Response frequencies are tabulated for the 26 respondents (there was 1 non-respondent).
The full questions are copied in an appendix below.
| Question | A | B | C | D | E |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Full open access without anonymity | 12 | 7 | 4 | 3 | |
| 2. Open access with partial anonymity | 7 | 12 | 3 | 3 | 1 |
| 3. Open access with full anonymity | 9 | 10 | 2 | 4 | 1 |
| 4. No open access | 5 | 7 | 10 | 3 | 1 |
A representative sample of your written comments are copied in a following section. Many people support open access. Many support the option of anonymity, and a few feel strongly that anonymity should be a possibility. Some issues raised are addressed below.
Copyright. If you post material online, it gives you some protection of your intellectual property to copyright it. For example, the Stats 531 notes are licensed under the Creative Commons attribution-noncommercial license, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/. This simply requires writing in your document that you intend it to be covered by this license. Read more at http://creativecommons.org/. You can copyright anonymous work.
Equity. Two people commented that the class policy for making the projects available should treat everyone the same.
Non-judgemental posting. No project grades, or other comments on the projects, should be shared. The aim of sharing the projects is not for comparison of the projects.
Posting on Canvas. Several people preferred sharing within the class. However, if open access is combined with the possiblity of posting anonymously, only one individual found that unsatisfactory.
Attaching your name to something that is not representive of your best work. Several people pointed out the following problem to attaching names. We all take many classes, and some of them don’t go so well. Indeed, if you ace all your classes then you’re not being ambitious enough, because there are always more challenging classes you could take! If this happens to be one of the courses in which your previous preparation levels or current time commitment put you at a disadvantage, it could be counter-productive and unreasonable to have your class project identified with your name online.
Final projects vs midterms. A sentiment expressed several times was that midterm projects might be insufficiently developed to be shared with pride. However, from the point of view of learning, sharing midterm projects is as important as sharing final projects. It would be expected that fewer people would choose to attach their name to an online version of their midterm project than their final.
My conclusion is that projects should be submitted on Canvas, and posted anonymously on the class Github. There will be an option to attach your name at the end of the course, once you’ve decided whether this is among the courses for which you think your coursework does you credit. Between classmates, the projects will be unblinded by the class presentations. If you see a project presentation for which you’d particularly like to study the report, you can contact either the author or me to help you find it among the anonymous reports.
Exceptions to posting, even anonymously, can be made for those who either (i) have confidential data; (ii) expect to publish the results and do not want to circulate any preliminary results before publication—noting that presenting preliminary results before publication has risks but also benefits that may outweigh the risks, for example, most successful scientists will present results in professional conferences that are not yet published on the assumption that the chance of useful feedback and the opportunity to communicate ideas outweighs the small danger of theft of intellectual property.
Let me know if you have any questions or concerns about this policy.
“I would be happy with any of the first three options, with a preference for more openness.”
“[Open access] is a good way to improve our analysis and programming skills by learning from other students. One probable disadvantage may be that this will increase competition among the class and cause large work load of course.”
“As long as the one’s project will not be presented as a case of poor work.”
“Open–access make students treat the projects more seriously and try the best to improve their work.”
“Associating one’s name publicly to one’s work provides an incentive for one to work harder to perfect one’s analysis. It also provides one an incentive to be more original and creative in one’s analysis instead of resorting to plagiarism. However, this assumes that I will be happy with future employers seeing both the excellent parts and non-excellent parts of my analysis, in posterity. Ten years down the road, it is possible that I may not agree with my current analysis anymore and in that case, I would not want it to accessible publicly online anymore.”
“It would be acceptable for me to have my work posted on the class GitHub site, but it must be fully anonymized.”
“Having the content of each person’s work, and source code posted on the class GitHub site will provide a win-win scenario for everyone in the class in that each person may learn exactly how other people performed their analysis and how they implemented their analysis. This can be invaluable in that techniques these people will use may not have been covered in class. Moreover, their data set may have a special structure that might be interesting and learning the techniques they used will help you analyze a whole similar class of data.”
