Advanced Technical Communication http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/lab/nlp/gazdar/teach/atc/atc.html The book reviews and man page have been posted and marked. A summary table of all the marks for the course (including the refereeing component) has now also been posted (please check it - last year a student spotted an error th* *at had been caused by a typo in one of my data files). The course feedback form (your opportunity to score, and comment on, the course) has also now been posted. This uses the same flakey mailto POST technology as the web page referee form. So, in order to do your course evalu- ation, you need to use an appropriate version of Netscape. As before, I suggest you type: % netscape 3.04 then go to the Options/Mail & News Preferences/Servers menu and ensure that the Outgoing Mail SMTP Server box contains rsunx.crn.cogs.susx.ac.uk (and_not,_e.g.,_localhost)._Then_complete_the_form_and_submit_it.___ These web pages will be updated and augmented quite frequently as the term goes by. Because of this you should always instruct the web browser you are using to to reload any pages that you consult (if you don't do this then you may be looking at out-of-date versions that are sitting in your browser's cache). You can download all the pages as a single ascii file or as a single PostScript file or as the LATEX source file, if you wish. Remember that all such files will become out of date, however. You can check how recently the pages have been updated by looking at the date which appears at the bottom of each page (but you can only be confident of this date after you have reloaded the page). Contents 5.1 Anonymous peer review form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 1 Title The course title is misleading. This is a course on technical communication, not an advanced course on technical communication, nor a course on advanced technical communication (whatever either of those might be). When I was first asked to teach the course, I enquired who was teaching the Introductory Technical Communication course, only to be told that no such course existed. Further enquiry revealed that the course you are taking is so titled because the University of Sussex has a rule that says that no two courses can have the same name. Since an undergraduate course called Technical Communication already existed when the postgraduate course was introduced, it had to be given a different name. This bit of dog-wagging is especially perverse given the topic of the course. If you ever find yourself on a committee that shows signs of comparable nomenclatural silliness, then you should intervene with a view to restoring some rationality to the discussion. 2 Rationale "Technical communication" is an umbrella term for a rather diverse set of skills and chunks of knowledge. Some of these are themselves technical (as in knowing whether and how to use Emacs, LATEX, html, dot, or whatever), others are craft skills (as in being able to hold an audience's attention whilst giving a talk, being able to write elegant prose, being able to lay out complex data or results so that people can assimilate the information, etc.), and a lot of it i* *s just commonsense (don't exceed the allocated time for a talk, cite relevant work, adapt your communication to the specific audience, and so forth). Some of these skills and chunks of knowledge can be sensibly covered in the context of a low intensity course such as the one you are doing. Others, like acquiring the ability to write elegant prose, cannot. The commonsense compo- nents are problematic: on the one hand, it is kind of irritating to sit through* * a one hour lecture that can be boiled down to the injunction "be sensible", but on the other hand, you don't have to do much in the way of conference attendance or journal and research grant refereeing to realize that there are many academi* *cs out there for whom commonsense appears to be an alien concept (even quite senior academics). Technical communication in the wild is almost always accompanied by real world constraints that make it difficult and stressful. Deadlines are ubiquitous and they are often absolute (there is no point sending a late abstract to IJCAI with a note about how you had a cold and your partner moved in with