Scientific Communication in Computer Science

This is the WWW page for the scientific communication course for students of computer science, (400060) given Spring 2004 at Vrije Universiteit. (Formerly, this course was called the presentation course.) In this course, students shall learn how to present scientific ideas (like the contents of their final bachelor's or master's theses) in written and oral form (a talk).

Students of BI or IK:

Unlike its predecessors from previous years, this course is not considered equivalent to the BI-project presentatievaardigheden. In fact, such a project is no longer compulsory for you. Instead, 2 ECTS have been added to your free-choice package (Dutch: keuzeruimte).

Latest news:

26/07/2004: Starting 2005, this course will be given by Bruno Crispo
26/07/2004: The overall grades can be found here.
I apologize for the delay, too many things kept me from reading all the papers. In general, the results are rather positive. The few people who failed did so, because their paper largely neglected the contents of this course, also stated on this page as grading criteria. The results should be entered to TISVU soon.
07/05/2004: The schedule for the talks is now available here:
for Group A and for Group B
16/04/2004: About talk presentation meetings:
all participants who presented their "paper in progress" have received email to sign up for a meeting about presenting their anticipated talk. If you did not receive such a mail, but you think you should have, then please send me email explaining your case, as soon as possible.
16/04/2004: Added the grading scheme for the papers.
17/03/2004: About paper presentation meetings:
all participants have received email explaining what they are supposed to do. If you did not receive such a mail, but you think you should have, then please send me email explaining your case, as soon as possible.
04/03/2004: The course is split in two groups of students. Please check your group.
Register for your paper presentation meeting with your adivsor now. (see office door of P4.14)
05/02/2004: To accomodate the large group of students, the lecture will be given twice. We have a room for monday mornings (see below).
I'd like to ask those students with overlapping courses on wednesday to come on monday.
(When in doubt, please come on monday and we will redistribute people if necessary.)
26/01/2004: More information added, most importantly about topic selection

The course consists of a four lecture sessions, after which students are supposed to write an article about two or three publications taken from computer science research. In a final session, students will give short talks about the subject of their articles. Presence in all sessions is mandatory. The grade will be determined based on the written article and the given presentation.

The course in a nutshell:

language:	the course will be given in English, your paper and talk are supposed to be in English as well
lecture:	given twice, please attend one of the two options:
	mondays, 9:45-11:30, (Feb. 9 - Feb. 23), P.020
	wednesdays, 11:45-13:30, (Feb. 4 - Feb. 25), S.111
presentations:	Group A
	tue., May 18, (13:45 - 17:30), S.201
	wed., May 19, (8:45 - 12:30), S.201
	wed., May 19, (13:45 - 17:30), S.201
	Group B
	tue., May 11, (8:45 - 12:30), R.232
	thu., May 13, (8:45 - 12:30), F.253
	fri., May 14, (8:45 - 12:30), KA.223
lecturers:	dr. Thilo Kielmann (office P.414), dr. Jens Kleinjung (office P.440)
credit points:	2 ECTS credits
grading:	written article (3/4) + oral presentation (1/4)
	both article and presentation have to be given to get the credit points
	presence in the sessions is mandatory
book:	J. Zobel, Writing for Computer Science, Springer, 1997
	available from STORM
prerequisites:	basic computer science as from the first study years

Grading criteria:

Both your paper and your talk will be graded based on how well the subjects of the course will be applied. This means, it is important for you to have good structure, organization, and presentation. The topic itself is less important.

We will grade the papers according to the following schema. All papers should have these sections, or at least sections that cover the respective functionality/content of the sections marked with a (*). For example, the evaluation of the presented solution may be covered in the solution section, but it has to be there to score the point. This also depends on the topic of the paper, but that has been discussed with all participants in their individual meetings. As usual, you need 6 points to "just pass" and can score up to 10 points for a perfect paper.

Section	Points (up to)
Abstract	1
Introduction	2
Background/Related Work (*)	1
Presented Solution (*)	2
Discussion/Evaluation (*)	1
Conclusion	2
Bibliography	1

Frequently asked questions:

How long shall the article be?
I know, there are only 2 credit points assigned to this course. Of course, your article shall be short (a few pages, maybe 5??), just containing enough material to support the "statement" you are going to make in it.
Beware: writing a short and concise article in as art. As Einstein said: "If I would have had more time, I would have written a shorter letter."
Can I propose the subject on which I want to write?
Yes, I would actually prefer if you propose your favourite topic. However, we need to agree on it before you start, to make sure things will go ok.

Course schedule:

date	action item
04/02	lecture "organizing a report"
09/02 and 11/02	lecture "self-contained writing"
16/02 and 18/02	lecture "presenting math, figures, algorithms"
23/02 and 25/02	lecture "giving a talk"
27/02	deadline for topic assignment
29/03-02/04	individual meetings about articles (15 minutes per student)
26/04	submission of articles (on paper)
03-07/05	individual meetings about presentations (15 minutes per student)
11-19/05	presentations

Choosing your topic

Look here for the procedure. The registration is closed now!

Material and topics covered:

The course is mostly built around the book mentioned above. Having the book is not strictly necessary for passing this course, although it helps by giving many additional background information. The book is highly recommended to students who are about to write their B.Sc. or M.Sc. thesis.

04/02/2004: Book chapters: 1
The MOVE-STEP methodology (structuring introduction and conclusion)
Example paper, Bandwidth-efficient...
09/02 and 11/02/2004: Book chapters: 2, 3
(Useful further reading is Chapter 4.)
Paper, How to get a paper accepted at OOPSLA
16/02 and 18/02/2004: Book chapters: 5, 6, 7
23/02 and 25/02/2004: Book chapters: 11
Slides, Giving a Talk made Easy
Example subject: Minimum Spanning Trees


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