Activity logs

A significant component of your grade for COMP560 will be determined by your activity log. Your activity log is a private Teams channel in which the only participants are you and the instructor. Please create your own activity log in our Team when you begin working on the project. Guidance:

• Please name your activity log channel “Your Name activity log” e.g. “John MacCormick activity log”. Make sure it is a private channel and give access to the instructor.
• The activity log should record essentially everything you do for the project. This includes time you spend:
  • reading background materials, literature and documentation;
  • writing code, debugging, conducting experiments, producing results;
  • writing reports, papers, presentations, posters etc.;
  • attending meetings or working with other students;
  • any other activity related to the project.
• Because a significant component of your grade is determined by effort rather than achievement, you should be assiduous in logging your activity. The instructor will be able to give you favorable grade for effort only if your activity log makes it obvious that you have been spending at least the MTE (minimum time expectation) working on our project.
• It is suggested you post at least one message to your activity log on every day on which you spend time working on our project. Each message should be headlined with the total number of hours worked and should contain a few sentences describing your activity (aim for, say, 50 words – but more is better!).
  • Example: In some particular week you spend the following time working on COMP560: 3 hours on Monday, one hour on Wednesday to attend our weekly evening meeting, 4 hours on Thursday, and 4 hours on Saturday. Then you should post four separate activity log messages describing your activities on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Each message should contain the number of hours worked in the topic line e.g. “3 hours: Monday, 3/1/2026”.
• If you post fewer than two messages per week (or one message per week for the half-credit course), you will likely receive a failing grade unless there is very strong alternative evidence of your effort on the project (e.g. substantial commits to our code repository, or concrete achievements such as research reports).

Public Activity Log

In addition to your private activity log, you are also expected to post summaries of your activities in our MS Team’s Public Activity Log channel. This channel serves as a way for the instructor and other students to see your progress and contributions to the project. The public activity log should be updated by 11:59pm on the days given on the course schedule, usually the Tuesday night before a Wednesday lab meeting. The Public Activity Log posts are listed as assignments PAL1 through PAL12 on the course schedule.