Lecture topics
Course Overview [ 1 lecture ]
- learning outcomes for the course
- grading
- overview of computer science sub-areas
- research methods intro:
-what kind of results different communities care about?
+ audience survey and in-class discussion
+ what are your key research areas of interest?
+ what do you know about: (take your best guess)
+ how papers get reviewed?
+ how research is funded?
+ how will you choose a research problem for your thesis?
+ how faculty spend their time?
+ assignment of initial readings
Research Methods for Area XYZ (see areas listed below)
- what are the common theoretical frameworks and the common assumptions?
- how is research evaluated in this area?
- what should CS graduate students know about the research
methodology in this area?
- what are open problems in this area?
+ assign an example paper or two to read in preparation for the discussion,
along with perhaps a few written questions to hand-in to motivate the reading
+ knowledge will be tested with 2 paper reviews, and student-done critiques of paper reviews
+ there will be a predefined set of papers to choose from,
probably two from each (broad) area
+ the reviews will use a standard review form from a conference appropriate
for the area of the paper
Research Methods: Emperical Methods of Algorithm Analysis "RM Algo" [ 1 or 2 lectures ]
- analytic vs emperical; deterministic and stochastic algorithms
+ assignment
Working with human subjects "RM HCI" [ 2 lectures ]
- research methods in HCI
- qualtitative studies
- quantitative studies
- intro / recap of basic statistical techniques
- interview techniques
- ethics of working with human subjects
+ in-class discussions
+ reading of "Ethics, Lies, and Videotape"
+ case study of evaluating adaptive interfaces
+ assignment
+ reading of an example ethics proposal for holes
+ stats questions
Research Methods: Systems "RM sys" [ 1 lecture ]
Research Methods: Graphics and Visualization "RM gfx" [1 lecture ]
Research Methods: SW eng + prog lang "RM SPL" [ 1 lecture ]
Research Methods: DB "RM DB" [ 1 lecture ]
Research Methods: AI "RM AI" [ 1 lecture ]
Paper Writing [ 1 lecture ]
- structure of a conference and journal paper
- general advice about writing technical papers in english
+ read: "How (and How Not) to Write a Good Systems Paper"
+ in-class discussion of technical writing examples
+ hand-in technical writing exercise:
produce a 500 word summary of a research paper
Reviewing [ 1 lecture ]
- the peer review process
- blind, double-blind reviewing, conflicts-of-interest
- program committee structure and operation
- the task of the referee
http://www.computer.org/tpami/freecontent/taskoftheferee.pdf
- peer review for tenure
- peer review for grants
- ethics of reviewing: borrowing ideas, discussing papers, etc.
+ written reviews of 2 papers as if a peer-reviewer
+ written critiques of 2 other student's paper reviews
Publishing [ 0.6 lecture]
- historical perspective (dating back to Euler, Newton, etc.)
- purpose, structure, "weight" of:
- conferences, symposia, workshops
- journals, e-journals
- posters
- technical reports
- other: MSc, PhD theses, survery articles, patents
- issues: dual submission, pub of interdisciplinary work
- evolution of these: "flagship" conferences, e-journals, etc.
+ assignment: determine the key publication venues in one
of your areas of interest; what are the submission categories,
what are the review processes; when are the submission deadlines
Starting on Research [ 2 lectures ]
- what constitutes a MSc thesis and a PhD thesis
- expectations of publication
- role of the thesis supervisor
- maintaining a notebook
- finding a good problem, top-down approach
- new problem needing tools
- tools looking for a problem
- looking at future trends
- impact
- scalable: simplify using assumptions?
- you know of a starting point
- finding a good problem: bottom-up approach
- get started on something, things will come up
- creative thinking techniques
see http://www.brainstorming.co.uk/tutorials/howcreativethinkingworks.html
+ preparation exercise: think about a particular example
+ in-class discussion of particular examples (priority queues)
Literature Search [ 0.33 lecture ]
- online tools
- google, CiteSeer, ACM Digital Library, IEEE
- The on-line Computer Science bibliography http://liinwww.ira.uka.de/bibliography/index.html
- survey papers, people(!)
- finding material not on the web
- searching patents
+ find some/all of the references for a given paper,
including those that are not on the web
Managing Research [ 0.5 lecture ]
- general thesis highs and lows
- "How to do research at the MIT AI lab"
http://www.cs.indiana.edu/mit.research.how.to/mit.research.how.to.html
- time Management
-scheduling, organization, and procrastination
-setting and achieving goals
Grants and Research proposals [ 1 lecture ]
- the granting system
- criteria for common types of research proposal
- surveying existing work in a given area
+ write a research proposal modeled after NSERC research grant proposal,
perhaps with some additional weight on a survey of related work
+ critiquing the proposals of two other students
Intellectual property [ 1 lecture]
Giving Technical Presentations [ 1 lecture ]
- talk structure, basic presentations skills
- use of PowerPoint and SLITHY
Careers in CS research [ 1.66 lectures ]
- academia: research, teaching, administration, grant writing, networking [ 0.66 lecture ]
- industry: guest lecture on research in industry [ 1 lecture ]
Student Technical Presentations [ 4 lectures ]
+ 20 minute presentation of research proposal
+ 3 presentations per class in 2 parallel sessions (book another room)
+ written critique of other presentations