Course Timeline and Homework

Course schedule, in and out of class. Subject to change, particularly further in the future. If you have any ideas for a future class, please add them here!


Timeline Summary

Week 1: Course introduction and project 1 planning

Weeks 2-3: Plan and start project 1

Weeks 4-8: Project 1; journal reviews; project status presentations; project tutorials; project 2 planning

Weeks 9-13: Project 2; project status presentations; journal review, project tutorials and activities

Week 14: Final presentations

Week 1

Class Thursday 1/21:

  • Class motivation, goals, structure, syllabus, wiki

  • Introduce everyone

  • Give a breakdown of the wiki

    • What was done last year

    • What is expected this year

    • Where to find everything

  • Project-oriented structure for class

  • How to evaluate a piece of software -- a brief explanation

  • Questions

  • Start planning projects

HW for 1/26:

(You must complete the assignments in bold; if you have time, attempt some of the other activities)

Week 2

Class 1/26:

  • Course Setup Tutorial

  • Introduce project guidelines (i.e. explain milestones, in class activities, and deliverables)

HW for 1/28:

  • Continue with activities from previous homework

  • Pick 2-5 potential pieces of software to explore and evaluate for your research project

  • Using this software, create 3-5 potential project ideas in your journal. Be prepared to share concisely (one sentence each) in class. We will ponder their levels of: 1) collaboration, 2) VR, 3) scientific visualization.

Class 1/28:

HW for 2/02:

  • Review wiki / web to solidify your 3-5 project ideas

  • For each project idea:

    • list three things you will do during the project

    • list one class activity we might do for the project

    • list potential deliverables:

Deliverables are what future readers of the wiki will look at and learn from. Examples might be comparative prose about different software packages, a Consumer-Reports style table of evaluations of features and quality of different software, tutorials showing how to use software for data visualization purposes, measurements of how long it takes and how difficult it is for a group to do a tutorial, etc. A good way to make sure you have a deliverable is to say explicitly where it will go in the wiki.

    • If you are confused or have any questions, feel free to post on the slack or email the TAs

  • Brainstorm software evaluation metrics

  • Continue adding potential software / data to the wiki

Week 3

Class 2/02:

First half of class:

Second half of class:

  • 15 minutes: Pair up and review project titles, and activities. Working together, add deliverables to each potential project. Ask questions if you are not sure what to do. Each student should pick their first-choice project.

    • identify what you need to learn and do before this first project begins so that you can design it to be successful. The projects will start next week, so you have only one more week for this pre-project work. Check out what we will do on 2/4 to help guide this.

  • 25 minutes: go around room and explain the project that you most want to do, including what we might do in class for it, what wiki deliverables you will produce, and what you need to do before the project. This will be done for each student via a max 1-minute individual oral-only presentation (no slides) followed by slightly longer discussion. I recommend speaking from notes, and I also recommend putting them in the shared class gdoc file at https://bit.ly/2XV8iOg.

  • document your potential pre-project activities in the wiki before leaving class

HW for 2/04:

  • Select one project from your list of potential projects and create a plan for your project. This project plan should have milestones to be delivered on 2/9, 2/11, 2/18 (2/16 is a holiday), 2/23, 2/25, 3/2, and 3/4. The project plan should include activities that span from February to the middle of March

  • Continue reading, doing, and logging with any extra time

Class 2/04:

  • 30 minutes: Pair up with someone you haven’t paired up with before and jointly evaluate your pre-project plans. Evaluations should consider:

    • Will the project deliverables be useful and significant?

    • Will the project activities improve the potential quality of the project?

    • Will the project activities help identify and reduce project risks? Risks often involve external dependencies that end up not being met or over-optimistic estimates of time required.

    • Will the project activities themselves add deliverables to the wiki?

    • Go over any questions from above, beginning with project concepts, deliverables, and activities described very briefly.

    • Look ahead to the Project Evaluation criteria below.

  • 40 minutes: Each person should present to the class a 2-minute evaluation of another project. Essentially, it should discuss the answers to the questions discussed, both positive and negative with the goal of getting additional confidence about the evaluation and any additional suggestions.

HW for 2/09:

  • Write your revised final project plan in your journal

  • Evaluate your project plan using the following rubric:

o Note that these first project should have milestones for 2/11, 2/18, 2/23, 2/25, 3/2, 3/4. Second-half projects will begin on 3/16 and go through the end of the semester. Here is an evaluation rubric for projects:

  • Project Evaluation

Below are a set of questions that should help in evaluating project ideas. Answer each with one of:

      1. strongly disagree

      2. disagree

      3. neither agree nor disagree

      4. agree

      5. strongly agree

The questions are:

o The proposed project clearly identifies deliverable additions to our VR Software Wiki

o The proposed project involves collaboration in VR

o The proposed project involves large scientific data visualization along the lines of the "Data Types" wiki page:

https://sites.google.com/view/brown-vr-sw-review-2018/course-archives/spring-2020/data-examples-and-collaborators

and identifies the specific data type and software that it will use

o The proposed project has a realistic schedule with explicit and measurable milestones at least each week and mostly every class

o The proposed project includes an in-class activity

o The proposed project has resources available with sufficient documentation


  • Prepare 3 minute project descriptions with powerpoint (must be a .pptx or .ppt file) slides sent to David AT LEAST 24 hours ahead title, brief motivation, in-class activity, wiki contributions/deliverables, schedule/milestones.

Week 4

Class 2/09:

  • Project presentations -- three minutes each (plus likely substantial discussion and questions). Include results from your first milestone!

    • These may fill entire class

    • Finally, you can have some slides!

    • Primary thing to show is concrete schedule, including things you'll be evaluating/trying, n-class parts, and wiki parts you'll be adding.

  • 10:33 Paul

  • 10:40 Melis

  • 10:47 Alejandro

  • 10:54 Shenandoah

  • 11:01 Michael

  • 11:08 Rachel

  • 11:15 Ethan

  • 11:22 Laila

  • 11:29 George

  • 11:36 Hiloni

  • 11:43 Kota

  • Slides: https://www.dropbox.com/s/dvl77by1k2jd8c3/1951t%20%231%20Plans%202021.pptx?dl=0

HW for 2/11:

  • Meet first milestone of project

  • Work on project and log hours in journal

  • Add to the wiki

  • Install Paraview and Ben's Volumer Renderer on your Paperspace machine according to these instructions.


Class 2/11:

Week 5

Class 2/16 (University Recess - No Class)

HW for 2/18:

  • Continue work on project and contributions to the wiki

  • Send pptx with at least one image/video (not of text...) showing progress on your project. Also include your list of milestones and where you are with each one.

  • Prepare journal for in-class review. Journals will be evaluated according to the following rubric:

Activities logging rubric -- fill in in your journal

Activities logging rubric

key for each criterion:

5 == exceeds expectations

4 == meets expectations

3 == mostly solid with some gaps

2 == shows some progress

1 == some attempt

0 == not found

Criteria:

Journal activities are explicitly and clearly related to course deliverables

deliverables are described and attributed in wiki

report states total amount of time

total time is appropriate

  • Using the above rubric, evaluate your journal and include your self-evaluation in your journal

  • If you would like to get a head start on the class activity for 2/18, do the setup section of the tutorial here.

Class 2/18:

HW for 2/23:

  • Continue work on projects

  • prep for Paul's, Michael's, and Alejandro's tutorials]

    • make sure headset is charged!

    • Mozilla Hubs runs in browser, so no explicit setup is necessary! You can try to run it according to the tutorial page below if you want to get a head start.

    • Install Spatial for Paul's tutorial.

    • [Michael?}

Week 6

Class 2/23:

HW for 2/25:

  • Prep for Shenandoah's tutorial

    • Please finish the steps in Setup (before class) here for the Class Activity on Thursday.

    • If you already have an account for Spatial from Paul's activity, make sure you also have your avatar set.

  • Send slides (.pptx) for project updates to David in private slack channel -- schedule status and visual candy

Class 2/25:

  • Shenandoah's tutorial

  • Project progress reports

    • slides: https://www.dropbox.com/s/74jte73qxv1ovrd/1951t_2021_25feb_projs.pptx?dl=0

HW for 3/02:

Week 7

Class 3/02:

HW for 3/04:

  • Prep for Laila's tutorial and Hiloni's tutorial

Class 3/04:

  • Laila's tutorial and Hiloni's tutorial

HW for 3/09:

  • Finish first project

  • Prepare presentation for first project for Tuesday or Thursday

    • Target 5-10 minutes for presentations, more time if you have more to say!