your best friend). Most of what you do is evaluated by your peers either informally (when they make jokes about your talk to each other at the conference bar) or formally (as when they rate your research grant application beta plus) and this constant peer evaluation does much to determine your status in your field. The present course has been designed with a view to incorporating as much of the pain of technical communication in the wild as is possible. Within the constraints imposed by the general rules of Sussex postgraduate assessment, deadlines will be absolute. Your oral presentation will be given in a professio* *nal TV studio and videoed. That presentation and the first of your two written assignments will be anonymously peer reviewed. The aggregate results of these peer review exercises will be posted on the course web pages as they become available. Technical communication can take place in two directions. Although, as is traditional in technical communication courses, this course will concentrate on your communications to others, some attention will be paid to aspects of their attempts to communicate with you. 3 Lectures The course begins (in week 2) with four lectures spread over two weeks, using both of the available teaching slots. Lecture 1, 11.30, Wednesday 13th January, A103 Introduction to the course. Lecture 2, 2.00, Friday 15th January, A103 Giving oral presentations, writ- ing short abstracts. Reading: Jeff Radel's Effective Presentations. Lecture 3, 11.30, Wednesday 20th January, TV Studio, EDB Brand, ethics, peer review. Lecture 4, 2.00, Friday 22nd January, A103 Tools of the trade. Reading: Jason Noble's Computing Resources in COGS: A Guide for New DPhil Students. Book: Debra Cameron & Bill Rosenblatt (1991) Learning GNU Emacs. Sebastopol: O'Reilly & Associates (if you want a paper manual for Emacs, this is the book to buy). Lecture 5, 2.00, Friday 29th January, A103 Preparing your 1000 word web page. This lecture will cover two topics: (i) the least html you need to know in order to be able to format your assignment page, and (ii) some guidance on web search to help you find the appropriate links to include in your assignment page. Reading: Beginner's Guide to html; Searching the World Wide Web: Tools and Resources for Locating Information; How Software Agents and search Engines Work; and Search Engine Watch. If you have had virtually no prior exposure to the web, then you might find Handley & Crowcroft's book The World Wide Web - Beneath the Surf worth a quick browse though it is now rather out of date. Book: Chuck Musciano & Bill Kennedy (1997) html: The Definitive Guide (2nd edition). Sebastopol: O'Reilly & Associates (there are hun- dreds of books on html, but this is the best I have come across. The language is developing very rapidly so ensure that you get the most recent edition if you invest your own money in a copy). Lecture 6, 2.00, Friday 5th February, A103 Markup languages: sgml, html 3.2, and xml. The March 1998 issue of the (now deceased) magazine Byte deals with xml and related matters in its cover story ("Reinventing the Web", pages 58-68). Books: Eric van Herwingen (1994) Practical sgml: Second Edition. Dor- drecht: Kluwer. Charles F. Goldfarb (1990) The sgml Handbook. Oxford: OUP (the definitive work, but not bedtime reading). There will be no lecture on Friday 12th February. Lecture 7, 2.00, Friday 19th February, A103 Writing technical and sci- entific documents. Here is a link to Larry Trask's 1997 Penguin Guide to Punctuation (but better buy the book - not least because you won't be able to access this link unless you are actually logged in to a COGS machine). If you have somehow managed to get through earlier phases of your aca- demic life without writing much academic prose, then you could take a look at Julie Rutkowska's essay writer's guide (though it is written for undergraduates, not postgraduates). Lecture 8, 2.00, Friday 26th February, A103 Introduction to LATEX. Slightly more than the least LATEX you need to know is available as LATEX source and as a PostScript file, likewise the LATEX source of the lecture overheads and its realization as a PostScript file. And, for completeness, here is the PostScript image file, used as an example in Slightly more . .