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lect01, Thu 01/12

Project Team Formation

This day is 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 ideas 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. Starting with S20, we were using a web app that could support that same exercise, but also work in a remote teaching setting (S20, S21). Since using the app seemed to be more enjoyable for students, we will continue using it even though we’re all in the same classroom again.

What you’ll do next

• We will announce the URL of the web app.
• Please open that app, and use the Google login with your UCSB email address (name@ucsb.edu) - it’s the email that is on the class roster (the default one you got messaged to from Canvas, minus the “umail” part).
• You should see that in the upper right hand corner, you have the role “student”.
• If so, it’s working!
• If not, pleasee flag a teaching team member, and we’ll help you get set up.

If you have the student role

• Enter a project idea. You should see a form where you can enter a project idea.
  • You have 10 minutes. Come up with (or pick the best project idea you thought about over the weekend) you can in these 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!
  • If you have a great second (or third) idea, flag down a teaching team member, and we’ll help you enter those. The web app unfortunately only allows one idea entry per email address.
• 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 reads the project idea
• Asks if the submitter of that project idea wants to claim it, and try to form a team around that idea.

IF the submitter identifies themselves, try to let the form a team

• 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 their Discussion Section (Fri 11am or Fri noon).
• Instructor asks which students that can make that Section are interested in that project.
• We will announce a URL to a Google Spreadsheet in which team members can self-enter.

If there are exactly 5, 6 or 7 hands (including the submitter), those students immediately form a team.

• We create a Slack channel for that team.

If there were 8 or more hands:

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

If 4 or fewer hands:

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

If a team not formed by original submitter

• 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

Iterate

• Iterate through all project ideas once for a first round.
• Then revisit viables ones set aside, until project teams are formed.