LSci 159/259: Assignments

Discussion points

Leading discussion

Weekly writing exercises

Final project: Mini lit review

Attendance and participation

Academic Dishonesty

An important part of understanding scientific literature is thinking about what you’ve read, and then realizing what you do and don’t understand. For every class session that we have a reading, you will submit discussion points. Your discussion points should include the following (though you’re welcome to submit additional discussion points):

LSci 159 students:

• A brief restatement of the main focus (i.e., the hypothesis, question, or topic) of the reading. This will help orient you towards the content you’re meant to understand.
• A brief explanation of at least one key figure, table, or equation OR
  a brief discussion of what you don’t understand about that figure, table, or equation.

LSci 259 students:

• One observation or question about the background.
• One observation or question about a main takeaway (a key finding or conceptual point).

We will begin each class session by reading the submitted discussion points and upvoting the ones we like. Because of this, discussion points are due at the beginning of the class session.

Late submissions are accepted until 12pm PST the Friday of Week 10. Please contact the professor if you submit late discussion points, to make sure you receive credit for them.

Even though discussions are a group activity, the discussion leader has spent a little extra effort going through the reading selection and identifying the aspects of the reading that are the main points and/or tricky things to understand. Discussion leaders are expected to prepare slides that include key figures, excerpts, or conceptual points. These slides will be used during the group discussion.

Importantly, this does not mean the slides include every detail of the reading. Instead, the slides provide guideposts to start off discussion, and may include the discussion leader's own thoughts on a particular aspect.

Note: If you forget to prepare slides for the class session you lead, you are still responsible for submitting slides and you may submit them late for partial credit.

Discussion slides are due at the beginning of the class session.

Late submissions are accepted until 12pm PST the Friday of Week 10. Please contact the professor if you submit late discussion lead slides, to make sure you receive credit for them.

This class will have weekly writing exercises. These exercises are writing summaries that are meant to act as mini literature reviews synthesizing the relevant aspects of prior work on a particular topic. You’ll often find these literature syntheses in the background section of published articles or conference papers. Importantly, these summaries are not just regurgitating a chunk of previous work, but rather pulling out and organizing content from previous content according to a specific goal. We'll practice doing this every week.

Writing summaries will typically be 150 words or less, and due the following class session.

Late submissions are accepted until 12pm PST the Friday of Week 10. Please contact the professor if you submit a late writing exercise, to make sure you receive credit for it.

The final project for this class will have you write a mini literature review for a set of three or more articles of your choosing, with the idea that you're organizing content from these articles according to a specific goal. A goal can include the methods used (e.g., Bayesian models), the area of acquisition modeled (e.g., syntactic islands), or the empirical motivation for a model (e.g., children’s cognitive processing limitations), among other possibilities.

The final mini literature review will be 150-350 words.

In Week 10, you will select the papers and goal of your mini lit review and give a brief presentation (around 5 minutes) to the class highlighting the main ideas in the papers you selected.

The mini lit review will be due the Monday of Finals week.

This class is structured as a seminar, which means much of the content is discussion we have about either (1) the material we read before the class session, or (2) the content of the writing we intend to do. So, attending class synchronously is the best way to experience this content.

The active part of the class sessions will be recorded (i.e., discussions of material, but not working on assignments). The recordings of each class session will then be available on the Canvas coursesite.

If you attend class synchronously, you just need to participate in the discussion as much as you can.

However, life happens, so if you can't attend class synchronously, please still do the following:

• If discussion questions are due
  • submit your own discussion questions
  • read through posted discussion questions from other people
  • reply to the attendance assignment for that session that you submitted your discussion questions and read through the other ones posted.
• Watch the recording from the active part of class and reply to the attendance assignment for that session that you watched the recording from class.
This is of course on the honor system. Be honest. It's good for you.