* * . Book: Leslie Lamport (1994) LATEX: A Document Preparation System. Reading: Addison-Wesley, 2nd edition. Book: Michel Goossens, Frank Mittelbach & Alexander Samarin (1994) The LATEX Companion. Reading: Addison-Wesley. Book: Michel Goossens & Sebastian Rahtz (1997) The LATEX Graphics Companion. Reading: Addison-Wesley. Book: Norman Walsh (1994) Making TEX Work. Sebastopol: O'Reilly & Associates. [Not in the Sussex University Library and it appears to be out of print, unfortunately.] Lecture 9, 11.30, Wednesday 3rd March, TV Studio, EDB Introduction to LATEX2html. Book: Michel Goossens & Sebastian Rahtz (1999) The LATEX Web Com- panion. Reading: Addison-Wesley. Lecture 10, 2.00, Friday 5th March, A103 C.v. preparation & job appli- cations. 4 Students Stevan Jay Anastasoff stevana Sarika Bahl sarikab Michael George Bartlett michaelb Mark Adam Buckland markb Thomas Michael Clowry thomascl Johann Fjalldal johannf Claudia Gama claudiag Miguel Garcia miguelga Beate Grawemeyer beateg Verena Vanessa Hafner verenah Jon Herring jonhe Julia Mary Jolly juliaj James Mechen jamesme Darren Pearce darrenp Michael David Salsbury michaesa Sean St. John seans Mark Alexander Venn markv David Welton davidwel Karl Andrew Whitburn karlw 5 The oral presentation assignment Every student on the course will have to give one 15 minute (+ 5 minutes for questions) oral presentation on a scientific/technical topic of their own choic* *e to the rest of the class during the term. The presentation will take place in the * *EDB TV studio and will be video recorded. The presentation will be anonymously evaluated by a subset of the audience (i.e., your peers) and the aggregated res* *ult of this evaluation will be posted here soon after your talk. Oral presentations will take place in the Wednesday slot in weeks 4 to 9, inclu- sive, with the intention of having 4 or 5 speakers per week. Speakers will be chosen and announced two weeks in advance. Speakers are required to deliver a title and an abstract (300 word maximum for the latter, with the Unix wc command definitive of word length) to me by email (in ASCII) dated no later than 2.00 pm on the Friday immediately preceding their talk. The quality of your oral presentation + title/abstract counts for 30% of the assessment on this course, more than any other single component. You are strongly recommended to spend some time exploring Jeff Radel's Ef- fective Presentations well in advance of putting your own talk together. Those attending the oral presentation, but not speaking, will be expected to provide (anonymous) peer evaluation of oral presentations (by completing and returning the rating forms that will be distributed at the beginning of each Wednesday session). This peer review exercise itself contributes to the course assessment, but provided that you do it all, and do it sensibly and construc- tively (giving every talk you evaluate top score on every scale probably won't turn out to be sensible), then you will get high marks for your peer reviews. If you fail to attend an oral presentation session, then you won't be able to participate in the peer review that day and will lose marks accordingly. If you cannot attend for a (very) good reason, then you must produce documentary evidence (e.g., a medical certificate) if you want the exam board to take this good reason into account (the same holds for the delivery of all other assessed course components). The peer review exercise for the oral presentations counts for 10% of the asses* *s- ment on the atc course. What happened last year? Oral presentations in 1998 What has happened so far this year? Oral presentations in 1999 5.1 Anonymous peer review form _____________________ |_<_Name_>______|____| |_Title_&_abstract__||_ |_Audience________|__| |_Speaker_________|__| |_Presentation_____|_| |_Pacing_&_timing_|__| |_Questions_______|__| |_Comment_______|_!