SET seminar

Course code: 2IS95 (OWInfo description can be found here).

Time and location: Thursday, 15:45-17:30 (7th and 8th hour). Connector 0.12 (plan, the Connector building is denoted CNT).
Target audience: Master (CSE,ES,BIS) students interested in Software Engineering. Students intending to work on their graduation project with Software Engineering & Technology as specialisation are expected to participate in the seminar.
Teachers: Alexander Serebrenik, Anton Wijs

Background information on the course:

Given the fact that non-Dutch speaking students may participate the use of the English language is obliged. This means that all presentations, discussions and documents have to be in English.

This SET seminar has several purposes:

• Getting acquainted with the research topics related to the Software Engineering and Technology specialisation.
• Getting acquainted with the basic principles of academic research, such are reading and reviewing scientific papers, presenting scientific results both in oral and written form. This can be seen as a preparation for your Master Thesis project.

• Preparing and executing a literature search; including preparation of bibliographic references
• Critical reading, reviewing of literature; judging relevance/quality, summarizing, classifying, comparing, etc.
• Critical listening to presentations, asking probing questions in dicussions.
• Setting up a small-scale academic investigation.
• Preparing and giving oral presentations.
• Writing a technical article/report.

The SET seminar consists of compulsory meetings. These meetings will also be attended by the MDSE staff and occasionally by students doing their Master thesis project. Frequency of meetings will depend on the number of participants.

Assignments and grading First, you will get two preparatory assignments (A1 and A2). After this, you will be asked to choose a topic for a (small) independent study (P), present it orally (O) and in writing (W), and review a paper by another student (R). Each one of those will be graded on the scale of 10 (1 - lowest, 10 - highest).

The final grade = 0.15 * A1 + 0.2 * A2 + 0.1 * P + 0.2 * O + 0.3 * W + 0.05 * R.

All written assignments (A1,A2,P,W,R) should be submitted via Peach not later than midnight (Eindhoven time) of the stated date. No late submissions will be accepted. In order to be able to work with Peach, please register yourself in the Peach system and join the course "2IS95: Seminar software engineering and technology" at the beginning of Quartile 1!

Preparatory assignments
Descriptions of the preparatory assignments can be found in the Peach system, together with their deadlines. These are exercises to get familiar with conducting academic research.

Choosing a research topic: Research proposal
You will conduct a mini-research either related to the themes presented by the staff or related to your MSc project. You have to find the relevant papers, write a report on these papers based on some by yourself formulated research proposition. There is no minimal number of papers you have to read. The research-related assignments (P,W,O,R) can either be done individually or in pairs. Details concerning the P assignment can be found in Peach. You are expected to regularly meet with your supervisor to keep track of your progress.

Oral presentations
You will give two presentations at the seminar. The first one will be part of a mini-workshop which is meant to present an initial idea for your research proposal before writing it down. This presentation should take 5 minutes, and will not be graded. It allows the audience to give early feedback and pointers. In the second presentation (O), you will present the findings of your research. This should take 15 minutes. After this presentation, the audience will get an opportunity to ask questions and provide the presenter with feedback.

• Tips for giving scientific presentations

Writing an essay
The essay should be at least 10 pages. If the selected topic is related to the MSc project, the written report could be the related work section or the feasibility study of the final thesis.

• Scientific writing
• Ian Parberry's TCS Guides
• Writing of technical reports

Reviewing a paper / presentation (Use this form to review each other's presentations)

• Peer review form
• Peer review guidelines