MAS111: Introduction to Research in Media Arts and Sciences

Fridays, 3-5pm, E14-525

V. Michael Bove, Jr., E15-448, x3-0334, vmb (at) media (dot) mit (dot) edu

Where possible, handouts will be linked to this page, but a few may unfortunately be available only in paper form. If you miss class, you can pick these up from Michael Bove's office, or in class the following week.

4 February: Research

• A brief overview of the semester
• What is research, and what kind do we do at the Media Lab?
• How to design an experiment
• How and why to keep a lab notebook
• Resource: Suggestions on keeping a lab notebook
• Assignment for next class: Find a popular-press article or blog discussion of some science or engineering result or design achievement, and also find the researchers'/designers' own write-up of the results. Did the press understand and correctly report the most significant aspects of the work? Write one page explaining your thoughts.

11 February: Ethics

• Research involving human subjects (Dr. Leigh Firn, Chair of COUHES)
• Resource: MIT COUHES Web site
• Ethics/ownership/teamwork
• Assignment for next class: A brief summary of who all the participants are in the project on which you are working and their roles: other UROPers, grad students, faculty and research staff, collaborators outside the Media Lab; also where the research funding comes from.
• Resource: Ethical Expectations for UROP at MIT
• Resource: IEEE Code of Ethics
• Resource: ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct
• Resource: AIGA Standards of Professional Practice for Designers
• Resource: The Online Ethics Center for Engineering and Science

18 February: IP

• Understanding intellectual property, copyright, patents
• Assignment for next class: Patent search -- find a patent that is relevant to your research and write a brief summary of it. For extra fun, find a seemingly silly, useless, or inexplicable patent and share it with class next week.
• Resource: US Patent Database
• Resource: Google Patent Search
• Resource: World Intellectual Property Organization
• Handout: US Patent and Trademark Office General Information Concerning Patents
• Handout: David Reed's slides about IP
• Handout: Example patent

25 February: Resources

• What kinds of resources exist and how to find them
• Assignment for next class: Literature search -- find a new paper/reference/informational resource (that you didn't have already) related to your project and write a brief summary of it. Also tell how you found it.
• Resources: VERA, IEEE Xplore, ACM Digital Library, Google Scholar, DBLP, Zotero, Britney Spears' Guide to Semiconductor Physics

4 March: What's "peer review," anyway?

• How to read/write a research paper
• Kinds of conferences and journals
• CFP's and review processes
• Assignment for next class: Conference search -- find out from your UROP supervisor or colleagues which conference or meeting is a typical place for research like that done by your group to be presented. Look up the conference on-line and write a brief summary of it.
• Resource: IEEE Conference Search
• Resource: ACM Conference Calendar
• Resource: NASA document on how to do technical presentations
• Resource: How to review a technical paper

11 March: What the Web means to all this

• How (and when) to do a research-results Web page
• Assignment for next class: find and critique a research-results page

18 March

• No class (since so many of you left early for Spring Break!)

25 March

• Spring Break -- no class

1 April: How does this stuff get paid for?

• Research funding and how it works

8 April: Demoing and presenting

• How to demo
• Ryan Chin's Top Ten Things I Learned About Demos at the Media Lab
• How to make slides and do an oral presentation
• Generic PowerPoint Presentation for MAS111

15 April

• Practice student presentations -- student critiques

22 April

• Practice student presentations (second half) -- student critiques

29 April

• Final presentations (revised)

6 May

• Final presentations (revised)