Informatics 201, Fall 2011
Professor Bill Tomlinson


Assignments and Readings MUST be completed BEFORE the class next to which they are listed
Week Date Topic Assignments Readings
1 9/26 Introductions Getting What you Came For (GWYCF) chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5

2 10/3 Research Interests/Time Management
1) Begin exploring the ACM Digital Library, Google Scholar, and other sources to find papers that interest you. Read their abstracts, skim their content, and look at the web pages of their authors.

2) Make a professional web page, if you don't already have one (potentially based on one or more other people whom you might aspire to resemble professionally). It should include a current CV (please create one if you don't already have one).
1) GWYCF chapters 10 and 11
2) Why Grad Students Succeed or Fail
3 10/10 Prior Work
Write a hypothetical CV for your future self 5 years from now, based on the real CVs of one or more people whom you might aspire to resemble professionally, who are approximately 5-10 years ahead of you. (Please include links to the CV(s) you used as examples.)
1) GWYCF chapter 12
2) Excerpts from Writing Successful Science Proposals
4 10/17 Research Questions/Collaboration

Visitor (tentative): Julia Gelfand, Applied Sciences & Engineering Librarian, UCI Libraries
Write 5 hypothetical titles and abstracts (100-200 words each) for papers on research projects of your choosing, and list the conference or journal to which each paper would be submitted. Some or all of these may have been listed on your hypothetical CV.
1) GWYCF chapter 13
2) How to read a book
3) How to read a paper
5 10/24 Advising/Ethics
Find at least 5 articles most relevant to each of 3 of the abstracts. Submit reference list created using Zotero or similar system. 1) GWYCF chapter 14, 15
2) Tooling Up: Managing Your Advisor
3) The Care and Maintenance of Your Advisor
6 10/31 No Class. Happy Halloween! GWYCF chapters 16, 17, 18, and 19
7 11/7 Qualitative and Quantitative Research

Visitor: Rebecca Black, Assistant Professor, UCI Education.
1) Revised the abstract for one of the projects, and write a related work section for it. Document should describe how your project is different from each of the most significant related works. Last paragraph should describe how your project is novel.

2) Write a list of 5 people (at least 3 at UCI, and possibly some in this course), with whom you might like to collaborate on this project, with a sentence for each one about why their work is relevant.
GWYCF chapter 20
8 11/14

Cross-Disciplinarity/Work-Life Balance
Build on the title/abstract/related work, and expand the paper to include a methods section and expected outcomes. Total length: 2000-3000 words.
GWYCF chapters 21, 22, and 23
9 11/21  Research Contributions/Writing
Using CHI reviewing form, write critiques of 3 classmate projects, each 100-200 words long. Please be rigorous and kind; the goal is to help person make better work, and want to work more. Also find the one most closely related paper you can that is not included in their reference list. GWYCF chapter 24
10 11/28 Career Planning

Finals week 12/9 Final paper due Friday by noon
In 4,000 to 7,000 words, please include:
Title, Abstract, Introduction, Related Work, Methods, Expected Outcomes, and References.