Project Review Presentations

Today we will break up into the same groups as Wednesday and review the project summaries and try to understand what will be needed to complete the project.

Agenda (70 Minutes)

(10 minutes) Announcements
(30 minutes) Project Review
(20 minutes) Sharing review results

1. Announcements

Honor’s Option

If you are interested in an Honor’s option, please review the option in the syllabus and send an email to your instructors TODAY saying you would like to be included in the SCHOLAR repository management team.

2. Project Review

Your goal for the next half hour is to review a project as a group and do some preliminary research. Get out your computers so everyone can help. After your 30 minutes you need to be ready to give a 3-minute presentation (max) to the entire class about the 2-3 most interesting things you found. The goal here is to share something new that may be helpful for other classmates to know as they pick projects. Practice if you have time so you can keep it under 3 minutes.

On Wednesday of this week the instructors split everyone into temporary groups of 4-5 people. Each group will be assigned a project summary. Teams will spend about 10 minutes in your groups on Wednesday to get organized and then have an additional 30 minutes on Friday to finish up.

Your goal is to do a quick read through the project summary and get started outlining roles and responsibilities for the summary report. Your team will be expected to give a short < 5 minute group presentation.

NOTE Remember that you are expected to individually review all of the project summaries and fill out your preferences as your first milestone assignment which is due this weekend (Sunday night). The purpose of this temp review is to dig a little deeper into at least one of the project and discuss as a group what you liked and disliked about the project. See what other people are looking at to help you prioritize the projects.

Group Formation

As soon as you get into your groups introduce yourselves and identify people for the following roles.

Reviewer/Researcher:

Everyone on the team is responsible to to review and research the proposal. Your job is to use your favorite search engines and see what you can learn immediately about the project. Pretend that this will be your project and you are trying to find the information you need to get started. This includes information such as software resources, background information, data sources, etc. Include links and descriptions of what you find. Think about the first steps and open loop questions that need to be answered.

Timekeeper:

In your groups you have 30 minutes to complete the review and get ready for the presentation. The timekeeper is responsible for the agenda and keeping your team on task. Here is a recommendation:

(5 minutes) To read through the project description. Maybe have someone read it out loud?
(10 minutes) Have everyone research details about the projects.
(5 minutes) Review report and add additional items as your team finds them.
(10 minutes) Pick 2-3 items you think would be good to report out to the class.

Note Taker:

The note taker will be responsible for taking notes for the meeting. These notes will be shared with the rest of the class. If you are the note taker, do the following:

Create a word document in the General–>Files–>Project_Reviews/TEAMNAME folder titled initial_Review.docx. Do not use spaces in the filename. The TEAMNAME is the name of the project your team is reviewing.
Add the title of the project to the top of the document. Include all of your names as authors and your assigned roles.
Write down notes and thoughts about the project. Make sure you include links to online resources.
Make sure the notes make sense. The intended use of this document is to help other students with their preference assignment.

Facilitator:

Your job is to make sure everyone is participating and working. Encourage discussion and help the timekeeper and note takers stay on task. Focus on making sure others are participating and not taking over the discussion yourself.

Presenter

Your job is to present the 2-3 items your team picks to the entire group. You will only have a maximum of 3 minutes to present so make sure you know what you want to say. If you have time write it down and practice.

Project Review Report

Remember, as with everything in this course, part of your grade is to read and follow instructions. If instructions are confusing make an educated guess. If you feel an incorrect guess will impact the quality of your product then ask questions of your instructors. Avoid asking questions that can be answered in the instructions.

Find the Review_template.docx file in the teams directory and make a copy in the Project_Review_Assignment folder. Rename the file with the same name as the project short name and include _review.docx at the end of the file name. Identify a scribe for the group (someone to make and share the report). As a group you will need to type up a report that includes the following:

Title of the project being reviewed.
List of people in the review team (names and email addresses).
A short 2-line summary of the project.
Initial Project breakdown (what seem to be the key components?)
What are the biggest problems that need to be understood and solved for this project to move forward (open loops)?
How will the team know if the project is complete (success metrics)
What will be the most time consuming task for this project (given what you know).
What would be this groups first task if they were assigned the project?
What questions do you have for the instructor about the project?
List any Anticipated Challenges your team identified while discussing the project.
What would be your very first step to solving this project?

You are encouraged to work on this document outside of class. Your team will be given 3-5 minutes on Friday to give an overview of the project with a focus on key insights your group discovered. Identify one person to share with entire class <5 Minutes.

Project Description Files

Once you are assigned to a group and a project, go to the “General” channel in our courses Microsoft Team, click on “files” and select the folder for the team. The project description will be in that folder.

Link to Course Microsoft Team

NOTE the above project descriptions may not be posted until the first day of class

Each group will get about 3 minutes to share some details about the project they reviewed.

Written by Dr. Dirk Colbry, Michigan State University
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.