Grading
| Assignments/Activities | % of Final Grade |
| Class Participation (attendance, presentations including the Week 1 presentation, contribution to critique and discussions) | 15 |
| Process Documentation website | 15 |
| Archival documentation | 10 |
| Midterm demo day | 20 |
| Final project (includes showcase presentation) | 20 |
| Documentation paper | 20 |
Class Participation
Students are expected to be present in every sense of the word – physically and mentally. You will be expected to contribute to conversations, provide critique to your peers, respond to feedback and critique from the instructor and peers, and be prepared to show progress week over week on your project.
You will have one-on-one meetings with your instructor. You are expected to arrive on time, ready to present and have all technical requirements for presenting to the instructor ready before your appointed time (that is, do not spend 5 of your 15 minutes trying to get your slides to display). These are not optional, even if you feel you have nothing to show or have made little or no progress since the last meeting.
In-class critiques are important parts of the process, and you are expected to be engaged even if you just presented, or the project is outside of your area of expertise. Critique is a two-way street and you are expected to be considerate and helpful with your feedback. (The minimum expectation for your participation in a crit is contributing to the discussion for at least 2 of your classmates.)
You will periodically present your work to your instructors and one another – you will be evaluated on these presentations. Be ready to go, have your materials ready and know how to set up the projector, monitor, etc. for a professional performance.
Process Documentation Website
Weekly documentation project – you will keep a weekly online journal to keep track of your progress on your project. This must include development of the project — inspirations and blockers you encounter, media like photos, video, code, etc, that identify progress on the project — and give a visitor a sense of how you are progressing on a week to week basis. This serves as the foundation of your process paper. You should expect to write at least 250 words each week describing your progress. On some weeks there is an explicit prompt (ex. write up your process plan), on other weeks there is no specific prompt but you are still expected to write, document, and identify where you have success and where you are stuck with your project.
It’s up to you to choose one method of documentation and stick with it. This will only be shared between yourself and your instructor. If you wish to make it public or share it with other people you’re using to advise your project, you’re welcome to do so but it is not required.
You must use one of the following for your documentation site :
- NYU WordPress
- Medium
- A self-hosted website with a dedicated page for the journal (a dedicated GitHub Pages site could work well for this, check with your instructor if you are interested in this)
Miro boards, Notion pages, are.na collections, git repos, etc. are great tools but not acceptable for weekly documentation in this fashion. Only one of the options listed above will be accepted.
Archival Documentation
Archival documentation project – Your work does not exist in a vacuum. You are making a project that will be part of a broader conversation around technology, design, and media. To this end, your project will be part of an archive of IDM Thesis projects. You will fill in pre-formatted material for this archive towards the end of the semester. This is not optional, and you must have media prepared in advance for this. Keeping track of your documentation is key to this aspect of the process. By week 13 you must fill in all requested information in the form provided to you.
As part of this archive, you must have a publicly available webpage (this can be hosted on github pages, on your personal website, it can be attached to your documentation site) that has information on your project including a description and images of the work. You will be required to provide additional information to be detailed later in the semester.
Midterm Demo Day
Midterm evaluation of project prototype. You will present your work at an invitation only demo day to the instructors, faculty, and your peers. If there are external people you wish to include in this, you may ask them to join. This is an opportunity for you to receive feedback on your work in progress and ask questions of the people who come to view the work.
Final Project and Paper
Final evaluation of project prototype and documentation – At the end of the semester, you will publicly present your work in the IDM showcase and you will be evaluated by faculty and your instructors. Your documentation paper must be completed and turned into your instructor prior to the showcase. You must be present for the entirety of the showcase, and be prepared to present your work to a variety of audiences. The paper and project are expedited to demonstrate mastery of well thought out and planned work. The typical paper length should be roughly 15-20 pages excluding the standard Tandon front matter.
Your project will be evaluated on its overall quality and presentation. This includes proper scoping (did you bite off more than you can chew, or did you work on something that was not challenging?), technical acumen (did you achieve technical excellence in the project, or did you do the bare minimum?), and overall quality of the presentation of the work (in the showcase and the midterm, was the work well presented, or was it hastily thrown together at the last minute – this includes thinking about the presentation of VR and AR oriented pieces – how are markers and headsets presented, what is users overall impression and experience of the work?).
Samantha Jackson will be asking you for information about your project early in the semester — it is vital you provide her with anything you require to show your work when she asks for it. Delaying this conversation will mean your presentation will not be the best quality it could be, which will affect your final grade.
Your paper will be evaluated on the content and how well it demonstrates your understanding of what goes into a project of significant work. This may include, but is not limited to, background research, novelty and relevance of your work in the field, description of your project, process and outcome. For some of you, you may have primary research you undertook – if so, it is incumbent on you to clearly explain what this research was, and how you analyzed the material. This is expected to be well written, proofread and in English. You may not use LLMs like ChatGPT to write your paper for you. Use your weekly documentation to help you organize and write your paper.
At the end of your semester, after the paper has been submitted for final grading, you will need to turn in a copy to Jose Miguel Ulerio julerio@nyu.edu. There are specific formatting requirements for the paper which will be communicated to you early in the semester. Do not deviate from the format provided as a template, or your paper will be rejected by the school.
LETTER GRADES
Letter grades for the entire course will be assigned as follows:
| Letter Grade | Points | Percent | Description |
| A | 4.00 | 92.5% and higher | Excellent (Work of exceptional quality; Exceeds Expectations) |
| A- | 3.67 | 90.0 – 92.49% | Very Good (Work of high quality) |
| B+ | 3.33 | 87.5% – 89.99% | Good (Solid work; Meets Expectations) |
| B | 3.00 | 82.5% – 87.49% | Satisfactory (Good work; Satisfies course requirements) |
| B- | 2.67 | 80% – 82.49% | Satisfactory but needs Improvement (Below average work) |
| C+ | 2.33 | 77.5% – 79.99% | Poor Work (Below Average) |
| C | 2.00 | 72.5% – 77.49% | Inadequate (Less than adequate work) |
| C- | 1.67 | 70% – 72.49% | Inadequate (barely complete) |
| D+ | 1.33 | 67.5% – 69.99% | Inadequate (incomplete work) |
| D | 1.00 | 62.5% – 67.49 | Inadequate (incomplete work) |
| D- | .67 | 60% – 62.49% | Inadequate (barely passing) |
| F | .00 | 59.99% and lower | Unacceptable (The performance and/or attendance of the student has failed course requirements.) |