Feedback for All Themes

in Proposal Feedback

Comments that apply to all themes. Be sure to read the comments for your specific theme as well.

The topics were intentionally open - to gives students enough freedom to be creative.

I definitely had some things in mind - I was trying to avoid steering students towards these things. But, I am a little biased because these are influencing my expectations.

When I write here… I may make up some example “baseline” ideas (simple ideas that I have off the top of my head) to give you a sense of the kinds of things that are possible. These baselines might be good points of comparison for your project (not that you should implement them - but you could at least think about comparisons).

Also, in some cases, I will give some tasks to consider. These should not take the place of your own thinking: they are just some representative tasks.

Some specific comments on students’ proposals (each number is feedback to a proposal - just because I didn’t give your proposal that number doesn’t mean that it isn’t appropriate). The numbers have the form “0.1” (zero for all themes, so the first in this list) or “1.2” (second comment on theme 1).

  1. Meeting just once a week is unlikely to be sufficient.

  2. Some groups sent me links to Google Docs, but for some reason, the University authentication kicks me out before I can read it. (It shows up OK that disappears).

  3. It is good to sketch first and then implement once you have some idea of what you are trying to implement. (some groups specifically said they planned this, everyone should follow this strategy).

  4. Many of the plans seem reasonable. And some seem to be particularly well thought out. And I typically forgot to say the positive things when going through them.

  5. It’s OK to take some of the time to learn about tools (new libraries, new languages, …). We will ask you in your self-assessment how much tool learning you had to do, and will factor things accordingly (e.g., if it’s your first JavaScript program, we’ll have lower expectations). On the other hand, be realistic: learning new tools takes time; spending the entire project learning the tools gets away from the main goals of the assignment.

  6. Some of the descriptions were a bit too generic/vague for me to understand what the author had in mind. If you get this feedback, make sure you have a more specific plan. (in general, everyone should have a specific plan)

  7. Comparisons against baseline designs are always a good idea.