“I am fine with sharing my project on the Canvas site and having my name associated with it. However, the disadvantage of it is that a broad community of data enthusiasts will not be able to build on your analysis, which is only possible if your work is posted online. If other data enthusiasts, possibly located many time zones away, catch on your work, and they share their analysis online as well, then you would have started a virtuous cycle of information sharing.”
“Coursera, Wikipedia, and MIT Opencourseware have helped me learn new skills from people I would have otherwise not have the opportunity to meet. In particular, after MIT started to make public high quality material from many of their courses through MIT Opencourseware, other top academic institutions then started making public their course material. These course material have helped students like myself, in lifelong learning.”
“As long as it is your own original work, there is nothing to be afraid of to put it online…. I wouldn’t put anything personal with my name on online. Some people with some purpose will tort the intention of your work and may do harm.”
“I was not sure that I can do something I really proud of during a relatively short time. Do something worth to publish is a really time-consuming based on my previous experience, which is not my expectation for a course project.”
“For the statement of potential employers, I can send them directly about the brief introduction of this course and project if I want, to let them know the relevant things about it. However, if I didn’t do well in my project, I still have to let them know if I posted online with my name, which is not I am looking for.”
“Personally, as my personality, I don’t like to expose too much on Internet, which I can’t get control with it.”
“I think I would prefer not to post my course work on Internet at all. But I think sharing my work with my mates is a good idea.”
“I would like to post the whole project on Canvas, but I don’t think post my code on GitHub is a good way for it. Posted online means many things, including maintains your code, debugging, updating, etc., which it is a huge responsibility and need everyone thinking it through. I don’t like to do something irresponsible, such as just leave it alone on GitHub after I finished the “homework”. However, I do think that I can learn many useful things from my classmates’ project. Considering all of these stuff, I would love to share my entire project with my classmates, but not the whole world.”
“I think what we learn and do in this class is just a really small part of the Time Series world, I don’t really want my potential employer think I that’s all I have.”
“We should post anything online with anonymity, people on the internet could still give the advice about what we did. We still can improve by doing this way.”
“Posting our project online is a very good way to building a data base for students will take this class in the future or students just who are interested in this topic. From this point of view, if people really like my project, I am thankful. I will be happy if someone else will be benefit from my research project.”
“Generally, I agree we post the project and code online, however I also think it is good to be anonymity. It could give us a privacy when we discuss the project results.”
From my point of view, if we want to have an open-access of our project, it is better to open to anyone online instead of opening partially. Thus I prefer to have an open-access of our project on github.
“Open-access to the project can draw the attention of potential employers and keep academic honesty. However, it can also make someone feel
reluctant and uncomfortable.”
“If it’s a work someone worked on at least several months, it would be safe to post it online with his name on it. However, if it’s just a few weeks of work and if its quality is not so high, I think there might be a room for disadvantages.”
“Since we are going to do the presentation, posting works anonymously on Canvas does not seem to have a point. However, posting works with names on Canvas seems to be good idea.”
“since students learn similar topics at similar level each year, I don’t think future students can make great improvement based on previous works.”
“I’d like to have my projected open-accessed. I don’t want to
enjoy myself with the project. I want others see what I did and discuss it with me.”
“As long as I really pay a lot attention on the project, I’d like it to be open-accessed.
There is not disadvantage for me to post the course project online, which I spent a lot of
time and efforts on.”
“As long as the other students have no problem with sharing their projects, I can benefit a lot from studying their ideas and results. If all of the students accept to share the projects with the classmates, it will be better
to share it online.”
“I hope my project can be popular in the future. But if it it not, I still won’t lose
anything with it open-accessed online.”
“we should always be very careful to post something online. But considering publishing project online, I did not come up with many serious disadvantages.”
“When I took other courses before, I always suffered from no way to review others’ projects after their presentation which I felt interested in. If we all post the projects online, we could see others’ work and would gain more relevant knowledge about this course.”
“People should be careful of what they post online. But this project will not connect anything private to the author so personally I am not so worried about this.”
“We should definitely learn new techniques for data analysis if we see our fellows use a new method. I can also see which project I am interested in and pay more attention to that during the presentation.”
