We made a subjective evaluation (based on the writeup and demo, if you had one) that assessed presentation as well as content. We graded things on an A-F scale.

2/5 of the grade was supposed to be for doing the initial phases of the project (proposal, updates, etc.). Everyone did reasonably well at meeting the requirements, so we gave everyone an AB for that phase.

If your final result got an A, you got an A. If your final result got less than an A, it was weighted averaged with the AB (so if you got a B for the final result, we gave you a 3.2). (this can only raise your score).

For assigning final grades, we checked to make sure that raising your subjective grade to the next step wouldn’t effect your grade. The one case where this may have made a difference, and we examined this one closely.

If you are wondering… 13 people got As for their projects, 5 got ABs. Many of the projects graded below that had special circumstances.

We will send individual feedback by email, however, it might not happen until after May 23rd.

(there will be an explanation of the Project 2 grading later)

Your grade is the simple average (1/3 1/3 1/3) of:

1. Project 1
2. Project 2
3. Other Stuff

Other Stuff is the simple average (1/3 1/3 1/3) of:

1. In-class Participation
2. Assignments (2/5=3 seek and critiques, 2/5=Design Challenge and Redesign, 1/5=Midterm). Since most people did most of the things well, the mean was higher than an AB.
3. On-line participation

In class participations was half of the “subjective” evaluation you were sent at the half-way point, and half of a subjective evaluation of the second half.

On-line participation was determined by the average of 3 different grades:

1. The number of required reading postings you completed (e.g. did the posting for). There were 19, 6 people did all 19. 11 people were given As for getting 18 or more.  12 people were given “ABs” for getting 15 or more. Most other people got B’s for 12 or more (one person only did 11).
2. A subjective evaluation where the TA selected a few posts and scored them based on completeness, connection to text, and connection to other ideas. (3 posts were checked * 3 categories * 1-3 scores). 10 people got As for 24/27 or higher, 11 got ABs, 5 got Bs, and one negative outlier got a BC.
3. A quantiative assessment of how many postings you made. The median was 34. You got an A for 35 or more, and AB for 31 or more, and a B for 26 or more (26 was the fewest).

Everyone got between a B and an A for online participation.

We will send you email with these basic scores. We will also send detailed project 2 feedback.

One person sent me a P2 self evaluation, which reminded me that I didn’t give you instructions for them.

I will not look at self-evaluations until after we have graded the project (after reading it, we may adjust your grade if you were at a borderline). So, you can turn it in until Wednesday, 5/13 at 5pm.

Using the questions from P1 is fine. They are:

1. How happy are you with the outcome?
2. What went right/wrong in your project? What would you do the same/different?
3. What will you do the same/differently on the next project?
4. What advice would you give to someone else proposing to do this project in the future?
5. The cliché is to ask about what you learned from the experience. This is good self-reflection practice, but may already be described above.

However, #3 doesn’t make as much sense. Instead, I would prefer if you consider the following questions:

1. How happy are you with the outcome?
2. What went right/wrong in your project? What would you do the same/different?
3. What advice would you give to someone else proposing to do this project in the future?
4. If you worked in a group, how did you split the workload?
5. What could we have done to better connect the class content to projects? What could we (the course staff) have done to have made this project a better experience for you (or students in general)?
6. The cliché is to ask about what you learned from the experience. This is good self-reflection practice, but may already be described above.

In general, we are really interested in getting feedback on the course. It’s still a work in progress. So if you have thoughts on what we could do better or differently (or what you think works and shouldn’t be changed), please let us know. If you want to do it anonymously, please put a printed page in my mailbox.

If you need to give a final demo, please sign up for a time slot on Tuesday, May 15th on the doodle poll at:  http://www.doodle.com/uy2u3e5if5mwhbkc

Each group should sign up for one (and only one) time slot.

Remember, your projects must be handed in by Monday, May 14th, 10am.

On Friday, May 4, the “handin plan” is due. The project page says little more than “expect instructions.” Well, this is it.

There are two goals here:

1. We need to predict what you will be delivering to us, so that we can figure out how you should transmit it to us.
2. We want to get an idea of what to expect, so we can have the opportunity to catch problems where projects aren’t going to meet expectations early.

So, on Friday May 4th (preferably before noon), please send the instructor and TA a note saying:

1. What you expect to have to turn in. Will it just be a big PDF? Will it be a ZIP with code and an excutable? Is there a lot of data? How big? (it’s not practical for you to deliver more than a few MB by email). Do you have some mechanism for putting it on the web?
2. Will you have a demo to run? If so, will you be able to put it on the web so we can try it? Even if we can try it, we will probably want to schedule a time to look at it and discuss it with you. (we want to get a sense of how many demos to schedule).
3. How is the project progressing? Give us a sense of where you’ve gotten to and where you expect to get to. (a few sentences – maybe 2 paragraphs – just enough so we get a sense).

