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DS 4200 S22

P2—Proposal

Due F 2022-02-11, 11:59pm EST 10pts

Please make sure you understand and follow the instructions properly. If you have any questions regarding this assignment, please post on Canvas in Discussion: P2—Proposal.

Table of Contents

Change log

  • 2022-02-08: Added the instructions to fill out the Partnership Summary Agreement Google Form for the S-L program.

Aim of the assignment

In this project assignment, you are required to organize yourself into groups for the course project and propose what you want to work on during the semester. The proposal should be as complete and exhaustive as possible so that you can receive meaningful feedback from the teaching staff early. We want to get you started on the projects as soon as possible to increase your odds of completing something substantial, and meaningful during the course.

Additionally, each group will also create a group charter to help manage their expectations of each other and set up the logistics of collaboration. The group will write and agree upon their charter together.

Background information

For a refresher on what we expect from your projects, please refer to the Project Overview.

Warning: The requirements listed for the projects must be met unless you have approval from the instructor to do a differentiated project.

Also refer to the guidance on selecting projects and partners in P1-Pitches.

You will have time in-class on T 2022-02-08 to organize yourselves into groups and work on this, but we encourage you to reach out to potential group members promptly after the pitches are posted to get started. You’re free to discuss in each project’s thread on Piazza.

Instructions

1. Identify the project and group

Go through the pitches the other students post on Piazza and decide what project you want to pursue and who you will do it with. You can decide to stick with your initial pitch and try to recruit others to join you in your project idea. If you are abandoning a project, please update your Piazza post to say Abandoned.

Ideally your project should be relevant to your research, career, public, or personal interests. Ensure that there are real challenges in this area that could be aided with data visualization.

  1. Coalesce into project groups of ~3 members.

    • More than 3 members: Extremely unlikely to be approved.
    • 3 members: Ideal
    • 2 members: Unlikely to be approved.
    • 1 member: Will not be approved.

  2. Claim one of the Project Groups we have created on Canvas.

    1. One person needs to claim a group which you will use for submitting assignments together. This will be the group leader on Canvas. Follow the instructions in the Canvas documentation about how to join a group. Pick the lowest indexed group available. E.g., if group 01 already has members pick 02 and so on.

    2. The group leader should then rename the group to have a short but descriptive suffix while keeping the ## prefix, where ## was the original integer there. E.g., 07 Paint Provenance.

      Warning: Do not use non-ASCII characters and keep the name short. Otherwise it can break GitHub Classroom.

    3. Every group member should then join the group. You are only allowed to be a member of one group but can switch initially.

2. Write your proposal

Take your ideas from P1—Pitches and flush them out into a proper proposal. Make sure to:

  • Use an appropriate project title and include all group members’ names at the top.
  • Elaborate as exhaustively as possible the following sections:
    • Abstract. A high-level overview of the project (~80 words)
    • Introduction. A brief description of the project topic and motivation.
    • Partner. Name and describe your partner, including an email address for them. You will need to interview them as part of the project, but they should be available to help you understand the problem, domain, and data.
    • Data. Explicitly identify what data you will be using for your project, or what data you will be generating/collecting. Hyperlink to it if possible.
    • Execution Plan & Preliminary Work. Describe what you plan to do and what technologies you’ll need. Also detail any preliminary work that exists. Note that you need not have done preliminary work, but if you have include details and images here.
    • Group Charter. See the content instructions below. Insert this after the Execution Plan & Preliminary Work section on a new page.
  • Ensure all your references (if any) have hyperlinked DOIs that are clickable.
  • You are limited to 1 page but you can have unlimited pages for:
    • references
    • images (not images of text though)
    • the group charter

3. Write a group charter

Please write up your group charter in the same document and address these key questions. Feel free to add/address more than these guiding questions!

  • Group Purpose: State the reasons for this group’s formation and the group’s purposes. Who are your stakeholders/intended users, and what are their expectations of and for the group? (You don’t need to reiterate details in the proposal, just anything additional.)
  • Group Goals. What are the group’s project, process, and quality goals? To what level of performance are group members willing to commit, and what course grade are you collectively aiming for? Articulating these goals will make a difference in your group’s performance.

  • Group Member Roles/Responsibilities. While some group responsibilities are shared by all members, collaborative groups work best when members also have unique roles and responsibilities. These could be technical and/or project management related, e.g., group leader, meeting facilitator, documentation coordinator, information manager, point person for sponsor/advisor communications, etc. Consider these assignments carefully.

    Each group is required to identify a “communications director” in the group. This group member will be the only person responsible for all email communications between the group and the partner person/organization as well as between the group and us (teaching staff) on final project related matters.

  • Ground Rules. How, how often and when will this group meet? What are the norms and ground rules the group will agree to? How will you conduct discussions and make decisions? How will you handle dissenting views among members? How will you hold each other accountable for living by these rules and for task completion? What kind of participation and level of commitment do you expect from one another?
  • Potential Barriers and Coping Strategies. What barriers to effective group work might potentially arise in the course of completing your project and other group obligations, and how will you handle them if they materialize? What problems with group dynamics have you experienced in the past, and how will you handle them if they come up again?

Warning: Throughout your project assignments, if you feel like a member is not fulfilling their responsibilities, or a member is unavailable or drops out of the course, please contact us as soon as possible. We can’t fix things easily at the end of the course, but we could help course-correct early.

Warning: There will be a peer evaluation component to the final project grading. So make sure you fulfill your responsibilities to your group!

4. Fill out the Partnership Summary Agreement form

  1. One person from the group (i.e. the group leader on Canvas) should fill out the Partnership Summary Agreement Google Form that the Service-Learning office on campus uses to track who we’re working with.

Submission instructions

  1. One person from the group (i.e. the group leader on Canvas) should create a PDF from your document and ensure it contains everything required for parts 1–3. They should then submit it as a single PDF to the assignment P2—Proposal on GradeScope.

    Note: Use Gradescope’s Group Members tab to add the members of your group to your submission.

  2. Part 4 is separately submitted using the Google Form listed above.

Grading notes

  • Your proposal should have a clear focus and a comprehensive explanation of the partner problem and data.
  • You will be graded on the quality, meaningfullness, and feasibility of your project idea as well as your writing.
  • Points will be deducted for grammar and spelling mistakes.
  • Points will be deducted for not following the submission instructions.

© 2022 Cody Dunne. Released under the CC BY-SA license