Week 8 To-Dos

Back to Schedule

Week 8 Objectives


(1) prepare for project meeting
(2) complete "Introduction" and "Related Work"
(3) prepare for masterclass I
(4) continue to develop your system/study design

Week 8 To-Dos

1. Project Meeting
This Thursday, the instructor will meet with each project team to discuss their project sketch and do some brainstorming. Please prepare for the meeting by thinking about questions that you have or things that you want feedback on.

2. Complete "Introduction" and "Related Work"
Complete the "Introduction" and "Related Work" sections of your paper in Overleaf (paper.tex). This will become your evolving paper draft. Use the two-column ACM paper template.

The Introduction serves as an argument about why your work is necessary, unique/new and significant. An Introduction is typically 4-5 paragraphs, and within this short text, you need to convince the reader (i.e., about the necessity, uniqueness and significance of your work) and pique their interest, so that they want to read further. It is essentially an argument, where each paragraph advances the argument along with supporting evidence. During the masterclass, we will critique the argument behind your Introduction and the evidence that you provide. Just as an example, your Introduction might look something like this:

  1. The problem we are tackling is a real problem that is worth solving. (provide evidence)
  2. The research questions within this general problem are interesting. (provide evidence)
  3. Other people have studied the same problem, but our work will advance knowledge in new ways or in ways that are not previously possible. (provide evidence)
  4. Our methodology is well thought out, sound and interesting. (provide evidence)
  5. Our work will produce findings that are significant or impactful for society by bringing measurable benefits to the people we studied. (provide evidence)

For the purpose of this exercise, add a bolded "argument" sentence to each paragraph in the Introduction section, so that students who are critiquing your writeup can easily pick out the structure of your argument.

The Related Work setion is similar---you should think of it as an argument instead of a dump of literature. Typically, the Related Work provides an argument for why your work is different from or goes beyond previous work. Similar to the Introduction section, highlight and bold the "argument" sentence in each paragraph, so that students who are critiquing your writeup can easily pick out the structure of your argument.

Together, the Introduction and Related Work sections should be minimum 3 pages long.

3. Prepare for Masterclass I

On March 18, the presenting teams will prepare a short presentation (5-10 mins max, 5 slides max) to the class about their Introduction and Related Work. The instructor will post a PDF of the presenting team's Overleaf paper to the #presentations channel by March 13. Teams who are not presenting should read the Introductions and Related Work sections of the presenting teams' papers, and be ready to critique the writeup and the presented argument during the discussion.

Specifically, each non-presenting team will be asked to share their answer to the following three questions during the discussion: (1) Is the argument compelling? Why or why not? (2) Is the proposed work actually novel? Why or why not? (3) Based on the argument presented, what results would you expect to see in order for you to be convinced about the paper's novelty and the significance of its contributions?

4. Continue to Develop Your System/Study Design

By March 19, about 2 weeks from now, you will need to have completed a design for your system and/or study. If your project does involve a system, you need to add a "System Design" section to your paper, and describe the functionalities/interfaces that your system provides. For the "Study Design" section, you need to describe the methodology you are using, argue why this methodology is appropriate (use the rubrics as a guide!), outline the procedures that a participant will follow during the study, and describe your data collection instruments (survey questions, interview questions, behaviour log from the system, etc). Continue to design/develop your system and data collection instruments.

Due Friday March 12
● completed "Introduction" and "Related Work" section on Overleaf (min 3 pages).