(This page is in flux)

COVID-19 Notes

This course takes the current Covid-19 pandemic seriously. Masking and 6-feet spacing are mandatory in the classroom, and the number of in-person students will be limited to ensure this policy. The first class session will be in person, and we will discuss the format of the subsequent sessions so that everyone can equally participate and stay safe.

Course Expectations

What you can expect

This course will introduce you to the wonderful world of research, where few things are really understood and there’s a wide world to explore. You will be exposed to major aspects of conducting research, including learning the state of the art by reading and critically assessing recent papers, learning that there’s a lot that is still not well-understood, and conducting a research project yourself.
As such, the course is structured akin to a reading seminar, where the format is loosely as follows:

General discussion about current events and relationship to recent readings
Small-group discussions about the session’s reading(s)
A presentation to provide context of the session’s topic, interspersed with Q&A

Since the course topic is Systems for Human Data Interaction, which is an emerging area of research, we will read papers in adjacent research areas. You will gain exposure to the main topics in visualization research, database research that is related to visual analysis, and many data related tasks that inherently rely on interactive data interfaces. The course is structured into 4 areas (see reading list for details)::

Visualization,
Data management systems,
Input/output Modalities, and
Data tasks

What I expect from You

It is hard to learn about research via lectures, thus I expect the following from you:

Students are expected to actively participate in class discussions; participation is mandatory.
Students should be comfortable reading research papers; you will read, answer questions, and comment on the readings before class.
Students should be comfortable with database systems and front-end technologies.
Students should be comfortable conducting a research project and writing up the results in a research paper format.

Participation

Participation is mandatory.
Since the course is small, it is expected that students will help contribute to the in person and online discussions. This includes:

Asking and answering questions related to the class’s readings and lectures.
Making observations about the lecture’s relationship with products or society
Asking and answering questions on slack

Paper Reviews

The purpose of the course is to gain exposure and conduct research – reading and digesting papers is a major part of the research experience. For this reason, we will be reading a lot of papers in this class.

You will be expected to write and submit a paper review of the readings before each class, and answer some questions about the readings. The purpose of the readings is to provide an illustrative example of the research area. You are encouraged but not required to read the optional and supplemental readings to better understand the materials. However, if you intend to conduct research in any of the areas in the class, then you should expect to read many times more than the requirements.

Reviews will be submitted on the class Wiki, which is shared with the rest of the class. This is meant to assist the presenters and seed the class discussion. You are also encouraged to discuss the papers on the class slack workspace.

Project (semester long)

You will pursue a semester long research project related to this course. The project is a significant part of the course grade.

Collaboration/Copying Policy

You are encouraged to discuss the readings with other in the class. However, any writing that you do must be written by yourself (or by your group for group work). Plagiarism of any kind will receive a zero in the course and reported to the school.

Refer to Columbia’s academic honesty policy if you are at all unsure. If still unsure, come talk to the instructor in office hours.