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INFSCI 3005 - Introduction to Doctoral Studies

(Fall 2019, CRN 22076)


[ Formal Data | Syllabus | Materials ]


Syllabus

Course Overview: Motivation and Content

INFSCI 3005 is a course originally established by the Information Science Program and adopted by Intelligent Systems Program to introduce new doctoral students in these programs to a range of topics critical for docpral students and young researchers - working of the scientific enterprise, scholarly research, ethics, and the current state of the art research in information science and intelligent systems. The participants of this course are first year doctoral students in the Information Science and Intelligen Systems doctoral program. Others can take the course or audit it by permission of the instructor. As you might have already experienced as aspiring scientists, being a researcher requires intelligence, independent, creative thinking, and most of all commitment to hard working. The course reinforces this.

The course includes a fair amount of readings. The readings were selected by several graduate faculty in such a way that they are fun to read. In addition to reading, the course features several assignemnts and projects, which focus on specific important skills such as paper analysis and presentation and peer reviewing. As a practical work, you will be expected to prepare a draft of a research problem, work it out over the course, and present it to the class at the conclusion of the course.

Course Work and Grading

Components of the Final Grade

Course assessment includes attendance, assignments, and projects. Each lecture bears 1 attendance point. Each assignment and project bears certain number of points. The instructor also reserves the right to administer unannounced quizzes for up to 5 points each if he feels that the students are not pursuing a resonable amount of assigned reading. Your final grade depends on the percentage of points you have earned. Score < 50% corresponds to F, 50-62.5 is D range, 65.5-75 is C range, 75-87.5 is B range, and 87.5-100 is A range.

Attendance

Class attendance, while not mandatory, is required if you want to succeed in this course. While the course a reasonable set of assigned readings, by the nature of this unusial subject most of the material is not sufficiently covered by the books or papers. Finally, many lectures include demonstrations and videos. The attendance credit is engineered to encourage your attendance. Each lecture bears 1 attendance point. The maximum number of attendance poits is 12. If you have missed the lecture, make sure that you have a copy of the slides and watch the video of the lecture if it is available online. The links to the lecture slides and videos are provided on the Materials page.

Weekly Grind

Every week, you are expected to do three things

Special Assignments and Projects

To practice specific skills, each student will need to complete the following special assignments and project. Details for each of these assignments can be found on the CourseWeb.

  1. Journal paper presentation (12 pt)
  2. Peer reviewing project (10pt)
  3. Research project proposal (10+20pt)

Other Course Requirements

In addition to graded work, there are a few course requirements. No further points will be assigned for completing the requirements, but you are expected to satisfy it before the end of the course to receive the grade. Options and details are explained on the CourseWeb.

Extra Credit Points

You can earn extra credit points for several things such as asking a good question in class, helping during the lecture, finding errors in slides, and suggesting good supplementary materials for the class (books, articles, videos, etc). Also, one extra credit point per week will be awarded to the student with largest CoMeT post impact for that week.

Course Policies

Academic Integrity

You are expected to be fully aware of your responsibility to maintain a high quality of integrity in all of your work. All work must be your own, unless collaboration is specifically and explicitly permitted as in the course group project. Any unauthorized collaboration or copying will at minimum result in no credit for the affected assignment and may be subject to further action under the University Guidelines for Academic Integrity. You are expected to have read and understood these Guidelines. A document discussing these guidelines was included in your orientation materials.

Late Submissions

Homework or projects submitted after due date will be accepted, but your objective grade will be scaled so that you lose 10% of the grade for every late working day. I.e., if you will submit your work one week late, you will lose 50% of the grade. Note that most homework and projects require submission in both electronic and printed form. The submission date (used in calculating late days) is the date when the last of these forms is submitted. In addition, projects have a portion of the grade for presentation of the project. If you will fail to present your project on due date, you will lose these points.

Special Considerations

Disability Policy: If you have a disability for which you are or may be requesting an accommodation, you are encouraged to contact both your instructor and Disability Resources and Services, 216 William Pitt Union, (412) 648-7890/(412) 383-7355 (TTY), as early as possible in the term. DRS will verify your disability and determine reasonable accommodations for this course

Copyright © 2019 Peter Brusilovsky