_|_ The lists of questions attached to each evaluation criterion below are not in- tended to be exhaustive. They are simply intended to give you a sense of some of the things you should be thinking about as you assign your scores. Title & abstract: did the title capture the essence of the talk? Was the abstract well written? Was it free of typos and spelling mistakes? Was it an accurate summary of the talk given? [If neither title nor abstract were provided, then a score of 1 is mandatory.] Audience: how well was the talk tailored to the audience? Speaker: Did the speaker seem confident and in control of their material? Did they exhibit any distracting mannerisms? Did they speak clearly and look at the audience? Were they reasonably animated and enthusiastic about their topic? Presentation: Was it well organized? Was it clear and comprehensible? If visual aids (or other props) were used, were they well designed and effec- tively used? If visual aids were not used, was that a reasonable decision given the nature of the talk? Pacing & timing: Was the talk appropriately paced throughout? Did the speaker overrun? Did the speaker underrun by a large margin? Questions: how well did the speaker deal with questions? Did they seem to understand the questions asked? Did they seem able to provide satisfac- tory answers? [If the speaker left no time for questions, then a score of 1 is mandatory. If the speaker left time, but no questions were asked, then write n/a.] Comment: you should write a brief phrase or sentence (about 10-20 words) in the space next to the relevant score box. Try and make your comment a constructive one that will be helpful to the speaker next time they have to give a talk. Use integers in the range 1-7 for scoring, where 1 means "truly awful", 7 means "perfection", and 4 means "okay, but no big deal". Please do not use scores like 0, 2.5, 4+, or 8. I am grateful to Ian Ozsvald of the 1998 ATC cohort for his detailed commentary* * on the version of this form that was used that year. The present version reflects many* * of his points. 6 The web page assignment You will prepare a 1000 word (1000 words of content - html markup ignored) web * *page on a scientific or technical subject of your own choice (but on a different topic * *from your oral presentation) and deliver it to me by 10.00 am on Monday 15th February. The web page assignment counts for 25% of the assessment on the atc course. This web page will be subject to an anonymous peer review exercise. Your web pa* *ge will be evaluated by a (proper) subset of your fellow students. The peer review exercise for the web pages counts for 10% of the assessment on * *the atc course. What happened last year? Web pages in 1998 What happened this year? Web pages in 1999 For each page that you will be asked to evaluate, you will need to complete thi* *s web form. The deadline for receipt of your completed forms is 2.00pm on Friday 5th March. You can take a look at it now, but you'll get an error message if you try and "* *Submit" whatever you have put on it. It will become operational at the time that you re* *ceive email from me telling you whose pages I would like you to referee. 7 The man page/book review assignment You will prepare a 1000 word man page for a bit of software (not necessarily so* *ftware you wrote yourself) OR a 1000 word review of a recently published (1997-99) scientific or* * technical book of your own choice (though, in either case, the technical material covered shou* *ld be distinct from that covered in your oral presentation and your web page) and deliver the * *(plain vanilla ascii) source file to me by email dated no later than 2.00 pm on Friday 12th Ma* *rch (put the name of the file in the subject header). If you choose to do the man page, then you need to select a bit of software for* * which no man page (or near equivalent - e.g., a texinfo page) currently exists. And you are requi* *red to format it in exactly the way that standard Unix man pages are formatted (look in /usr/* *man/man1 for 500 examples) using the same macros. You can check that it is formatting correc* *tly by doing this: % nroff -man yourmanpage.1 _ less and you can check that you haven't exceeded the word length by doing this: % nroff -man yourmanpage.1 _ wc -w If you choose to do the book review, then you are required to format it in LATE* *X (a suitable "least LATEX you need to know" pro forma fragment has been provided via these w* *eb pages at the time of the lecture on LATEX). You should write the review for a specifi* *c journal or periodical (one that publishes reviews - not all do) and this target journal sh* *ould be specified in the opening of the review. If you want to try your luck at getting it publis* *hed then it would be sensible to choose a book that has not already been reviewed in your target * *journal. The man page/book review assignment counts for 25% of the assessment on the atc* * course. What happened last year? Book reviews and man pages in 1998. What happened this year? Book reviews and man pages in 1999. 