CS 4750, HCI Design and Evaluation, Grading

CS 4750
HCI Design and Evaluation
Grading

Grading

Overview
Your final grade is made up of three major components, homework assignments, projects, and an exam. The weighting of these components is described below.
Students are expected to do their own work at all times and to follow the university's codes of academic conduct and honor code. Cases of suspected collaboration or cheating will be immediately forwarded to the Dean of Student Affairs, and will be pursued to resolution. This is an unpleasant process for all involved, so please do not put yourself in this situation.
Students are expected to conduct themselves in a professional manner--this entails showing up for exams at the appointed time. Late make-up exams will not be given, so beware of circumstances such as "My alarm didn't go off," or "I thought the exam was Thursday." If some form of prior committment does not allow a student to take an exam at the given time, PRIOR arrangements should be made with the instructor.
Extra work after the term, is not allowed to "bring up" a grade. A student's grade shall be earned from their performance solely on the term's assignments.

Grading is determined by a term-long accumulation of points, weighed in percentage as stated for each component as summarized below. Determinations of the individual category breakdowns will be determined by looking for gaps or clumps in the final averages.

Examinations
A mid-term examination is planned for the course. Most exam questions will reflect the material covered in lecture and assigned reading. The exams will consist mostly of short answer questions, with a few multiple-choice, and longer essay questions thrown in as well.

Homework Assignments
Two types of homework assignments will be given: "regular" assignments and "small" assignments. The regular homework assignments will be more substantive and you will have about a week to do them. The small assignments will be shorter and hopefully a little fun. I anticipate giving around four of the small HWs and two of the regular ones. The regular homeworks will be worth 10% of your grade and the short ones will be worth 8% of your grade. Individual values will be determined later.

Project
One term-long interface design project will be given in this course. The project will be broken down into four parts, each around three weeks in duration. Each of the substantive assignments is worth 15% of your final grade. The project will have you develop an alternative interface for some computer-based application. The assignments will have you evaluate users, needs, and tasks in the domain, design a mock-up for a new interface, develop a prototype of that interface, and evaluate your design. The material which you turn in should be presented professionally, and should stress grammatical correctness and clarity. It will be submitted via on paper, with supplementary material via the Web. You will be judged on your originality, innovativeness, quality of writing, and correctness. Each assignment will be graded on a scale of 0 to 10. Further details will accompany each assignment.

Class Participation
Reading assignments will be specified for each week. You are expected to come to class, and be prepared --- that is, having read and having made an attempt to understand the material. You should be ready to discuss the material covered in the lectures and reading. Much of the material in this course is subjective. Feel free to describe your views.

Experiment Participation
My research group is doing user interface evaluation experiemnts this summer, and we need participants. We will "pay" each student who participates as a subject in our experiments 2 percentage points on the term's mark.

Summary
Below is presented the weight of the different course components toward your final grade.

Component		Weight
Experiment Participation		2%
HWs		10%
Small HWs		8%
Project part 1		15%
Project part 2		15%
Project part 3		15%
Project part 4		15%
Midterm exam		20%