Assessment

Grading

Students will be assessed and graded according to the following components:

  • Research project (includes final presentation and project report): 50%

  • Paper presentation and slide submission: 20%

  • Paper summaries: 20%

  • Participation in discussions: 10%


Research Project

Please see research project page to find more details on this category. Following is the breakdown of research project 50% grading:

  • Project proposal: 10%

  • Midterm project evaluation: 10%

  • Final project evaluation (includes final codebase): 20%

  • Project report: 10%



Paper Presentation and Slide Submission

Every class period will include presentations of 1-2 research papers. Each paper presentation will have a slot of 50 minutes (including discussion). The presentation should consist of the following components: problem motivation, objective, threat model, related work, key innovations, methodology, experiment setup, and results. Please note that this structure may not be feasible for all research papers and the presenter can add new components and/or remove the existing ones.

The presenter will add 2 sets of breakout room questions. The first set of questions at approximately 1/3rd point of the presentation, then the second set of questions at approximately 2/3rd point of the presentation, and finally questions will come from the class at the end. The 1/3rd, 2/3rd points are not strict. Please think of some interesting questions that would encourage discussions and put those questions in your slides wherever it seems most appropriate. Each breakout room question set may have a list of 1-3 questions.

Approximately, the presentation should not be more than 30 minutes (including 2 breakout room discussions 5 minutes each) to leave room for at least 5-15 minutes of discussion. Students are required to submit their slides used for presentation via Canvas. This is due at noon (12 pm) on the day of the presentation. The students are encouraged to check the original conference presentation of the papers by their authors (videos/slides, if available) and collect ideas on how to make a strong presentation.


Note: If a student finds the research paper they originally opted to present less relevant, they can choose another related paper to present. More specifically, the topic and presentation date should not change but the paper being presented can change if necessary. However, this change request should be communicated to the instructor at least one week before the day of the presentation. For example, if your presentation is scheduled for September 30, please inform the instructor about the change along with the changed paper title by the end of the day on September 23.


Paper Summaries

A paper summary should consist of the following nine components. Please write separate paragraphs/sections for each component under a heading.

(1pt) problem motivation,

(1pt) threat model,

(1pt) a short summary of the methodology,

(1pt) key results,

(1pt) 2-3 strengths of the paper,

(1pt) 2-3 weaknesses of the paper,

(1pt) 1 or more potential ways to address the limitations or to extend the work,

(1pt) something you would have done differently if you had written the paper, and

(2pt) final thoughts/questions.

The last component will be added to the discussion after the paper presentation. The summary of one paper should not exceed 2 pages.

You have to submit only 8 paper summaries throughout the term. Important: you still must read all the assigned research papers before the class. These 8 papers must be a subset of the papers presented and discussed in class. Also, this ‘8 papers’ list of your own must not include papers that you are assigned to present. Each of your paper summary should come from different topics. The goal here is to ensure sufficient breadth.

The summaries are due at noon (12 pm) on the day of the presentation. For example, if you want to summarize a paper scheduled to be presented on September 28, the deadline for you is September 28 at noon (12 pm). I will name the assignments according to dates (in this example the assignment name would be ‘Paper summary September 28' to which you will submit your summary).





Participation in Discussions

Engage in interactive discussions during the class. Ask questions and share thoughts based on your knowledge and from your readings. This is important since participation will also be assessed for grading (10%).