COMPSCI 705 - SOFTENG 702: Literature Reviews:

This assessment is 30% of your final grade. There are four components: interim report (5%), final report (15%), presentation slides (5%) and presentation (5%). Deadlines are announced on the assignment page of the course webpage. Please take all further announcements and advice during the course of the project into consideration.

Document Format. Write your interim and final report in ACM CHI "HCI Archive format". Also use this format for the references - there are examples in the Word doc.

References. Correct references are a critical part of academic writing. Provide a full reference in CHI style for each of your publications. This Referencite web site has useful instructions on how to reference and cite work - but unfortunately not in CHI Style. If you are using EndNote (recommended) you can import citations directly from the libraries (saves a lot of time and errors). However CHI style is not one of the EndNote styles - it is close to Numbered - you can modify Numbered, so that it includes the page numbers etc. In addition, provide an electronic link to each of your papers - e.g., ACM Digital Library, author's webpage - we should be able to click directly to the paper.

Title, author, etc. as per document format
Abstract - introduce and scope your topic (200 words)
Summaries of 3 related research publications by different authors. These must be peer refereed research papers. Anything from the IEEE Explore, ACM Digital library or Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) - all available through the library's e-databases - is acceptable, as are other journal and conference proceedings publications. What's not acceptable are articles in a format of a popular magazine or trade-literature or advertising or blog posting. If you're in doubt about the acceptability of your source that's outside of IEEE, ACM or LNCS, just email the relevant lecturer and ask.

For each publication you must:
1 summarize the paper in 200 words
2 describe how it relates to the topic
3 provide a full reference in CHI style as per the document format
4 provide an electronic link to the paper

Use the CHI style for your report. Your word count should be between 3000 and 4000 words (excluding references). The page limit including pictures and references is 7 pages.

Suggested structure:

• Abstract - Introduce your topic and overview the scope of the review findings (200 words).
• Introduction - Should motivate the reader's interest in this topic and why it deserves a review.
• Body - Your report should demonstrate that you have an integrated understanding of the literature. It should discuss the following points as appropriate: problem and sub problems, approaches, findings, methodologies. We expect that you will have extended your review to at least six different research groups/authors. These must be peer refereed research papers (see above).
• Summary - Brief conclusions
• Future work - Identify gaps and shortcomings for topic

Maximum of 10 slides plus one slide of references in CHI format (.pptx or pdf format). Same logical flow as your Full Report, but note that a Powerpoint can't hold all the content of your report. After a title slide and introducing the topic, try to hit the key points around slides 4-8 and then close out with the last 2 slides. Some straightforward advice can be found here.

Because of the class size, it's just a bit much to give everybody an individual presentation slot, so you will be grouped with the other students who reviewed the same topic - generally, two other students. You will be marked on your individual presentation skill, but you are to coordinate with the other students to provide the most informative presentation to the rest of the class.

You'll be best served to put all the slides in one Powerpoint file for ease of transition and to choose one style. You'll want to reconcile redundant material to have a single intro and conclusion / future research - each of you should cover some 'core' material as well. Your time slot will allow just under 20 minutes including question time (two presentations per class), so each student should get 5 minutes speaking. That's about 5 slides per person, so not all of your draft slides will make the cut for the combined presentation (most likely there'll be overlap that will help with this). Allow some time for questions after you've all spoken.

Sometimes people lose track of time and start eating into your time. Work out unambiguous time signals with your co-presenters - the lecturer may bail you out by asking your co-presenter to move along, but don't count on it!

Have a title slide naming your topic and the presenters. Include a footer on each slide that indicates the name of the speaker for that slide to help the lecturer who is marking the presentation.

The presentation schedule will be posted on the course page.

One of the difficult skills you must master with this work is learing to summarize other people's work in your own words. Copying word-for-word is not acceptable! - with a very few exceptions, like a definition. We will submit your assignments to Turnitin. When writing your report, it's best just to pretend that there is no Copy/Paste feature in your word processor. An exception: you can use photos or striking figures from your reviewed articles - just cite source in the figure caption. [Note - if you were publishing this work, you'd need permission of the original article's publisher (publisher, not author) to re-use the figure... and they'd probably want a royalty.]