Assignment Information

Assignment 1:

Topic Ideas List. This assignment consists of an annotated list of potential research topics for the course. In the subsequent research work, you will only go on to explore 1 topic. For this assignment, please select 3 topic areas, where each area has a couple of meaningful paragraphs describing exactly what the open issues are that warrant research. Please include citations to recently published works that are related to this problem area. Also list the SE professor who will be your advisor for the topic.

Assignment 2:

Paper Reviews: First choose a full (10+2 page) paper from the most recent ICSE or FSE conferances, and then in your own words write a summary that addresses the following:

What are the research questions/hypotheses?
What is the motivation for the work?
How did the authors conduct the experiment/case study? Do you notice any flaws or limitations in how they did it?
What data did they gather and how did they analyze it? Was their approach reasonable?
What were the results? Do they make sense given their research questions/hypotheses?
Discuss any limitations in the study. Please describe as many of your own limitations and areas of improvement as you can and do more than simply state what are described in the paper.
How does this work compare to others that were published before and after it?

Your submission should be 2-3 full pages in length (not including references) and be in ACM/IEEE format. Be sure to properly include any relevant citations. You are encouraged to examine other areas of the paper that are not mentioned in the above list of items you may focus on. Your submission should be more than merely a recap of what the paper was about. You should include some of your own thoughts and critical analysis. I do not care which citation format that you use (MLA vs APA), but choose one. I encourage you to use Latex for this submission.

Assignment 3:

Paper Reviews II. In this exercise, you will select a full paper in your research area and review it. This full paper should come from a 'top' research venue in your field. Be sure to explain why you decided that this was a top venue, using and describing rankings statistics/values when possible. As you review, remember to keep your research in mind. The paper can be new to your Research Log or they can be previously located. The paper should be recent (within the last 3 years, unless approved by the instructor ahead of time). Some of the items you may wish to focus on include:

A brief overview of the work. What issues did it address, and how did they do it?
What are some questions you have about the work? For instance, do you not understand how some data was created or how participants were selected? What is some clarification which is needed?
What is some future work which could be done off this research? How would you conduct the work?
What are some weaknesses the paper has? This could be in the form of poor methodology, weak data, or inadequate literature review.
Analysis of the related works which may, or may not have been mentioned in this paper. Do other works do a better job than this research did? Have other papers found issues with this work?
How does this work compare to others that were published before and after it?

Your submission should be 2-3 pages (full) in length and be in acm/IEEE format. Be sure to properly include any relevant citations. You are encouraged to examine other areas of the paper that are not mentioned in the above list of items you may focus on.