The Masters Seminar in CSS has the objective to prepare students to understand the research literature of the field and to use the literature to remain current. An additional goal is for students to develop a broad view of the discipline as a whole and how issues of computing are embedded within a larger social framework. Students will also be introduced to some of the CSS faculty and will begin their acculturation into the CSS program and into the discipline of computing. A final objective is for students to develop an identification with the program and as professionals within the discipline, and to develop strong peer relationships that will serve them throughout their time in the discipline.
Upon completion, a student should be able to
During the course of the term, we will be reading and discussing a number of papers in computing and computing-related areas. In addition to having a wide-range of computing-related topics, the papers chosen will also have a broad range of writing styles for different purposes. This includes technical research articles, more opinion related articles, as well as non-specialist overview articles on a particular area. The bulk of the work in this class will be in critically evaluating the articles given, and in describing a potential project in an computing-related area of your choice. In our critical evaluation of the articles, we will be primarly interested in the technical merit of the article. However, we will also evaluate the papers from a wider perspective, such their social, economic, political, ethical, or historical impact. Depending on the subject matter of the article, some of these perspective will make more sense to discuss than others. The order of readings is given in the schedule (on a separte page).
If you would like to request academic accommodations due to a temporary or permanent disability, contact Lisa Tice, Manager for Disability Support Services (DSS) in the Science Building, Suite 102. An appointment can be made through the front desk of Student Affairs (692-4400), through Student Services (692-4501), by phoning Lisa directly at 692-4493 (voice) or 692-4413 (TTY), or by e-mail (ltice@u.washington.edu). Appropriate accommodations are arranged after you've you've conferred with the DSS Manager, and presented the required documentation of your disability to DSS.
The coursework involves:
You will be spending much of your time writing annotated bibliographies, which are essentially reflections on and brief summaries of articles that you have read. Annotated bibliographies will be part of both the project you turn in, as well as the writing portfolio. The goal of these writings are to help you learn to critically evaluate the articles, to help improve your writing and summarization skills, as well as to serve as a good reference for you in your future professional career.
Your life as a professional will involve reading a number of different books, papers, articles, etc. As this list of readings grow, it is helpful to have more than just your memory to rely on, especially as you want to reference some of the things that you've read in the past or refer others to these works. In the future, your annotated bibliographies can help remind you of where some of those gems are that you want to keep track of, and warn you about those papers you've read that are worthless and not to be bothered. Keeping an annotated bibiliography of your readings will serve you over your entire professional life.
You may use the form that you want for the annotated bibliographies. However, they must include:
The main criteria for evaluating these is the extent to which you have addressed the main issues of the paper and reflected on the content. Check the assignment guidelines page for more information on how to write annotated bibliographies for this class, some examples, as well as information on grading criteria.
Your final project will consist of a description of a central topic of interest that you plan to investigate during your time as an MS student, a proposal on a research idea or implementation project related to this topic of your choice, an annotated bibliography of preliminary readings on this topic, and a plan for how you will further this investigation during your MS studies. Each of these four milestones is described in more detail below. You will receive an "indicative" grade on each milestone when you first hand it in, but it is for advisement purposes only and will not count toward your course grade. Your grade on the project will be based on your final turn-in.
Pick a topic in a computer or software-related area that you are interested in. After researching this topic, you should describe it using 900-1800 words of prose. Your goal is to become an expert on your particular topic. Thus, your topic should be fairly narrowly focused, so that you can at least have a good start on becoming an expert on your area by the end of the term. If you happen to pick a topic which you later find out is too broad, you should start listing out the subtopics of that broader topic, and pick just a few of the subtopics to describe.
The main part of this should be a precise description of your narrowly-focused topic. In addition, you need to describe the topic in its broader context, as well as point out areas of your topic in which you would like to pursue further research.
The broader context of the topic may include the historical background of your topic, brief mentions of other areas closely related to your topic, as well as ethical, social, economic, or political implications of work done in your topic. Although some discussion of the broader context is required, depending on your topic, not all of the above perspectives may be applicable to your topic.
You will also need to include some reflective comments on what aspects of your topic you plan on learning about in more detail during the remainder of the quarter. (These can be considered learning objectives). Thus, you may include comments on which parts of your topic you find intriguing and would like to learn more about, or perhaps comments on areas or techniques that you did not fully understand but would like to read more about. Being able to identify things that you should read and/or figure out is an integral part of becoming efficient at research.
Your description should be understandable by the typical baccalaureate degree holder of computer science. It should also include references to the bibliographic sources that you used in the writing of your report. Although you will be handing in this initial description early in the term, it is often the case that you will need revise it as you learn more about your topic area. Check out more project guidelines on the assignment guidelines page.
