Grading Policy

Your total grade for the semester is divided into the following sections.

Participation
10%
Blog
20%
Presentation
5%
Quizzes
10%
Project 1
10%
Project 2
10%
Project 3
10%
Final Project
15%
Exams
10%
TOTAL
100%

A
90% and above
B
75% to 90%
C
60% to 75%
D
50% to 60%
F
below 50%

Participation Grade: 10%
Discussion is an important part of the classroom content. Insightful questions and comments are encouraged. As such, we have a classroom rubric that rewards students who participate insightfully. 10% of your grade will be composed of your classroom participation. Participation will be graded on a 50 point scale. For every thoughtful comment, question, or response, you will get one point for that day. You can get a maximum of 3 points per day. Additionally for each n’th day that you are absent you will get a minus number of n points. The maximum number of points receivable are 50 points.

Here are a number of ways for you to reach the 50 points max.  There are 29 days in the semester, thus there are a total of 87 points for the taking:
  • Respond to 4 questions each day, get 3 points each day for a total of max(50, 4*29) = max(50,116) = 50 points
  • Respond to 3 questions each day, get 3 points each day for a total of max(50, 3*29) = max(50, 87) = 50 points
  • Respond to 2 questions each day, get 2 points each day for a total of max(50, 2*29) = max(50, 58) = 50 points
  • Respond to 2 questions each day, but absent 2 times for a total of max(50, 2*27 - 1 - 2)= max(50, 54 - 3) = max(50, 51)
Thus, you can be absent twice, participate an average of twice per class, and still get a perfect score for participation.  Note however that each missing day hurts more and more, and it is no longer possible to score 50 points if you miss more than 5 days, and you will get 0 participation points with 11 or more absences.

Absence Effect on Max Participation Points:
  • 1st absence = -1 point (with one absence, max participation points = 83)
  • 2nd absence = -2 point (with two absence, max participation points = 78)
  • 3rd absence = -3 point (with three absence, max participation points = 72)
  • 4th absence = -4 points (with four absence, max participation points = 65)
  • 5th absence = -5 points (with five absences, max participation points = 57)
  • 6th absence = -6 points (with six absences, max participation points = 48)
  • 7th absence = -7 points (with seven absences, max participation points = 38)
  • 8th absence = -8 points (with eight absences, max participation points = 27)
  • 9th absence = -9 points (with nine absences, max participation points = 15)
  • 10th absence = -10 points (with ten absences, max participation points = 2)
  • 11th or more absences 0 participation
Blog Grade: 20%
Blogs are important for several reasons:
  1. They help improve your writing skills.
  2. They get you in the practice of writing and taking good notes about what you read.
  3. The summary/discussion format is very useful for taking notes on papers in graduate school.
  4. Your blogs will be helpful when you are writing papers, rather than re-read the papers, you can just read the blog since everything you will need is there.
  5. They help ensure that you have read the paper effectively.
50% of your blog grade will go towards your paper review blogs, and 50% will be on other readings and classroom activities. There will be 25 UIST/IUI/CHI papers to blog on (note that this is half compared to how many the students had to do last year).

Microblogs are worth only one point, and are miniature versions of full blogs. They are used to take notes on each chapter so that you can write a full blog and remember what you read when the time comes.

Each full blog post will be given a total of 10 points. For each blog post, you are expected to read blog posts from two other people’s blogs and place a comment on them. Each of the following is worth a single point out of the ten points.
  • [1 point] Blog has proper format (0 points if any missing):
    • includes paper, book, or presentation title
    • includes author names
    • includes presentation venue
      • which conference, when where
      • who were the book editors, when, where
      • where and when was the presentation given
    • labeled summary section
    • labeled discussion section
    • links to two comments
  • [1 point] Writing should be clear and concise, but of appropriate length:
    • Grammar/Spelling: No grammatical or spelling errors
    • Concise: Writing should be as concise as possible
    • Length should be appropriate: between a paragraph and a page
    • Clarity: Writing should be clear and understandable to someone who hasn’t read the paper
  • [1 point] Summary exists (the person tried)
  • [1 point] Summary does not include opinion information
  • [1 point] Summary is useful and follows the following five requirements
    • Completeness: Writing should include the main/significant/important concepts from paper
    • Completeness: Writing should be able to function as a reference: If you later need to access information from the paper, it should be in the summary
    • Completeness: Writing should include the information necessary to implement ideas
  • [1 point] Discussion exists and is an opinion (possible opinion questions below)
    • Why is this paper interesting or significant?
    • What are the faults of this work?
    • What is the possible future work extending from this work: i.e., if you had implemented this work, what would be your next steps – either continuing or fixing this work, taking some of these ideas and applying them to others’/your work, or starting new work from some of these ideas.
  • [1 point] The blog contains a useful picture.
  • [1 point] Discussion is insightful and interesting (could answer one of the questions below, but points only given, if the reader say, ‘oh interesting point, I didn’t think of that’)
  • [1 point] Comment on other Blog
  • [1 point] 2nd comment on other Blog
Additionally, there will be -1 point if it is not written by the time of class when it is due. And
another -1 point for every week that it is late.

More information on writing your blogs in the correct format can be found in Guide #1: Writing your blog posts.


Presentation Grade: 5%
Verbal communications skills are as important as written communication skills, and as such, you will be given 7 opportunities to present during the semester. You will present by yourself 3 times, through three blog presentations, and with a group 4 times (for your three projects, and your final project)

We will use the following rubric for grading the presentations:
Each presentation will be worth 16 points:
  • 4 points for delivery,
  • 4 points for strength of material, organization
  • 8 points for awareness of audience

Quizzes: 10%
There will be total of 12 quizzes held an average of once a week.The quiz will be on the reading material for the week. The quizzes serve two purposes. 1) The quizzes will help ensure that everyone has done their required reading before class, thus making a more enjoyable discussion scenario. 2) Studies have shown that people remember material better and learn more from it from the act of quizzing them on the material. In fact, studies have shown that you learn more from two study sessions followed by two quiz sessions than you do by four study sessions!

Each quiz will have 10 questions. The best 10 of 12 quizzed will count towards the students’ grade.


Exams: 10%
There will be two exams, one midterm and another final exam. Each will be worth 5% of your grade.


Projects: 45%
There will be three projects on a defined topic, followed by a final project. Each project will consist of a research component followed by three products to be turned in:
  • Paper (using the paper rubric provided)
  • 1-5 minute video highlighting the work done
  • Presentation of the work to the class.
The projects will be on the following topics: