CS 6967 -- Technical Communications in Computer Science
Syllabus -- spring 2013
Main class web page.
Revised 2/4/2013. Schedule is (still) 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 | readings | assignments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1/8 | Introduction; the big picture: audience and goals, overall organization | 1 | |
| 1/10 | Basic building blocks: sentences and paragraphs. | Summary of audience, goals, and constraints for upcoming document or presentation | ||
| 2 | 1/15 | On-line resources, plagiarism | 3 | One paragraph summarizing some published article in CS |
| 1/17 | Critiquing of single paragraph summarizing published articles | |||
| 3 | 1/22 | Giving talks | 15 | Three paragraphs summarizing some published article in CS |
| 1/24 | Presentation of summary of published article in CS (3 minutes) | |||
| 4 | 1/29 | Critiquing of multiple paragraphs summarizing published articles | One paragraph describing research interests | |
| 1/31 | Critiquing of multiple paragraphs summarizing published articles (cont.) | |||
| 5 | 2/5 | Research interests presentations - short (3 minutes) | ||
| 2/7 | Word processing and bibliography tools; citations and references | 16 | Three paragraphs describing research interests | |
| 6 | 2/12 | Revised research interests presentations - short (3 minutes) | ||
| 2/14 | Language: wording | 5 | ||
| 7 | 2/19 | In-class exercises | Language exercises | |
| 2/21 | Language: precision and clarity | 4, 5, 6 | ||
| 8 | 2/26 | In-class exercises | Language exercises | |
| 2/28 | In-class exercises | Language exercises | ||
| 9 | 3/5 | Figures, drawing tools | 10, 11 | |
| 3/7 | Organizing a technical document: Abstract, Introduction, Background, Description of Work, Results, Conclusions | 2 | ||
| 3/12 | Spring Break! | |||
| 3/14 | Spring Break! | |||
| 10 | 3/19 | Process: focus statement, outline, elaboration, review | 17 | Two pages describing research interests, including citations and at least one figure. |
| 3/21 | Research interests presentations - long(er) 1 (7 minutes) | |||
| 11 | 3/26 | Research interests presentations - long(er) 2 (7 minutes) | Reverse outline of some published article in CS | |
| 3/28 | Critiquing of research interest summaries | |||
| 12 | 4/2 | Structure and content of CS publications: systems & architecture; graphics & visualization | Revised two pages describing research interests | |
| 4/4 | Structure and content of CS publications: theoretical computer science; scientific computing | |||
| 13 | 4/9 | Proposals | 13 | |
| 4/11 | Proposal presentations - short (3 minutes) | |||
| 14 | 4/16 | Proposal presentations - long(er) 1 (7 minutes) | One paragraph summary of proposal | |
| 4/18 | proposal presentations - long(er) 2 (7 minutes) | |||
| 15 | 4/23 | Wrap up | Two page summary of proposal |
