Class
Discussion & Presentations
One of the best
ways to
deeply understand a topic is to discuss the topic with others.
Therefore, everyone is expected to actively participate in the
classroom discussions. You may use your paper
reviews as the basis for
discussion, but please do not feel a need to limit your comments to
what you wrote in your evaluations. I encourage everyone to ask
questions about or offer clarifications for confusing parts of the
papers, and to think about the limitations of or possible extensions to
the work being discussed.
There
will be an advocate and a skeptic for each paper for every lecture,
each to speak for 5-8
minutes about the paper.
Each person should sign up to be the advocate on one paper and the
skeptic on a different paper.
(The
sign up
sheet is available via Blackboard
system.)
When you are not the advocate or skeptic on a paper, I will still
expect you to participate actively in the class discussions.
The
advocate gives
the elevator pitch for the paper: what is the topic of the paper, what
are its main results, why the system or idea is an improvement upon the
previous works (if any), why does the result matter, and so on. The
answers to these questions may be different from the ones the authors
gave in the paper.
The
skeptic
should discuss why we should be cautious in interpreting the results of
the paper. The skeptic should also suggest additional research
directions that could build upon, improve, or otherwise augment the
paper under
discussion.