Assignment 3: Team Concept Presentations (2x2)

Goal

To learn about your teammate(s) skills; to setup electronic tools you will use to communicate with each other (and future teammates who will use your prototype); to work with your teammate(s), building on all the ideas presented by you and others in class, to select and improve the two most promising ideas that you think your team could pull off; to consider not only the problem and the solution, but how to use the prototype you would build to make a strong scientific/technical case for the viability of your big idea(s).

Team assignment

You have your team assignment. First, get organized and setup a strategy for working together.

• Meet with your teammate(s) face to face. Make it happen. It may be logistically difficult, but you must do it.
• Develop strategies for using the online tools required for class.

Minimally, you must

• Setup two times per week (spread throughout the week) for a face-to-face or virtual meetings. They should be long enough so you can productively get some work done.
• Setup a shared phone/video conference line you will use for the meetings.
• Create a shared reference library using Endnote's group feature where references and PDFs of the documents will be shared.
• Create a shared dropbox space to store other important project materials and devleop version naming conventions.
• Setup your Git and BitBucket spaces.
• Create a team mailing list on Piazza
• Start using all the above tools to develop your idea, assemble supporting materials, and create your in-class pitch
• Use the above tools to decide upon the technology platform to use in the course

 

Meet with your teammate(s) either in person or via teleconference. Learn about each other's backgrounds and skills. Spend some time getting to know what you can each do and can't do, and what everyone most wants to accomplish.

Based on all class presentations, discussions, and readings so far, as well as meeting with your teammate(s), come up with yet another idea, or extend an idea that has been presented/discussed. This time it must be one that is appropriate for your new team to tackle based on the skills you have our feel you can develop within the time line of the semester. If the idea is a variation on one previously suggested by you or someone else, you must improve upon it (i.e., add detail, add support, respond to prior feedback the idea received). Key is that you think about ideas that:

• your team could build a prototype to demonstrate, and
• your team could propose a way that the prototype built could be used in some type of experiment/test/demonstration to convince (possibly skeptical) health researchers of the viability of your big idea(s).

Remember that if your idea is novel enough, it may challenge the conventional wisdom about what is possible or not. Therefore, you will need to prove to others that the idea has merit. You need to be able to build just enough of a working prototype, so that such proof could be generated (by a team working hard next semester).

This is when the big ideas hit reality, and where you have to be especially creative in utilizing the skills and experience your team has to the greatest effect. As you prune ideas that may not be appropriate for your team in this class, be sure to make a note of those that you might want to revisit at some later date and in other circumstances. If you are doing all the reading, and actively listening and participating in class, you should be coming up with many ideas at this point.

Develop a two-minute presentation describing your team's best idea to the class, using this template (note, this slide format is different than the one used in the last assignment). You want to get the problem and proposed (novel) solution across clearly, with enough detail so that you will get the most useful feedback from your peers. It should be clear how the prototype you would build could be used to convince people of the significance/impact of the core scientific ideas upon which you will build.

Done?

Ok. Now do it again for a second idea, as different from the first as you can imagine.

When you are done you will have two solid ideas/presentations, and your team should be prepared to present and discuss them in class. Please be sure all team members participate in presenting in some way, although how you do that is up to you. Please do not, however, just divvy up the two presentations to different people, and develop ideas independently. It should be clear that the team worked together on both ideas (and support them), even if the presenter roles are divided up by idea.

Hand in:

Email your Powerpoint slides named PHIDD-Team[Number].2mm-TeamIdeas.ppt to ...@neu.edu by the deadline so there is time to compile them before class.

Please practice both your presentations and make a strong pitch!

You will be evaluated on whether your ideas reflect that you are reading the assigned materials, listening carefully in class, and doing enough background research on your own to support your ideas. You also must demonstrate that you have practiced and polished your presentation so that you can get your ideas across in a clear and compelling way. You must demonstrate that your team has spent enough time talking with each other to understand what skills are collectively available to the team.