The purpose of this "course" is to help you define, plan, and carry out your senior project.

You are the one who has to do most (if not all) of the work in this project, but I will provide some structure that will hopefully help you to do so successfully and without getting too frustrated or stressed out along the way.

I am also here to help you in case you do get frustrated or stressed out along the way. This is a research project you are working on, and in research projects things don't always work exactly the way you think they should work when planning the project. So, it is not uncommon to get stuck at some point. Come and see me any time if this happens to you or if you are unhappy with your project in any other ways. We will talk about it and find a solution.

So, here are the rules for this "course":

Weekly meetings

I want to have a weekly meeting with each of you starting in the first week of the term.

Send my an update on your work the evening before our meeting (I want to be able to read it early in the morning). This update should say what were your goals for the past week, what you in fact did get done (give reasons for why you did what you did especialy if there were any changes to your original plans), what your goals for the following week will be, and how this fits your planned schedule for the term.

Be honest if you don't always make your weekly goals. This is normal in research projects. The important thing is to make sure that you finish your project and have interesting results at the end of winter term. I am here to help you with that. So, let me know if you are falling behind schedule or think that you won't be able to meet some of your goals, so that we can discuss what to do about it.

Group meetings

I want to have four group meetings during the term in the first, fourth, seventh and last week of the term. In these group meetings, you will give mini-presentations to the rest of the group and get a chance to get feedback from them. We will also discuss general things about project planning and management, giving presentations, and writing scientific papers.

Time commitment

In addition to the meetings, you should expect to spend about 10 hours per week working on your project. Don't leave all your work for the day before our weekly meeting. If you run into any problems, there may not be time to fix them and you will have lost a whole week.

Monitoring your own progress

In the first week of the term, you will develop a detailed work plan for this term. This will allow you to evaluate your progress wrt. this plan regularly. We will talk more about this in our first group meeting.

Reports

At the end of both the fall term and the winter term, you have to hand in reports. More info on those will follow later.

Final presentation

At the end of the winter term, you will present the results of your work to CS students, faculty, and guests. This will include an oral presentation and a poster session.

CS seminars

I expect you to attend the talks in the CS seminar series. These talks will introduce you to a variety of research areas in computer science. They will also see what presentations of research results in computer science look like (You will need that for your final presentation!), and you will develop an idea of what techniques, skills, and behaviors make a presentation a good presentation or a bad presentation.

The seminars usually take place (more or less) bi-weekly on Thursdays at 12:45 in a room that needs to be determined. Lunch will be served outside the room before the lecture.

Asking for help

If you run into any unexpected problems, contact me immediately. Don't wait until our next meeting, since this will probably throw you off your schedule. You can send me an email, come to my office hours, or come by my office any other time to see whether I am in. If my door is open, it's a sign that it is ok for you to come in.