Day 17

Today

• Project Ideation and Team Formation
• Start working on project proposals

For Next Time

• Finish project proposal
• YOGA Phase 1

Small Group Discussion of YOGAs

Form small groups with people that you have historically *not* worked with. A good group size is 3-4. Within these groups, take turns sharing the goals from the YOGA. When sharing these goals you want to make sure to communicate what the goal means specifically, how it is measurable, and why it is important to you. When listening to the goals of others, you should be asking questions to help better understand this learning goal. Once everyone has had a chance to discuss their YOGA, you should take some time to pull out a few interesting similarities and/or differences between these YOGAs. We will briefly share these with the rest of the class. [Timeline: 3 minutes per person per YOGA, 5 minutes for generalizable lessons, 8 minutes for sharing among groups, total: 22 minutes]

Project Ideation

In your same small group, write down 3-4 of your favorite project ideas on a post-it note. Create a matrix that describes the alignment between each of these project ideas and your learning goals. One example of this might look like is this (I used + to indicate that the learning goal and the project are well-aligned, - to indicate that they are not well-aligned, and ? to indicate that it was uncertain how well they were aligned).

Once everyone has done this, take turns describing your project idea. The goal of this activity should be to help shape / refine each others' ideas and to discuss the alignment with learning goals. Interesting questions to probe during this session: project scope, feasibility, etc. After having this group discussion, write down your top 2-3 ideas on post-its. [timeline: 3 minutes for writing down your own ideas, 10 minutes for group discussion, total: 13 minutes ]

Affinity Grouping

Next, we will try to cluster the project ideas together. On the front whiteboard, place your post-its. If you see two post-its that are related, go ahead and move them closer together. If a cluster starts to emerge, go ahead and circle it with a pen and write a descriptive name next to it. [timeline: 10 minutes for clustering / finding first affinity group]

Group Brainstorming

Interested students should choose a cluster. You are not committing to this project topic yet, however, it should be one that you are considering. Once a group of students has coalesced, go ahead and find a corner of the room. In this small group you should start sketching out what a project in this space might look like. For instance, you may want to brainstorm on the following topics.

• What is the main idea of the project?
• What interesting design decisions might arise during the project?
  • What would an MVP be? What would the stretch goals be?
  • How would you incorporate learning about algorithms into the project? What would the likely balance be between learning about algorithms and doing software software engineering work?
  • What would be the biggest risks / showstoppers for the project?

Once you have had a chance to do this brainstorming, we will do one more round of this activity. Find another cluster you are interested in, and repeat the activity above. [timeline: 15 minutes for brainstorm 1, 5 minutes to find next affinity group, 15 minutes for brainstorm 2, total: 35 minutes]

Team Formation

Now, you will be forming your actual team. Beyond your interest in the topic area and alignment with your YOGA, you should consider your compatibility with your teammates. A few considerations are: programming proficiency, robotics background, schedule / working style, and commitment to the class. [timeline: until the end of class, hopefully we will have at least 20 minutes]