A major component of this class will be a research project. This is your opportunity to get some insight into the process of coming up with a problem, crafting the correct research hypothesis, and performing experiments that you would do to validate that hypothesis. The output of this step will be a workshop-quality paper that we will evaluate in a ``program committee'' meeting.
You may do projects individually or in groups no larger than 2 students. Here are some things to be aware of:
There are several steps in project development.
By Sep 15, 2006, you will have to select a project (see below). On or before that date, you should send plain text email (no attachments) to cs694@enl.usc.edu containing a description of your project. In this project selection report, you will need to describe your research hypothesis (i.e. what problem you have chosen) in one or two paragraphs, and list the team members.
By Oct 01, 2006, you will have to write a project plan document. On or before that date, you should send mail to cs694@enl.usc.edu containing this document as a PDF attachment. This document should be no longer than 5 pages, and should describe: what questions your research project is based on, a detailed sequence of steps that you will take to validate those questions, a timeline for the various steps, and an evaluation or demonstration plan. This document will count 5% towards your total grade.
By Nov 15th, 2006, you will submit an up to 8-page research paper describing your project. This paper can be an extended version of your project plan document (but, of course, should describe the work completed for the project). I will evaluate your project based on this document, so be sure to take extra care in writing this document! Please anonymize your submission, so that we can do a double-blind review.
On Nov 16th, I will farm out your project documents to three other students in class for review. Each student will write a review of your project, and we will have a mock ``program committee'' meeting in class on April 24th to ``select'' a small number of the paper for a fictitious workshop. This ``peer review'' will not count towards your grade (I will assign the grade based entirely on my assessment of your work).
You may come up with your own research project. Feel free to discuss extensively with me, via email or during office hours. If you're having trouble finding topics, I'd be happy to suggest topics.
Roughly speaking, there are three types of projects that a student in this class can choose from: