COMP6021 Class 20 (Lab)

Students worked away on their assignment.

I asked students who were finished to experiment with animated GIFs.

COMP6021 Class 19

We looked at how GIF works.

Class only took 40 minutes, but I never keep people just for the sake of it.

SOFT6001 Assessment Results

I have put the results of the group work and last week's exam online. You can find your result using the last four digits of your ID number (unless it starts with zero(s)).

If you do not know your student ID number, I am not prepared to find it for you.

There are some students for whom I do not have ID numbers because they have not yet signed up for the class.  I am not prepared to give those student their results by some other means.

CMOD6001 Class 19

I hadn't made it clear enough that today's class was a tutorial. More students came than might have, had they known.


We settled on 2000 words for the paper.

Seeing as we were all here anyway I met with the (video) groups.

HEA report on drop out rates

A HEA report on dropout levels found that only 73% of students who start computing courses progress to second year. Of all the courses in the country computing courses fare the worst.

A success rate of 73% at CIT would be considered a very good year. Our retention rates are much lower. The report does compare the university sector with the IOT sector, but does not compare individual institutes. This is probably wise.

The report found that there was a correlation between the number of points required to get onto a course, and the retention rate.  Retention rates in medicine are much higher. But it would be crazy, of course, to conclude that computing is more difficult than medicine. One can conclude that students with higher points in the leaving cert do better than those who have low points. But we didn't need a HEA report to tell us that.

SOFT6001 Assessment

We will have an in-class exam on 02 December at 1815.

If you know you can't make this, please let me know well in advance and I will try to find you an alternative.

SOFT6001 Week 07

I explained why I haven't corrected the exams from last week yet.

This week's exercise was the the same as the exam, but just Part B.

This was tougher than it looks. The devil is in the detail.

COMP6021 Class 18

We had a tutorial.

We went over
Interpolation
Dithering (with numbers)
Huffman coding

There was a question about whether arithmetic coding could come up in the exam. You cannot rule it out, but if it comes up it will be smaller than the example we did in class.

GIF is mentioned a lot in the sample questions. We will see GIF in class soon.

Huffman's original paper is here for anyone who is interested.

CMOD6001 Tomorrow's class is a tutorial

Class on Friday 28 will be a tutorial.  I will use that time to help students with any difficulties they are having with the assessments.

I will not take attendance.

CMOD6001 Deadlines

Draft of Paper - 13 November (sooner if you expect decent feedback)

Final Paper - 20 November


Presentations:
12 November - Online Reputation
18 November - Gold Farming, Monotizing Music in the Digital Age
19 November - RFID & Privacy, Prediction Markets

Each student in the group must speak, but students need not speak for equal lengths of time.
Every student must attend every presentation. If a student misses a presentation, it will affect both their individual mark and their group's mark.

Videos are due 25 November at 0900.
Every student must attend this class. If a student misses a presentation, it will affect both their individual mark and their group's mark.

Any student that misses a required class because of illness, should provide a cert from a doctor.

CMOD6001 Class 18

I gave tips for giving presentations.

We set dates for the various assessments.

COMP6021 Tutorial Reminder

This is just a reminder that today's class is s tutorial. Attendance is not required.

Come with questions or specific issues.

CMOD6001 Class 17

I spoke very briefly about the feedback I left in TurnItIn on the drafts of the introductions to the paper. I talked about the structure the paper might take.

I gave out a handout on common mistakes.

We agreed that another opportunity for feedback would be good. Drafts can be submitted to "Draft 2" up to 22 November. Submit draft early for early feedback.

The final paper is due on 20 November.

I met with some students about their introduction drafts.

I asked students to hold project meetings. One group already met today. Another group just refused.

I now have the URL for each group's blog. All meetings should be documented in the blog.

COMP6021 Class 17

I talked briefly about what the results of the assessment mean. I asked students if there was anything I should be doing differently.

I showed another way to solve the dithering question, that was a bit less abstract.

Students continued working on the image compression assignment.

COMP6021 Class 16 - Exam

There was an in-class assessment.

The results are here sorted by the last 4 digits of student ID number. They were not very good and suggest that some students need to modify their study strategies for this module if they are to be successful in it. They were marked out of 10. Student that got 0/10 would likely have picked up a few marks were it marked out of 100.

Suggested solutions below:

CMOD6001 Paper Introductions corected

I have read all the introductions that were submitted. Students can read individual comments by logging back into TurnItIn.

Some general point that came up:
I believe I made the plagiarism point very clearly. I certainly made it repeatedly. But I probably won't make it again.

Some students didn't get organized enough to submit anything. Other students just threw something together. I don't know which is worse. But both classes of student have lost a valuable opportunity for some early feedback.

We will talk about style and tone in class some day soon. For this kind of writing it is best not to talk about "I" "me" nor "the reader". Also stuff like "in this paper I will talk about ..." is best avoided.

Make your point. What are you saying? Just say it. There is no need for big words nor flowery language. Thinking clearly and writing clearly is what matters most.

Some students took this exercise seriously. They got feedback, some of it harsh, all of it useful. Well done to them.

SOFT6001 Week 06

We had an in-class exam.  However there was a surprise fire drill and we had to evacuate the building. We continued the exam on our return.

I don't yet know if the exam is valid or not. As soon as I know I will be post to the blog.

COMP6021 Class 15

We looked at how 3-D images are displayed. We saw some anaglyphs and watched a Bjork music video in 3-D.

CMOD6001 Class 16

We discussed the project. I spoke about holding meetings.

Students should have their groups formed by the end of class and set up the blogs fairly soon. Meetings must be documented on the blog, as must individual student contributions.

Meetings:

• Agenda
• Attendance and location time
• Review of last meeting.
• What happened since. Who did what.
• What decisions.
• Action Items. Who will do what
• Set time and place for the next meeting

CMOD6001 Class 15

This was an optional class. 3 students came along to discuss the project.

Some things that came up

Need to pick group fairly soon
any song
doesn't need to be one take