As far as when things are due: according to University policy, things must be due the last day of class. However, we will have an “email blackout” between Wednesday May 9th at noon and Monday, May 14th at 10am. Anything sent during this time will be considered as handed in at May 9th, but won’t be looked at until the 14th. In fact, we’d prefer that you didn’t send us things until Sunday the 13th (since we’ll both be traveling).

So, the deadline for us to receive your project materials is really Monday, May 14th at 10am. This is a pretty firm deadline, since we need to grade it quickly.

You will at least need to send us your written report by email (if it’s a small enough PDF, otherwise send a web link) by this time, and have some arrangement for us to get other files.

Overall, everyone who submitted something did at least a good job.

There was variance. Some are more insightful than others. Some more directly addressed the question (how does the research utilize class concepts), while others critiqued the tool itself. Still others decided to praise the tool (sometimes in ways that didn’t necessarily add). I will account for at least some of the variance by the way the question was phrased.

But, Almost all the things were (at least) good. There were a few (4) that were just OK (and one that might have been a little less than OK). But since I am not sure I can objectively qualify why things fell into these different bins, I think its more fair just to say that those who didn’t do “good” legitimately had different ideas about the assignment.

So, everyone who turned it in gets “100%.” We’ll count this as a “written participation” – but emphasize it more than the individual Piazza assignments.

To the person who did a visual critique of the paper: you are totally right! I can’t tell you how hard it was to cram everything in to 10 pages. And it really does show (the paper is way too dense).

Everyone should get have gotten their P1 grades sent to the email address that my mailer thinks of.

Notes on how grading was computed are available here.

There were many cool projects. It’s too bad we didn’t have a forum to share them (like presentations). Maybe we’ll do something (optional) at the end.

The diversity of projects was pretty remarkable. It made it challenging to find a (relatively) fair way to grade them all.

Wow – we’re getting to the end. Hopefully, your projects are going well (and you sent a project update), and that will be the main focus of your time. But we do have some topics left…

• Monday, April 30: A lecture of Design. We will have an special guest lecture and interactive activity with someone who has experience as a designer. Please do the reading before the lecture, but you can do the Piazza post afterwards.
• Wednesday, May 2: We’ll combine the previous two lectures and have a discussion on talk materials (using our developing design critique skills to look at some presentations). We will also do course evals.
• Friday, May 4: No class. I will hold extra office hours to discuss projects. There will be a project update due, but details have not yet been provided.

The last week, we’ll talk about 3D and depth perception, and the “other half” of visualization (traditional scientific visualization). But mainly its time for you to get your projects done.

Next week, we’ll go over two topics that I like to talk about (and people said they want to hear about). They are both topics for which preparing yourself for the discussion will be useful. Also, next week is really a chance to get your project on track.

• before Monday – Your project 2 revised proposals are due (extended deadline). If all goes according to plan, you should get initial P1 feedback on 4/20. If you don’t get it before the P2 revised deadline, let us know because something has gone wrong.
• Monday (April 23) – Class discussion on animation, with required Piazza post. Yes, we’ll watch some cartoons in class (projector willing). It makes it more fun. Thinking about animation can be a good way to get at general communication principles.
• Wednesday (April 25) – Class discussion on presentations, with required Piazza post. I guess presentation is part of Visualization, but I am thinking of it more as a skills building thing. We’re not doing presentations in this class, but hopefully it will help you should you need to give on. (which I do, on Thursday)
• Thursday (April 26) – I am giving a talk in the library about the Vis work in our group. You can view it as a chance to see if I practice what I preach (both in terms of vis projects and presentation). But its totally not connected to class, and you probably hear enough of me any way.
• Friday (April 27) – Project 2 Progress updates. A lesson from Project 1 is that doing these are important: they are a really good opportunity for course correction, and to make sure things are on track.

I have initial feedback for all of the project 1. It isn’t totally “graded” but there is at least some commentary that may help you in planning project 2. (my not-so-good excuse for the delay is that I wanted to focus on giving feedback for P2)

I will warn people that on the first pass, I am often noting what is wrong, not necessarily counting up all that’s right. (it’s kind of like grading a test where you put an X on the 1 that’s wrong, rather than 99 checkmarks on the one that’s correct).

Today, the revised and approved project 2 proposals were due. I have gotten few of them so far (and have not responded to any of them). I’ll give people the excuse that you were waiting for P1 feedback. So, everyone can have an extension until Monday. However, remember that this is for having a project proposal approved: just sending it to us at the last minute is not an opportunity for us to iterate with you.

I am noticing from the final results of P1, that more careful scrutiny at the revised proposal and 3rd week update phase may have caught problems. So I strongly encourage people to give us description of what you are doing and where things are going (as much as possible): the more we get from you, the more we may be able to help steer you.