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lect01, Wed 01/08

Project Team Formation

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

Seating arrangement

• Students sat in separate parts of the room, clearly separated by discussion section.
• Chairs were ready to form into project teams

The instructor selected the top 16 project ideas from the 78 submitted.

The inclusion criteria were:

• positive feedback from the exercise during the first class (i.e. in the top 1/3 by student score)
• that were also considered viable by the instructor

These were then shuffled in random order.

For each one, we followed the following 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.

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

• Instructor asks if the submitter wants to form a project team in their discussion section.
  • If no, proceed to “If a team not formed by original submitter”
• Instructor asked which discussion section submitter is from
• Instructor asked which students from THAT section were interested in that project.

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

• That team was seated in a group of adjacent seats, formed into a circle/group facing each other.
  • student occupying those chairs asked to stand, or fill in a vacated seat in their part of the room.)

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 a team cannot be formed by submitter” below:

If forming a team including the submitter fails

• 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 WITHIN a single discussion section, the idea is non-viable; set it aside as non-viable.

• If and only if there is a team of 4, 5 or 6 in one or more discussion sections, 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.