CSCE475/875 Multiagent Systems

Collaborative Topic Summary Assignment: Wiki!

August 30, 2011

Introduction

Collaborative topic summaries are written wikis of topics that we cover in class. The summary will be based on my lectures, the textbook, and other papers. Your summary should include at least the following

· an overview of the topic – motivations and underlying principles, etc.,

· a list of praises: a description of what you think are the important/useful aspects of the topic,

· a list of critiques: a description of what you think are the weaknesses of topic, and

· its applications: how the topic relates to real-world applications.

You will use an online wiki tool (http://iamas.unl.edu/wiki). All of your actions will be tracked and recorded while you are working on the assignment online.

You are allowed to search online for information to help you write your topic summary. However, anything used must be formally cited. That is, you must have a References section in your summary. Further, you are not allowed to cite web URLs. Links are not allowed. Furthermore, you are not allowed to cite Wikipedia pages. You might find, however, references that are useful on Wikipedia, and may pursue those references, and then cite those references properly in your summary. Each summary will be submitted to Blackboard’s SafeAssign tool to check for excessive similarity with other online texts.

Collaborative Contributions

On the Wiki tool, you will be allowed to rate and tag essays and participate in threaded forum discussions. You will be also encouraged to contribute to other essays. You are also required to start three different threads of discussions for the forum of your wiki essay. To start each thread, you are required to ask a meaningful question about the topic of your wiki essay.

How the Assignment Works

There are nine (9) basic topics:

· distributed constraint satisfaction

· distributed optimization

· noncooperative game

· learning and teaching

· communication

· social choice

· mechanism design

· auction

· coalitional game theory

You may choose one of the above topics or a sub-topic of the above to write your summaries. Further, you may choose other MAS topics from other papers as well. But if you do so, please inform me ahead of time to make sure that your topic is appropriate.

Each wiki essay is required to be at least 1000 words long.

Note also it is possible that multiple students might end up writing about the same topic.

Every student is assigned to be responsible for one topic. Note: Since there are more students than topics, that means some of you will write about the same topic. So, you will be a primary contributor to a topic of your choice. In addition, every student is required to contribute to three other topics. The contributions could be any of the collaborative activities listed below.

There are three deadlines:

1. Deadline 1: Primary Contribution (November 15, 2011). This is when every student’s primary topic will be “snap-shot” and “graded”. Before this deadline, a student is only allowed to contribute to its own Wiki essay. After this deadline, your Wiki essay will be open to all to edit. Please also make sure that you start your three threaded discussions prior to this deadline.

2. Deadline 2: Collaborative Contribution (November 29, 2011) . This is when every student’s collaborative contributions will be “snap-shot” but not graded. I will use this to give feedback and comments on your collaborative behaviors. These collaborative activities include actual contributions to the wiki essays, participation in the threaded discussions, viewing of essays, tagging essays with keywords, and rating the essays.

3. Deadline 3: More Collaborative Contribution (December 14, 2011). This is when every student’s collaborative collaborations will be “snap-shot” and “graded”.

Grading

Each student’s primary contribution will be graded in the following manner:

20% Overview

20% Praises

20% Critiques

10% Applications

10% Threaded Discussions Started (Quality of your questions)

10% Grammar and Errors

10% Requirements

Each student’s collaborative contributions will be graded in the following manner:

60% Wiki Editing (at least three other essays, and amount and quality)

30% Threaded Discussions

10% Rating, Tagging, and Viewing

The total of your Collaborative Wiki Essays Assignment will be 70% x your primary contribution + 30% x your collaborative contributions.