Deadlines. Team formation proposals are due no later than midnight on Sunday October 29. Proposals may be submitted by fully formed teams (of four members), or by smaller groups, or by individuals.

Overview. This document defines the tasks that are required for these proposals, which (in short) amount to identifying candidate problem domains and (optionally) assembling a team.

Final Project Goals & Scope. Please read this document for an overview of what kinds of problems and apps make suitable projects for the class, as well as suggestions for ensuring that teams will succeed and have an enriching experiences.

Team Membership

For your final project, you will work in teams of four students. You can choose who you want to work with. You are encouraged to use the class forum to find potential team mates (specific threads are linked below).

If you propose a team of four students, the staff will accept the proposal, except in unusual circumstances (in particular, if there is a concern that one or more of the team members is too far behind on assignments to be adequately prepared for the final project).

If you propose fewer than four students, the staff may augment your team, by combining proposed teams, matching them by their declared interests. The staff will likewise assign individual students to teams, so don’t worry if you don’t have teammates in mind. We will do our best to ensure that every student is assigned to a team that matches their interests.

If the number of students in the class is not divisible by four, one or more teams will have fewer than four members. The expectations of these teams will be scaled accordingly.

Problem Domain Identification

Your team’s selection of a project will proceed in stages. The first stage, which is the task at hand, is to find a suitable problem domain. To do this, you will propose three different problem domains, each of which you would be happy to choose as the domain for your final project. In the next stage, with the advice of the teaching staff and after some lectures and in-class team exercises about domain selection, you will choose one of the domains as the domain for your project.

A problem domain is not the same as a problem, but is rather the larger context that defines an entire collection of problems. Here are three somewhat random examples:

  • Moral distress. “Moral distress” and “moral injury” are terms used to describe the experience people have when they are unable to live up to their moral convictions due to constraints beyond their control, often in stressful situations. There has been considerable interest in how nurses and doctors in particular suffer from moral distress due to structural problems in the healthcare system. Finding ways to address moral distress amongst nurses would be an example of a problem domain. Particular problems within that domain might be: how to track and measure moral distress; how to evaluate moral distress incidents; how to teach nurses to recognize moral distress; how to eliminate particular forms of moral distress; etc.
  • Memorabilia management. Individuals and families are accruing increasingly large volumes of media assets (photos, movies, messages, etc) that they would like to keep, but which impose a challenge for management, storage, organization, etc. This is an example of a problem domain. Problems within this domain might include: how to organize and filter large numbers of personal photos; how to share memorabilia within a family; how to archive and organize historic memorabilia belonging to ancestors; and so on.
  • River pollution. Throughout the world, rivers get polluted because of runoff, industrial effluents, release of raw sewage, etc. Reducing pollution in rivers is a rich problem domain. Particular problems might include: tracking the pollution levels in a river over time, and measure the effectiveness of interventions; warning people when rivers are unsafe for swimming or other uses; locating the sources of pollution; running grassroots campaigns to change laws regarding industrial dumping; etc.

Tasks

Here are the steps to take in identifying possible problem domains and proposing a team:

  • Assemble a team that you’d like to work with. To help you find collaborators, we’ve created a thread in the class forum for students to declare their interest in particular domains and to invite other students to join their teams or to form teams with them. Don’t be shy! Many students in the class will be looking for teammates. If you can’t find suitable teammates, don’t worry: just submit a team formation proposal by yourself.
  • Identify three problem domains that you’re interested in, preferably distinct from one another and spanning a range of issues, and for each come up with two or three examples of problems within that domain. The result of this work should be 300-500 words in length; for comparison, the three bullet points in the previous section are about 300 words long in total. Of course you can start on this before you’ve assembled your team too.
  • Submit a team formation proposal using this form. The form asks you to include the names and emails of between one and four proposed team members. If a team proposal includes more than one member, there should still be only one form submission for the entire team.