“It is desirable that I can link my project on the course Github site, since it is a convenient way to impress my potential employers or PhD advisors. However, it is possible that some companies would use my work for commercial use without my permission. If there are effective ways to protect my intellectual property right, I am in favor of the open-‐access.”
“If I spend much efforts on a project, I would prefer to post my name on it, since it shows my hard work.”
“I hope people could tell me more about their opinions of my work. Receiving feedbacks (whether positive or negative) helps me to think through the work critically.”
“If I spend much efforts on the project, I would like to post my name on it, as it shows my hard work. But if I didn’t try hard, I won’t do it cause it’s not my work.”
“When taking computing courses in my undergraduate studying, the previous papers can be viewed online by all of the students. It’s a great way as we could learn from each other and have more motivation to improve our work when we see some excellent papers.”
“It is great that I can link my project on the course Github site, as it is a convenient way to show my work to my potential employers. And it’s relatively convincing.”
“An open-access course project with our names on it will do help for our future career, no matter of we are going to find jobs in industry or academia. As long as we finish the project with our efforts, it is beneficial for us if others can see what we achieve in this course. Moreover, since I am not going to cheat, I believe that, open-access work is a good way to keep it fair because people dare not cheat on the project that everyone can access.”
“Sharing what we learn is always helpful our future study. Therefore, reading others’ analysis of time series can help us to think what we miss in our own projects. This will be great help for our final projects.”
“Future students can even contact us if they want to discuss the projects. It is always good to share experience with others.”
“In the midterm project, it will be our first try to apply the methods we learn in the half semester to a real case analysis. Therefore, I suggest that we only have the final project fully open-access because the final one will be more comprehensive. However, we can still keep the midterm project open-access within the class to share our idea.”
“If it is possible, I would like to have access on the former students’ project of this course.”
“I do not think it is wise to upload the project without anonymity. It’s not about the reason of academic integrity. It’s about privacy. Because it’s sort of the past of history of the person. We should have the right to deal with it at any time for any reason. If you upload it on the web, it is not easy to deal with it after we graduate. Someone may easily find your past on the web. It’s not at all satisfactory.”
“Sharing between classmates are acceptable. We can learn much through the class presentation. But if there are too many sources to read from, and no selection for the future students… Thus, I think sharing through canvas should be based on the selection of some good projects. And before uploading, we should get the consent of the specific student. Everyone should have the right to choose whether upload or not based on the specific projects.”
“Considering it as an academic project, I think it would be good to put it online and let everybody see your thoughts.”
“Posting our project online is a very good way to building a data base for students will take this class in the future or students just who are interested in this topic. It could give them a brief though at first. I think it doesn’t matter if it is anonymous or not. Both ways are good to me.”
“I am looking for intern and full time and would like to gain some presence on Internet.”
“Think before you post. I think posting the mid/final project will just be fine.”
“I would suggest that rules should be the same for everybody unless for situations like publication or confidential data.”
“I would much rather share our projects online. I think the online aspect represents an opportunity to learn more about github and also to learn more about time series by looking at the work of our peers.”
“In this case, I believe the benefit [of open access] outweighs the risk.”
“Well, at the first thought, you might think that standing on the caution side should be a better choice when seeing no actual benefits. However, we really need to balance the advantages and shortcuts carefully before making decision. Choosing a conservative road blindly without careful consideration may lead to potential loss which may not be reflected very soon. After considering this issue in details, unless somebody find their own reason again this proposal, if we can find no reason to object that versus several benefits listed, we should bravely stand under the light and accept the unanonymity.”
“That is another strong standpoint for open-access without anonymity. That makes it convenient for project searching and source code reference, also name linked on that enables free discussion regarding those charming topics. Also, putting the projects under light is a good way for scrutinizing, other people may help you check if there is calculation or logic error existing in your paper which is a critical for you. In addition, your statement and method might provoke other people’s idea based on your result which might be a potential chance for further development and extension of your project if readers are happy to discuss their thoughts.”
“Sharing work online and having it accessible outside of class is beneficial for multiple reasons. Having this option compulsory seems a little unnecessary – however encouraging it seems reasonable.”
