475 - Weekly Diaries

This course is assessed through coursework and weekly diaries, not with an exam.

What are these diaries for?

The diaries are intended for you to reflect on the new knowledge, tools and techniques that you have learned about in the week's lecture and tutorial, and to connect them to your own personal experiences and to other materials that you have read in books or articles. You should reflect on where these techniques might be useful, and where not. You are encouraged to give opinions based on your experience rather than plain factual statements.

Some Good Examples

Here you can view a selection of the better diaries submitted last week, which should give you an idea of what to aim for.

What is Good About these Examples?

These submissions are good because they:

• explain why the author thinks their takeaway points from the lecture are important, spending a few sentences on each.
• demonstrate that the authors have read some further materials connected to the topic presented. They give specific references to book chapters or articles that they have read, and the author gives their opinion on what they have read, connecting it to the lecture material.
• link the topic of the lecture to their own personal experiences. The authors reflect and explain why the topic relates to them and work that they have done in the past, or that they expect they might do in the future.
• in describing the tutorial, the authors are specific about the approach that they took, highlighting details that are of particular interest. They reflect on which parts they found hard, why this was, and how the topics from lecture were helpful - or if they weren't, why they weren't. They describe what they have learned.

Overall we are looking for people to reflect on what they have learned as an aggregate of the lecture, the tutorial, extra reading, connection with past experience, and conversations with friends and colleagues. Give your thoughts and opinions on when these techniques would be useful, and if you think there are possible situations in which they would be difficult or in appropriate to apply, describe these too.

Concentrate on writing about why you took the approach that you did in the tutorial, rather than just stating what you did.

Feedback Section

We do appreciate any helpful comments on things that were good about the course that week, and what could be improved. We hope that by gathering feedback over the course we will be able to incrementally improve it.

CATE

Please produce a pdf of your diary and submit it to CATE before the start of the next lecture. Apparently you have to "subscribe to the course at level 2" to be able to submit.

--Robert