Your description of the project should be enough detail so that the scope of the proposed work is well-defined, and the merit of the proposal is evident. The technical merit of the proposal is essentially about showing that completing the project would require a significant amount of learning about computer-related topics, as well as application of CS related concepts; think of this as the academic portion of the merit. Other aspects of merit for the proposal include evaluating the potential uses and benefits for the project. These could include political, social, or other benefits as well. There is no length requirement on the project proposal; it should simply be sufficiently descriptive of the proposal. You may assume that the project topic description has been read by anyone who reads your proposal; you do not need to redefine any concepts defined in the project topic description. A copy of the project topic description should be turned in with the proposal.
The final part of this preliminary project proposal is a list of 12 to 20 bibliographic sources that you will have read by the end of the term as part of your preliminary investigation into your topic area and project. You may include the sources you read in preparing the project topic description. As much as possible, you should pick sources that are focused on and relevant for the project you are proposing. And you should try to pick a wide variety of sources, from in-depth technical academic articles, to overview chapters from a standard textbook, to more generic articles meant for a wider general audience (not necessarily a CS-related audience). In terms of counting sources, you can count a chapter from a book as one source, so that two chapters from a book would be two sources. Check out more project guidelines on the assignment guidelines page.
This should be an annotated bibliography of the sources that you chose that are related to your topic area. They should be in the annotated bibliography format described above, with the following additions. In addition to the other comments/questions/reactions to the article, you should also include a brief discussion about the nature of the source of this article, and a rationale for why you chose the source. You may describe the "strength" of the information or evidence that the article provides based on the characteristics of the source (USA Today much weaker for science writing than Nature). Your rationale for choosing the source should also partially depend upon how it relates to your proposed project.
Part of your grade on this part of the project will be that you have chosen credible and authoritative sources to provide you with the sort of information you need to plan your course of study. Fellow students, the instructors, librarians, and other faculty can help you to determine appropriate sources.
In this portion, you are to flesh out more of the details of your preliminary project proposal, partly based on the information you learned in your readings. This will be a document that describes the steps you would take if you were to proceed on your project proposal. The goal here is to reflect on what you have learned about your topic so far, and to come up with a plan for the future. The requirements are a timetable with tasks listed, a brief description of that task, and an estimated time each task would take. All though the format of this document is up to you, one method would be to give a monthly (or every two months) schedule with a short description of the task(s) to be done in each month.
This list will primarily be about breaking apart your project idea into slightly smaller task-chunks than was in your preliminary proposal, and listing these out. The task list can also include additional readings or areas for research that you feel are necessary to create a strong proposal. In other words, the project plan is a plan for how you would both finish creating a strong proposal and steps to take to do the work in the proposal. You may also include tasks that you think will help you in your proposed work, such as relevant classes you could take, or seminars and conferences you could attend.
As you flesh out your project, this may be a good time to revise your project proposal. If you have learned something through the readings or through discussions with students that could potentially take your project in a different direction, it would be a good idea to describe what you learned and how it has changed the proposal.
The main criteria in evaluating this part of your project is, first, whether the steps listed seem sufficient to accomplish the proposed project, second, whether the steps seem reasonable in the timeline given.
You are encouraged to revise any assigned writings that receive low grades. The early deadline for revisions is one week after the writings are handed back to you. Revisions after the one week deadline are no longer eligible for full credit, but will instead count as part of your participation grade.
You will need to write an annotated bibliography, in the previously defined format, for most of the readings on the schedule. These bibliographies will be due on the day the reading is to be discussed. Bring a hardcopy of these entries to class (i.e. don't print out your entire annotated bib each class session, just those for the readings assigned for that day). Be prepared to read your abstracts in class.
All annotated bibliographies should be submitted in your portfolio at the end of the term. It is very important that you include both the marked-up version of documents that I return to you and the final version of each document in the portfolio. This allows me to examine the progress you have made.
You will be periodically given a number of questions reflecting on some theme that is related to the assigned readings or the topic discussion of the day. For each theme, you will be responsible for writing a (400-800 words) position essay. Questions on each theme will be posted on the website as the course progresses. Each essay should be focused and coherent on one particular topic. These writings are to be completed prior to the class in which they are due. Each of these should also be submitted in your portfolio.
The final course grade is calculated as follows.
| Description | Final Grade % |
|---|---|
| Project (only final hand-in grade will count) | 38% |
| Presentation | 8% |
| Portfolio | 38% |
| Participation | 16% |
Each assignment will receive an overall score between 0 and 4. Your final grade will be calculated by taking the weighted sum of grades on all work that you have handed in, and rounding to the closest 1/10th. That is, multiply each score that you receive by the weight of the assignment, add these together, then round to the nearest 0.1. The correspondence between numeric grades and letter grades (i.e., A, B, C, etc.) can be found in the UW University Handbook, v.4, Ch.11. (Make sure to see the comments in this document in section B: Grading Practices for Graduate Students).
For more writing guidelines, sample response essays, and more on grading criteria, check this linked page .
As indicated in the course schedule, all work must be handed in by the last day of classes.