“I think [anonymous posting on Github] is a good option for those who don’t want to be identified. Perhaps combining this and [an option of including your name] would be nice. It’s clear to me that if that was offered, there would be a potential situation of enough people choosing non-anonymity that would result in those wanting anonymity to be identified, but I suppose that’s a chance I’m willing to take( although I’d probably go with non-anonymity so I’m biased).”
“While I’m generally mortified by giving presentations, I do think work-sharing is good among academic communities. When one looks at open-source projects in general – good things have come out of them. This would be a way for those particularly interested in time series to come together, ask questions about projects, and delve into the material a little more.”
“Most of the employers in data science ask for github link.”
“I agree that post our works with the names with open access will help us be seen by potential employers or people who have similar research interest. I don’t mind doing it at all, but I wonder if it will be better if we just post our project on our own github, so we will have better control for our repository and we can update our project anytime.”
“I am not super familiar with R, so read people’s code will help a lot. Also I know people in the class coming from different backgrounds (EEB, STAT, EPID, etc) I am excited to see different interesting projects.”
“I wonder if it is possible to make people choose if they want to publish their work on github. For example, maybe people all turn in their work to Canvas, and students who are willing to share their work can update to either their own github account or the course account.”
“I agree to share my project report privately within the course via the Canvas site. However, I hope that we could share only part of the source code. And I also hope that we can choose to be anonymous or identified based on individual choice.”
“When participating in the Mathematical Contest of Modeling, the previous excellent papers can be viewed online under the approval of the authors without anonymity. But the source code in the appendix is confidential. I think this is a proper way to share academic works. Personally speaking, I am not very comfortable with sharing all of my code, but I am happy with sharing my ideas and research findings.”
“I don’t know about an academic advantage, but it would be cool to see how people applied time series analysis to real data. I agree that I hope I learn something new from other students.”
“I don’t know if I would ever link to github, as I have my own website, but I agree that you have more to gain than lose with open access, and I am completely for it.”
“By now it’s difficult for our students to do our projects. If we could have got the projects by the previous students as references, we may perform better for these projects. Then I think if we could help the students in future for the project, it will be great.”
“I think it would greatly benefit the course in the long term to have an archive of past projects.”
“From my point of view, if we want to have an open-access of our project, it is better to open to anyone online instead of opening partially. It does not make much sense to share our projects in a small group when we all agree to share those. Once we want to share, it is better to share them to all.”
This is an extract from the homework assignment.
Question 6.1. What level of anonymity is appropriate, if the class favors posting either or both of the midterm and final projects? There are many options. Please give each one a letter grade; A for entirely acceptable to you; B for satisfactory, suggesting you have no serious objections but it would not be among your most favored choices; C for minimally satisfactory, suggesting that you have some reservations but don’t see anything fundamentally wrong with the option; D for failing, suggesting that you would be unhappy if anyone required you to comply with this option; E for objectionable, suggesting that you feel this option is unreasonable and should not be given further consideration. You can add \(\pm\) values to your grades if you like. You may like to come back to answer Question 6.1 after responding to Question 6.2.
Options for you to give an A–E letter grade:
Q6.1.1. Open-access without anonymity. Your project, with your name, is posted on the Github repository. If your project has confidential data, or research results that you hope to publish and wish to keep private until that time, you can ask for an exception and your project will be turned in directly to me and not posted on the course Github site.
Q6.1.2. Open-access with partial anonymity. Your project is un-named. You upload and edit your project on the class Github site, so someone could in principle search through the revision logs and unblind you. However, no internet search engine could associate your project with your name. If your project has confidential data, or research results that you hope to publish and wish to keep private until that time, you can ask for an exception and your project will be turned in directly to me and not posted on course Github site.
Q6.1.3. Open-access with full anonymity. You submit your project via Canvas, un-named, and Dao or I post it on the class Github site. If your project has confidential data, or research results that you hope to publish and wish to keep private until that time, you can ask for an exception and your project will not be posted on course Github site.
Q6.1.4. No open access. Your project and source code are submitted via Canvas, but will not appear on the course Github site.