30% Final Content  (A)
– 30% Final Presentation/Writeup (A)
– 10% Initial Parts (A – everyone did it)
– 10% Intermediate phases (status reports)
– 10% Post-Mortem
– 10% Readings (summaries)

—–
Final Grading
– Final Project: 1/4
– Participation: 1/6
– Readings:      1/6
– DC:         1/6
– Free:         1/4

Instructions for the final project handins are here.

The project description has been here.

Everything is due before the beginning of the presentation session. Leave yourself some time for getting the files delivered.

Each group will turn in a single zip file containing:

  1. A Visualization
  2. Any Artifacts
  3. The writeup
  4. Presentation materials

Each person will turn in a zip file (seperate from the group one) containing:

  1. A Bibliography
  2. Paper Summaries
  3. A Post-Mortem

Each of these is detailed below. One you have created the zip file, send email to the instructor and TA telling us how big it is, and we’ll figure out the best way for you to deliver it. (do not send us big files by email!)

Everything must be turned in before the beginning of the presentation session. So make the delivery arrangements well before that!

Things to be done by each group

Each group should prepare each of these together. I would prefer documents as PDFs except as noted. Everything should be put together in a single zip file.

A Visualization

Turn in some pictures of what you did, applied to some specific data (this is a requirement in the project description). If you made an interactive tool, you should make some pictures of what it looks like.

Each picture should have an associated “caption” explaining what the picture shows (as in, what the data is, and what the visualization is showing about the data). It might be best to do this by created a web page that includes the image and the caption (but make sure the zip file is self contained, with local links). Or you can put the pictures into a document in your favorite word processor and make a PDF.

Any “artifacts”

This is mainly the program you wrote, along with the data to run it on (if that is feasible). Please make sure that you provide instructions on how to run your program(s). (windows binaries are preferred in addition to the source code, if appropriate. If you have questions on what to turn in, ask.

You should also include pictures that you made (preferably in a curated gallery with captions explaining what they are).

The Final Writeup

As indicated in the project description, your main writeup should be a 4 page (in the format for IEEE Visualization), self-contained, description of your projects. Define the problem and your solution.

Create a writeup: your writeup must be in the format of a Eurovis poster paper IEEE Visualization poster paper and 4 pages, not 2 pages. The writeup must be submitted as PDF document. The format is described here, including Word and LaTeX templates. Note: you do not need to provide the “Descriptors” or “Keywords.”

The formatting is actually a requirement (so you can learn how to deal with formatting requirements for real venues).

Authorship order (which is significant in some academic venues) is not important for this.

In addition to a PDF, please include the “source code” (e.g. latex or word) for the document.

Presentation

Each group will give a 10 minute presentation either in class or in the presentation session.

Please include your presentation materials in the zip file.

Things to be done by each person

Each person should turn in their own version of each of these as they were supposed to be done independently. Please turn in each one as a PDF, and turn in 1 zip file with everything.

Bibliography

You should provide a complete list of everything you read. The citation should be complete (enough of a bibliographic entry that someone will know what it is, can judge the source, and find it). Please include a web link if available (for example a DOI – which is required by many journals now).

Note: you might not have read all of the papers in the bibliography that you list. Please indicate this (maybe denote them “read” “skimmed” or “not looked at”).

Reading Summaries

You should write a brief summary of the papers that were significant. This won’t be everything in the Bibliography. (but should be at least 5 papers per person, as discussed in the project assignment)

You should summaries the content of the paper (what is the main ideas), as well as what you took away from it (both in general, as well as for the project).

These need not be long – 2-3 paragraphs can do the job well (if you really understand the paper, you can see what the key points are)

Post-Mortem

A “post-mortem” is a chance to reflect on the project after its over. In terms of pedagogy, this is a critical piece of making sure you learn something form the project.

Briefly describe the process – what did you do. This may be different than what is reflected in the final writeup (which is focused on the outcomes).

What did you learn from the process?

What would you have done differently? What would you do the same if you were to do it over?

Self-Evaluation: what grade would you give yourself (and why)?

Group Evaluation: how well did your team work out? How would you evaluate your teammates? (this will not be shared with them)

Final Presentations

May 3, 2010

in News

The winner (with all but 3 people being able to make it) is Thursday, May 13th, 10am-noon. I have reserved room 4310 for the presentations (if you haven’t been to 4310, it can be tricky to find). It’s much nicer than 1207.

The three people who could not make this time slot will get other arrangements. At least one (probably two) will give presentations on Thursday, May 6th.

Details on what you need to turn in will be discussed in class, and explained here soon.

We’ve made it to the end – 2 last lectures. Make sure you’ve noted your availability for final demos on the doodle poll.

  • Tuesday (May 4) – We’ll talk about some of the projects I am doing (probably molecular motion illustration) as a way of reviewing some of the things we went through this semester. We’ll also talk about the pragmatics of final projects. We’ll also do the official course evaluations. So please come to class to do those (they really do matter).
  • Thursday (May 6) – Final projects are officially due (we’ll talk about unofficial late deadlines on Tuesday in class). We’ll do the first of the project presentations (for people who prefer to do it at this time, rather than during the exam week time slot). And in the time left, we’ll summarize what we’ve done over the course of the semester.

There will be no reading assignments for this week, but you are expected to be reading for your projects. Details about how the projects will be turned in, and what’s expected will be posted soon.