Activities

The class will meet once a week. Here is the sequence of events for a particular meeting :
  • Email the plan ahead of the meeting : At least 5 days before or at least a weekend before (whichever is earlier), the leaders should send out (to the group cs6846-2015@googlegroups.com), a reading plan for that week and a division into three subtopics along with a small description about how they are connected among them and to previous material that the course covered. The references for each of the section from either textbook or the paper should be pointed precisely. This carries weightage (5%) in their presentation evaluation for all the leaders of that week. These paragraphs will also be displayed at the "reference" part of the corresponding meeting at the course page.
  • Evaluation of Presentations : For each subtopic, the discussion is expected to be started off and led by the leader assigned. He/She should make the overall picture clear first (say 50000 feet level view). Quickly enough, with interaction, clarify each of the blackboxes and jump in soon. The aim is to finally see even the grass-level details of the ideas. Let me also put down some metric of evaluation for the presentations for the leader.
    • Technical clarity and rigor - 10%
    • Structuring of the discussion (Getting the intuitive level right first and then helping the class to unravel the details) - 10%.
    • Mode of delivery and Making it interactive - 10%
    • 5% with the instructor for normalizing with respect to difficulty level of the topic and indicative points about work put in.
    • 5% - for the quality of email description described above.
  • Random Order : At the meeting, the class will choose an order among the leader uniformly at random. They will present/lead the discussion on the topic in the chosen order. Everyone is expected to participate in the discussion and will follow the discussion better if they have already worked out the details.
  • Random Short Tests : Each student in the class is expected to read the material before the meeting. In some meetings there will be surprise tests. The test will also deeper questions about the material already covered in the previous weeks and some simple questions on the material that is going to be covered that week.
Need Help? : At any point if you require help from any of us (Jayalal : jayalal@cse, Sajin : sajin@cse, Dinesh : kdinesh@cse), please feel free to write to us to fix up an appointment for discussion.