Assignment

From IT

To pass this class, you will need to complete an assignment: you'll have to write a short paper about a topic related to the course. Here are some rules you will have to follow:

• The paper length is 10 pages or more... but not necessarily much more: you'll have to express your thoughts clearly and briefly enough to fit the space you have;

• The topic of the paper must be chosen and communicated to me before December, 19th, 2011 (even if it would be better if you had chosen it and communicated that to me one week in advance). If you really cannot think about a topic on your own, the Assignment Topics page contains some suggestions;

• The contents of the paper must be original, that is huge cut'n'paste from the Web is not allowed. Of course nothing is really original nowadays, so it is not a problem if you quote sentences or refer to concepts expressed elsewhere. In fact, it is very important that you rely on authoritative sources to ground your assertions. However you should not abuse this and you should always cite your source (if it is a printed publication you can use a standard format for bibliographies, otherwise just provide a Web link with the date you last accessed the document).

• The paper needs to be published on this Wiki: you can build your own page here (whose title will be the title of the paper itself) and format your content accordingly to the wiki style. Of course, you are free to prepare everything within your text editor and then paste it at the very end, but remember that the paper will also need to be formatted so this might require additional time;

• The purpose of putting your assignments on the wiki is to share them: with me, with your colleagues, and with others. If you do not agree with this just send me an email and tell me what level of sharing you want to be applied. The document will still reside on the wiki, but I can prevent its access to anybody except me. Same holds if you want to share your document with a license which is different than the one I use (see bottom of this page).

• The (STRICT) deadline is Jan, 11th 2012, at 24:00, and on Jan, 19th we will meet for a discussion about your work and its evaluation. (NOTE: the deadline has been extended to Friday 13th at 24:00!!!)