8 Peer review marks If (i) you did all the refereeing that was expected of you, (ii) you provided p* *rose comments on everything that you refereed, and (iii) your average score for the items tha* *t you refereed fell within +_15% of the actual average score for those items, then you will ha* *ve received full marks for the relevant refereeing exercise. For the talks refereeing, almost all the marks lost were covered by case (i). I* *n addition, one student had their mark reduced for thin commenting and another for being too ki* *nd with their grading. For the web page refereeing, all but two of you did the refereeing expected. An* *d nobody's scoring fell outside the +_15% limit. But the absence of a couple of prose comm* *ents led to a couple of marks being dropped. _______________________________________________________ |_Reviewer________T|alksW|eb_pagesT|otalC|omment_______ | |_Stevan_Anastasoff10|.0_|___10.0_|20.0_|______________| |_Michael_Bartlett10.|0_|____10.0_|20.0_|______________| |_Claudia_Gama____1|0.0_|____10.0_|20.0_|______________| |_Verena_Hafner___10|.0_|____10.0_|20.0_|______________| |_James_Mechen____1|0.0_|____10.0_|20.0_|______________| |_Michael_Salsbury10.|0_|____10.0_|20.0_|______________| |_Sean_St._John___10|.0_|____10.0_|20.0_|______________| |_Mark_Venn_______|10.0_|____10.0_|20.0_|______________| |_David_Welton____1|0.0_|____10.0_|20.0_|______________| |_Beate_Grawemeyer_|9.0_|____10.0_|19.0_|too_kind_to_talks_ | |_Thomas_Clowry____|7.5_|____10.0_|17.5_|______________| |_Sarika_Bahl______7|.5_|____9.0_|_16.5_|missing_comment_ | |_Darren_Pearce____6|.5_|____10.0_|16.5_|______________| |_Mark_Buckland____|6.0_|____10.0_|16.0_|______________| |_Johann_Fjalldal__6.|0_|____10.0_|16.0_|______________| |_Miguel_Garcia____6|.5_|____9.0_|_15.5_|missing_comments_| |_Karl_Whitburn____|2.5_|____10.0_|12.5_|______________| |_Jon_Herring______|3.5_|____0.0_|__3.5_|______________| 9 Final mark summary and rank list All the marks that appear below have been transcribed (by eye and hand) from el* *sewhere. Although I have checked them against the sources, there remains the possibility* * of transcrip- tion error. If you think you have detected a transcription error (or an arithme* *tic error), then please let me know asap. ________________________________________________________________ | | | Talk | Web | Peer |Book review | Total | |____|______________|_______|__page_|_review_|/_man_page_|______| |____|______________|_Max:30_|Max:25_|Max:20_|__Max:25_|Max:100_| |__1_|Stevan_Anastasoff_2|2.0_|_18.5_|_20.0_|______20.0_|__80.5_| |__2_|Verena_Hafner_____|22.0_|_19.0_|_20.0_|______17.0_|__78.0_| |__3_|Michael_Bartlett__2|3.5_|_18.5_|_20.0_|______15.0_|__77.0_| |__4_|Michael_Salsbury__2|4.5_|_17.5_|_20.0_|______14.0_|__76.0_| |__5_|Sean_St._John_____|21.5_|_18.0_|_20.0_|______16.0_|__75.5_| |__6_|Mark_Venn_______|_22.5_|__18.0_|_20.0_|______14.0_|__74.5_| |__7_|James_Mechen_____|19.0_|__17.5_|_20.0_|______16.0_|__72.5_| |__8_|Thomas_Clowry____|20.5_|__17.0_|_17.5_|______17.0_|__72.0_| |__9_|Johann_Fjalldal___1|9.5_|_17.0_|_16.0_|______19.0_|__71.5_| |_10_|Claudia_Gama_____|20.5_|__12.5_|_20.0_|______18.0_|__71.0_| |_11_|Beate_Grawemeyer_|20.0_|__16.5_|_19.0_|______14.0_|__69.5_| |_12_|Mark_Buckland____|18.5_|__16.5_|_16.0_|______15.0_|__66.0_| |_12_|David_Welton_____|17.5_|__13.5_|_20.0_|______15.0_|__66.0_| |_14_|Miguel_Garcia_____|21.0_|_13.5_|_15.5_|______14.0_|__64.0_| |_15_|Karl_Whitburn____|21.0_|__15.5_|_12.5_|______13.0_|__62.0_| |_16_|Darren_Pearce_____|16.5_|__7.5_|_16.5_|______20.0_|__60.5_| |_17_|Sarika_Bahl_______|16.0_|_13.0_|_16.5_|______14.0_|__59.5_| |_18_|Jon_Herring______|20.5_|___??_|___3.5_|_______0.0_|____??_| Note that the marks for the talk and the web page that appear above were recalc* *ulated from the original raw referee scores. Note also that marks are shown to a 0.5% accuracy only to facilitate the constr* *uction of a rank list. Exam boards expect whole number marks.