CS 6030 -- Technical Communications in Computer Science
Syllabus -- spring 2014
Main class web page.
Schedule is subject to change!
The course will involve four types of in-class activities:
- Lecture material presented by the course instructor
- Critiquing of submitted assignments, in which members of the class will discuss each other's submitted written assignments in order to identify problems and suggest improvements
- Presentations by students, intended to provide practice in oral presentation skills
- Exercises in which the class collectively evaluates and corrects commonly occurring problems in written English
| lecture |
in-class
critiquing of submitted assignments |
in-class
presentations |
in-class
exercises |
| week | date | in class | assignments |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1/6 | Introduction; the big picture: audience and goals, overall organization | |
| 1/8 | Basic building blocks: sentences and paragraphs. | Summary of audience, goals, and constraints for upcoming document or presentation | |
| 2 | 1/13 | On-line resources, plagiarism | One paragraph summarizing some published article in CS |
| 1/15 | Critiquing of single paragraph summarizing published articles | ||
| 3 | 1/20 | Martin Luther King Jr. Day | |
| 1/22 | Giving talks | Three paragraphs summarizing some published article in CS | |
| 4 | 1/27 | Presentation of summary of published article in CS (3 minutes) | |
| 1/29 | Critiquing of multiple paragraphs summarizing published articles | One paragraph describing research interests | |
| 5 | 2/3 | Critiquing of multiple paragraphs summarizing published articles (cont.) | |
| 2/5 | Research interests presentations - short (3 minutes) | ||
| 6 | 2/10 | Word processing and bibliography tools; citations and references | Three paragraphs describing research interests |
| 2/12 | Revised research interests presentations - short (3 minutes) | ||
| 7 | 2/17 | Presidents' Day | |
| 2/19 | Language: wording | ||
| 8 | 2/24 | In-class exercises | Language exercises |
| 2/26 | Language: precision and clarity | ||
| 9 | 3/3 | In-class exercises | Language exercises |
| 3/5 | Figures, drawing tools | ||
| 3/10 | Spring Break! | ||
| 3/12 | Spring Break! | ||
| 10 | 3/17 | Organizing a technical document: Abstract, Introduction, Background, Description of Work, Results, Conclusions | |
| 3/19 | Process: focus statement, outline, elaboration, review | Two pages describing research interests, including citations and at least one figure. | |
| 11 | 3/24 | Research interests presentations - long(er) 1 (7 minutes) | |
| 3/26 | Research interests presentations - long(er) 2 (7 minutes) | Reverse outline of some published article in CS. | |
| 12 | 3/31 | Critiquing of research interest summaries | |
| 4/2 | Structure and content of CS publications: systems & architecture; graphics & visualization | Revised two pages describing research interests | |
| 13 | 4/7 | Structure and content of CS publications: theoretical computer science; scientific computing | |
| 4/9 | Proposals | ||
| 14 | 4/14 | Proposal presentations - short (3 minutes) | |
| 4/16 | Proposal presentations - long(er) 1 (7 minutes) | One paragraph summary of proposal | |
| 15 | 4/21 | proposal presentations - long(er) 2 (7 minutes) | |
| 4/23 | Wrap up | Two page summary of proposal |