This is a three part assignment. Part 1 is due on Wednesday of Week 4 by class time, part 2 is due on Monday of Week 5 (again, by class time), and part 3 is due on Wednesday of Week 5.

The assignment is about familiarizing yourself with Overleaf and LaTeX, starting to put together your proposal, and performing a literature search. We will assess this assignment based on the quality of your work and how creative you get in expressing your findings visually and in writing.

This is a group assignment.  You will submit the PDF document (one document per group) that you download from Overleaf at the end of each part.

Setting your weekly objectives

Before you begin, read through this whole assignment and identify the tasks/objectives you will complete this week. Record these at the start of your log for the week.

Part 1 (due Wednesday of Week 4): Proposal preliminary work and potential sources

Part 1 of the assignment gets you started with Mural and Overleaf, which are the tools that you will need to create your proposal and perform a literature search.

1) Creating a graph of related work using Mural
Mural is collaborative visualization app. Each team member should create an account on mural: https://app.mural.co/ . Then have one member create a new mural with "infinite canvas size" to collaborate on with your group. Make sure everyone can access it.

See example template below.

Next, start with the paper you read for week 2. You will search the literature related to this paper and try to get a better understanding of the field as a whole. On your Mural, work with your team to create a graph of the related work by completing each of the following activities

  1. Identify the problem that the paper you were assigned is solving
  2. Find existing works that relate most closely to this paper and add them to your visualization graph. Hyperlink each node in your graph to the web-link of the paper (use Google Scholar to find the web-link of the paper). Include papers worth exploring that the original paper builds on or that present an alternate solution to the same problem. These papers must be preferably from authors other than the original authors of your paper.
  3. Find the top five publication venues for your project area. These may be conferences or journals. Label the papers in your graph that have appeared in these venues

In parts 2 & 3 of the assignment you will work expand your graph by doing a forward search and a database search.

Working with LaTeX in Overleaf

You will be writing your proposal in Overleaf, which is an online collaborative LaTeX editor.  LaTeX is a document creation tool that is widely used in CS research (and is used in several of our undergraduate CS courses), so learning LaTeX will be essential.

Find your proposal

I have made a very basic proposal document for each group and shared it with all team members. You should receive an invitation on or before Wednesday.  Find your proposal document on Overleaf, and contact the staff via Slack if you cannot find it.

Complete some LaTeX tutorials

Spend about 1 hour learning LaTeX and Overleaf.  We recommend the tutorials here. You can do this together or individually. Add some formatted text or some changes to your proposal document to demonstrate what you have learned.  It doesn't have to be real text or information.  Just something to show you've done some learning.  It could be a bulleted list of the things you've learned, or a table of your names, or whatever you want. Add the link to your Mural in your LaTeX document

Download and submit a PDF of your Overleaf document to Gradescope.

 

Lit Search Part 2 (due Monday of Week 5): Broaden your search and deepen your knowledge of the field

In this part of the assignment you will once again work to broaden your search by doing a forward search and a database search. Note that you do not have to have read the whole paper to make this list. Read titles and abstracts only.

  1. As a group, use Google Scholar to find at least 6-10 papers that cite your original paper or any of the other papers that you have found so far.  Based on the title and abstracts, select papers that you think relate closely to your problem. Add these to the bibtex file of your overleaf project. Add 1 or 2 sentences summarizing each paper in your overleaf document and cite each paper.
  2. Perform a database search by first identifying 2-3 primary publication venues related to the topic of your project. Find the proceedings of the publications for the past 2 years in the ACM or IEEE digital libraries. Then perform a keyword search to find more papers that are closely related to your project. Continue adding these to your bibtex file.
  3. Brainstorm with your group to settle down on a list that you think are worth exploring that seem to either build on the work from your original paper or present an alternate solution to the same problem. Add these to your visualization graph. Expand on your notes in overleaf by describing how each paper relates to your original paper (1-2 sentences).
  4. Brainstorm with your group to cluster all the papers you have found so far by how related they are to each other. E.g. some will extend the work in one direction while others will go in a different direction. Try to update your visualization graph to reflect your main findings, making creative use of labels and colors.
  5. Use your visualization graph to write a Related Work section in your Overleaf document. You should write about your understanding of the area as a whole, and tell a coherent account of the the main problems solved so far and the different approaches for solving those problems.

Download and submit a PDF of your Overleaf document to Gradescope.

Lit Search Part 3 (due Wednesday of Week 5): Narrowing down and identify gaps in the literature

From the list of all the papers you identified so far, select at least 3-5 papers you feel are most relevant to the direction your own work will take. For each paper:

  1. Highlight the paper in your visualization graph and annotate the links to describe the relationship between the papers
  2. Insert an image of your latest visualization graph in your Overleaf document
  3. Add the complete citation for the paper (including authors, title, publication venue, publication year, and URL) to your Bibtex file (if you don't have this already)
  4. Individually, in your research log, write a one-paragraph summary of the paper, in your own words.
  5. Individually, in your research log, write about the relationship between this paper and your original paper (i.e., how do the two complement each other to add to the general body of knowledge in the research field)
  6. Specifically why you chose the paper (over other papers you found)

Work with your group to write a single combined version of points 4 & 5 in the related work section of your Overleaf document. Next, write a paragraph in the Introduction section of your Overleaf document. What are the the gaps in the literature that you observed based on your literature search? How does your project seek to close one or more of these gaps.

Download and submit a PDF of your Overleaf document to Gradescope.

Don't forget to document all your activities in your log as usual.