DAT315, Period 2, 2016: The Computer Scientist in Society

Instructor

Peter Damaschke (ptr)

Assistants

Inari Listenmaa (inari.listenmaa(at)cse.gu.se)
Simon Robillard (simon.robillard)

Announcements

Student representatives: Simon Johansson (simojoh), Solrun Einarsdottir (slrn(at)chalmers.se).
Mail all submissions, questions, etc., to "ptr".
The final submission deadline in the study period has expired. Due to the nature of the examination, the re-exam simply consists of finishing the exercises that were not yet passed, at any time. However, quick response/reporting cannot be guaranteed.

Organization

The course is very much based on reading and homework and has at most one lecture time per week. The course is examined by two writing exercises. This organization allows you a very flexible individual time planning. However, for passing the course we do expect two well-written reports in the end.

Lecture time:
Wednesday 10:00-11:45 in room HB1.

Office hours for consultations:
Send mail if you want an appointment. The preferred time for consultations is Tuesday, 8:00-12:00, in room 6478.

Aims and Goals

Various skills needed to write clear and structured reports with proper scientific argumentation, especially as a preparation for your master's thesis writing.
Learn how to summarize a topic from computer science, based on influential articles or industrial examples. (This is also an opportunity to get familiar with some great original literature like in a seminar course and to study an additional topic of your choice.)
Learn how to explain a topic on different levels to different audiences.
Ethical issues in computer science and approaches to a scientific reasoning about them.
Ethics in research and development in general.

Exercises and Examination

You have to produce two texts: a summary and a proposal. As an additional part, ethical considerations are required for one topic. The course is passed when all these exercises are passed. The course grades are fail/pass (not U/3/4/5), and you can only pass the course as a whole.

The proposal should ideally be your upcoming real master's thesis proposal. Otherwise it can be a fictive research proposal where you only practice the writing.

The topic of the summary is rather free (however observe the detailed exercise instructions). It may be connected to your thesis proposal, but it can also be based on some other article(s) of your choice, or on some academic or industrial research talk. Summarizing is an important skill. For instance, as a part of your thesis you will have to summarize the state of the field which your work builds upon.

Summaries must be submitted individually (one per student), whereas proposals may be written by one or two students who will work together on their master's thesis.

Submit all texts as PDF attachments (no other formats please) to ptr(at)chalmers.se. The subject line must mention "DAT315" and "summary" or "proposal". Put your name on every PDF.

Deadlines, passing, and resumbissions: Respect the deadlines for the weekly exercises and for the final documents. If you cannot stick to a deadline for an important reason, ask for an extension. When an examination part (summary, proposal incl. ethics) is passed, you will get a mail that explicitly says so. Otherwise, fix the problems mentioned in the feedback and turn in again. (But you don't have to formally "pass" the intermediate steps, only the final versions count.) Resubmissions are permitted until you have passed, and their number is not limited. However, please address all comments carefully, to avoid long chains of incremental resubmissions.