| Note to those leading discussions | ||
| Instructions | Aside from leading discussion the day of
the meeting, a discussion leader's key responsibility is
to select the readings and prepare them for distribution
in a timely fashion. To accomplish this: 0. Find the papers you'd like the group to read. Aim for three readings, with at most one of them being long. You may also supplement these readings with some background material, but these should be considered optional reading. 1. Bring the papers to Margaret Weigand (WeH 8107) for distribution. Please let her know which of the readings, if any, are supplemental so that she can indicate this in the packet. You should plan to get the papers to her on the Tuesday morning the week before the meeting you'll be leading. This will allow her to distribute the papers for collection on Wednesday, the day our participants indicated they prefer. 2. Send a cover letter to Margaret (weigand@cs) by email right around the same time that you give her the papers. (She can't distribute the readings without the cover letter.) The email should at least contain a citation for each paper, suitable for a citation list in a journal paper. If you're handing out something unusual to read that has no proper citation (like a product pamphlet), you should give some indication of what it is and where you found it. Even the supplemental readings should have citations. As for format, feel free to crib from the citations given in this web site. You should also consider including a brief guide to the readings in your email. A guide gives us reading advice, such as which parts to skim or skip, which parts need a bit of additional background, which parts should be read carefully, and so on. The parts of the cover letter that are not particular to the papers are boilerplate; Margaret can generate this text on her own. On the day of the meeting itself, you have one other key logistical responsibility: arrive five minutes early and guard the pizza until the meeting starts. Margaret will take care of ordering the pizza and dealing with the delivery person, but can't sit around to babysit it. |
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| Advice | Here are some general thoughts on what
you can do to help make the meeting you lead as
productive as possible. This list should grow over time
as the nuggets of wisdom are collected. Good places to look for papers include: general reference works, like the Software Engineer's Reference Book (Mary has a copy) and the Encyclopedia of Software Enginering (the engineering library has a copy); bibliographies from the web and from courses taught here (both being gathered at our web site); and of course our illustrious and friendly faculty members. Please consider reading other materials than those you hand out. The extra reading can really bring context and perspective to your own learning and will prepare you for the questions and diversions that happen during the meeting. Try to avoid losing information that illuminates either the topic you're covering or the teaching of it. For example, knowing that a paper you considered handing out was rejected because it was too long, badly written, complex, out-dated, or otherwise unsuitable is valuable information! It should become part of that meeting's web page. Since a big part of SERG's purpose is to help teach our graduate students important topics in software engineering, dedicating part of the meeting to a short lecture with slides on the basics of the topic can be very useful. These slides can then be made consumable from the web as a kind of reference on the topic and resource for those who might later teach the topic. Even if you don't want to do slides, please see that at least some time is given to getting the basics of the topic on the table before our critical participants tear it apart. Similarly, in keeping with SERG's purpose, we should discuss the educational worth of the topic, such as whether it should be included in a PhD-level course and how to present it. Since the participants are all researchers, there's a temptation to discuss only the technical merits of the topic and its papers - a temptation that should be controlled. You should think about combing the web for additional materials on your topic, either to prepare yourself or for other participants to browse. It's surprising how many relevent sites are out there now! |
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[DeLine 02/20/97]