    • Elements of a good presentation (thanks Ross!)

      • Your contributions to the wiki

        • Some contributions will report on easily accessible information

        • Some should include more active evaluation and analysis of collaboration, science, and VR

        • Contributions that compare software are particularly interesting

        • Your deliverables + photos & videos (please include some media!)

        • If you think something is worth presenting, it should probably be in the wiki!

      • Any takeaways + challenges;

        • Maybe some thoughts about how your path deviated from its original course

        • Anything you've learned

      • Your ideas for second projects

  • PPTX to David in personal slack channel by 10pm Monday

Week 8

Class 3/09

HW 3/11

  • Be prepared to discuss second-project ideas you are considering -- slides/visuals could be appropriate

    • Consider more concrete and quantifiable evaluation

Class 3/11

  • Finish project presentations

  • Discuss second project

  • Review results from presentations as models for second project

HW for 3/16

  • Draft of project 2 plan in journal for others to review

  • Consider the levels in Bloom's Taxonomy below as you deepen understanding of the knowledge you have put into the wiki and planning to put in the wiki. This is often used to capture learning in education, but it makes sense in any context involving learning about new things.

Week 9

Class 3/16

  • Continue discussion second project plans and get feedback on them

  • Experimental or UX evaluation

  • Bloom's Taxonomy

  • Sketch some imaginary results

HW for 3/18

  • Review project 2 plan for the three people following you in the journal index page

    • Use same project rubric as for first project

    • Put your feedback just below the plan

  • Fill in class activity in the wiki timeline for the class time you would like

  • Prepare 3 minute project descriptions with powerpoint (must be a .pptx or .ppt file) slides sent to David AT LEAST 24 hours ahead title, brief motivation, contributions/deliverables, schedule/milestones progress on first milestone

https://www.dropbox.com/s/8g4iyr0qwpbxp3m/1951t_2021_18mar_proj2prop.pptx?dl=0

Class 3/18

  • Project 2 plan presentations

  • In-class activities signup

HW for 3/23

  • Work on second project

  • Prepare journal for peer review

Week 10

Class 3/23

  • Discuss "Seven Scenarios"

  • Evaluating in-class activities, survey questions, and reporting results

HW for 3/25

  • CavePainting Prep

  • Send slides to David for progress report

Class 3/25

  • Project Progress Reports (20 minutes)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/0apzp9u3y5moeuh/1951t-2021-25mar_proj2prog.pptx?dl=0

HW for 3/30

  • Prep for Paul's in-class activity and Rachel's in-class activity

Week 11

Class 3/30

HW for 4/01

  • Prep for Alejandro's, Hiloni's, and Kota's in-class activity

Class 4/01

HW for 4/06

  • Prep for Michael's, Melis's, and Laila's in-class activity

  • Send slides to David for progress report

Week 12

Class 4/06

  • Project Progress Reports (20 minutes)

    • https://www.dropbox.com/s/ewjb9iyh43wuty5/1951t-2021-25mar_proj2prog2.pptx?dl=0

  • In-class activities

    • Michael -- Project testing (20-30 minutes)

    • Laila -- GeoGebra3D activity (30 minutes)

HW for 4/08

  • Prep for George's, Shenandoah's, and Rachel's in-class activity

Class 4/08

HW for 4/13

  • Work on final presentations

  • Prep for Rachel and Melis activities

Week 13

Class 4/13 (Reading Period), Final in-class Presentations

  • Rachel - AltSpace VR Activity

  • Melis activity/demo (20-30 mins)
    https://sites.google.com/view/brown-vr-sw-review-2018/course-home-page/journals/meliss-journal/cybersickness-activity

  • Final in-class Presentations

    • Hiloni

    • Shenandoah (own slides)

    • Paul

Class 4/15 (Reading Period), Final in-class Presentations, Course Wrapup