lect01

lect01, Thu 04/01

Project Team Formation

This day was devoted to assignment of students to teams and projects.

Project Formation Tool

Today, if all goes well, we’ll be using a webapp that was developed by CS48 course staff and adapted by your current teaching team.
The app is one that will allow us to generate project idea, and then rate one another’s ideas.
It is intended to reproduce an exercise called 25:10 that is the basis for how Prof. Conrad and I have generated project idea for CMPSC 48 in W19 and W20.

However, that exercise requires face-to-face interation and is done with index cards, or pieces of paper.

We tried to build an app that could do that same exercise, but via a webapp.

We will paste a URL into the chat window of Zoom
- There are separate links for each discussion section.
- Be sure you click on the right one (noon, 1pm, 2pm, or 3pm)
Please open that app, and login with your UCSB email address (name@ucsb.edu).
You should see that in the upper right hand corner, you have the role “student”.
If so, it’s working!
Then we’ll go into breakout rooms to make it easier to help folks who are having trouble.

Enter a project idea. You should see a form where you can enter a project idea.
- You have 10 minutes. Come up with the best project idea you can in 10 minutes.
- If you can’t come up with a good project idea, put in a mediocre project idea.
- Don’t stress over this too much. We are grading this on participation, and doing your best, not on the quality of your idea.
- Nevertheless, come up with the best idea you can!
Rate other project (at least five).
- Once you’ve put in a project idea, you’ll be able to rate other students project ideas (anonymously).
- Rate at least five, but after that you can rate more if you like.
- Don’t spend too long on each rating. You have about 10 minutes to rate five project ideas.

After about 20 minutes, or after we see that everyone is done, we’ll reconvene in the main group.

For the top-rated submitted project ideas, we will follow this protocol:

Instructor read the project idea
Asked if the submitter of that project idea wanted to claim it, and try to form a team around that idea.

Instructor asks if the submitter wants to form a project team around the idea
- If no, proceed to “If a team not formed by original submitter”
Instructor asks if the submitter can coordinate with the team in the Fri 1pm Section. If not, we will attempt to accommodate a second Lab Section that may work better with other time zones.
Instructor asks which students that can make that Section are interested in that project.

If there are exactly 4, 5 or 6 hands (including the submitter), those students immediately form a team.

If there were 7 or more hands:

The project is viable, but set aside for now; placed into a pile of “viable projects to return to later”.

If 3 or fewer hands:

Proceed to instructions for “If forming a team including the submitter fails” below:

Project is thrown open for bid to the entire class.
- Ask everyone interested in working on the project to raise their hand.
If there is no team of size at least 4, the idea is non-viable; set it aside as non-viable.
If and only if there is a team of 4, 5 or 6 that can all get together in a discussion section, a team can then be formed to work on that project idea immediately.
If there is only one team of 6, that team wins over competing teams of 4 or 5.
- Similar if there is no team of 6, and only one team of 5.
If there are multiple teams of equal size competing, the instructor may resolve the conflict by any of these means:
- Ask a representative from each potential team to do Rock Paper Scissors
- Put the idea back in the “viable project to return to later” pile
- Allow multiple teams to work on the idea