In many cases I'll be bucket-sorting individual subcomponents of your grade based on on a scale roughly following {great 100%, good 89%, ok 78%, poor 67%, zero 0%}, although the exact weighting may vary. Note that poor is not a passing mark in a graduate class.
There will be no final examination in this course, final project presentations will be during the final exams period (Thu Dec 11, time 1-5 (may change slightly depending on final enrollment).
The grading scheme is roughly proportional to estimated time
spent. I assume available time is 12 hours per week across 14 weeks,
for a time budget of 168 hours. The synchronous in-class meetings will
take 3 hours per week, and occur during 13 weeks. Attending the
final presentations will take 3 or 4 hours. I estimate about 7 hours
of reading and writing time each week during the 11 weeks of reading
and online discussion. The project should be scoped to take about
80 hours per person, spread throughout the term.
Do not attend class if you are ill with something that is
contagious or need to quarantine due to COVID exposure.
If you must miss class you should send me
email with an explanation; this email should be in advance not after
the fact, unless the problem is illness or emergency. You do not need
a doctor's note to establish illness, UBC policy is to self-declare.
Among the reasons you might miss class: you are ill or quarantining,
your visa is delayed so you cannot get to Vancouver in time for the
start of term, you missed the first one or two classes because of
changing plans of what courses to take, you must attend a conference
to present your work, and so on.
If you are unable to come to class for any reason, you can (and should) work through the exercise on your own for full
credit. Follow the link to the googledoc folder for the exercise.
Manually copy the Answer Template into a file in the Solo Results
folder and give that file a unique name (following the naming
convention of the Group Responses folder but with 'S' instead of 'G'
for the unique number, followed by the week number after 'W': for
example, 'S01 W1' for the first solo assignment of week 1.
Complete the activity on your own, and post
a private note to the instructors on Piazza when you have finished.
Although the educational benefit of doing exercises on your own is
substantially less than attending class, because you won't learn from
discussion with your small, or the reportbacks and discussion with the
larger group, it's better than missing this material completely.
Your submitted comments should be thoughtful, and clearly show
that you've done the reading and reflected on it. They may either be
phrased in the form of an observation or a question. Do be concise:
aim for a short paragraph for each reading. If you genuinely are
confused by some aspect of the reading, then it's useful and
legitimate to ask for clarification. However, simply asking something
that you could trivially look up yourself is not a good question.
Neither are vague statements like "I liked it" or "I learned a lot",
or anything that you could write without having thought carefully
about the reading. As with any written work that you hand in, I expect
correct grammar and spelling. Your responses to the observations and
questions of your classmates should also be thoughtful and polite. I
will also sometimes chime in to the online discussion.
For marking I'll start with pass/fail, I may fall back on explicit
marking if I see quality issues.
Below are examples of graded comments from a
Navigation/Zooming reading in a previous course, ranging from great to
poor.
Synchronous In-Class Participation
The synchronous component of the class will be in person and will include in-class
exercises working in small groups, lectures, and discussions. It
will occur in the Thursday afternoon time slot (2-5). Participation
is mandatory, I do expect you to attend and the material covered will
be important for absorbing and internalizing the course material. It
will be marked on a pass/fail basis: if you participate and you're
engaged, you will pass.
Missed Classes / Illness
Asynchronous Reading & Online Discussion
The asynchronous (async) component of the course will take place over
weeks through 10 weeks. For each week, you will first do the assigned
readings, then join the online discussion by first posting your own
comments about the readings, then responding to comments from others.
In most weeks there will be three assigned readings. In the online
discussion, your own comments on the readings are due by Tuesday noon.
You must post one comment on each assigned reading. Your
responses to the comments of others are due by Thursday noon. You must
post to at least one response to a classmate's comments each
week, feel free to contribute further to the discussion as well.
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Tamara Munzner
Last modified: Sat Sep 6 11:56:27 PDT 2025