Assignments

Assignments
Participation (10%)	Students must be actively involved in all class discussions. This includes leading discussions about topics and papers, contributing to discussions, active questioning, presenting material, and so on. Assessment is based on your ability to lead and present material (assigned ahead of time from the reading list), and your ability to make concise, relevant, and insightful contributions to all discussions. This is a course demanding student involvement. If you are a 'lurker' (someone who just watches but does not participate), you will be asked to withdraw from the course.
Methodology / Comparative Survey (25%)	You will be responsible for researching a particular methodological approach or a survey of studies done on a particular topic. Deliverables are: A detailed web page that describes the comparative survey or the methodology. The comparative survey should not only summarize the other results and findings, but should compare / critique methods used, highlight differences and similarities, and reflect on the meanings of the results as a whole. The methodology paper should describe when and where the methodology is useful, provide worked-through examples, and offer an annotated bibliography (an example template is included) a classroom presentation that introduces the methodology to the class and that has the class perform an exercise of how the methodology is applied on a particular problem or that presents the comparative survey.
Project (65%)	Your project will apply one or more methodologies to evaluate an interface design problem. Problems should not be toy problems. Rather, they should be derived from: your thesis work, a non-trivial replication of an already existing study, systems being worked on at your job site (if you are working), an on-going research project (perhaps provided by the Instructor). Projects may be developed around user studies, analytic studies, and even software development of tools that support particular methodological processes. They are also team efforts involving two-three students