Due: Thursday 9/29

General Directions

The purpose of this document is to prepare your team for success in the course project. Your proposal should contain at least three parts, which we define below. In terms of length, it should be 2-3 pages using standard margins (1 in.), font (11-12 pt), and line spacing (1-1.5). In addition to these three components, you should provide any additional context or information necessary to understand your vision for your project. You should convert your final document to a pdf and upload it to Gradescope under the assignment “Project Proposal” by the due date. Be sure to use the group submission feature on Gradescope to include all of your group members in a single submission.

Introduction and Research Question

Your proposal should introduce your topic in general and motivate why your research question is relevant. Relevance addresses the importance and interest of your research question to the CSEd community (or at least this class). It should then define one or more research questions. The research question(s) should be substantial and feasible.

1. Substantial research questions require more than a surface-level analysis (more than just computing basic summary statistics on readily available datasets, for example).
2. Feasible research questions can actually be addressed by your group over the course of approximately eight weeks, including writing a report and creating a presentation.

Related Work with Status

Your research questions should be informed by related work. This section should summarize the key takeaways from the related works you have read so far with a note on the reading pass level for that work (see the reading academia papers assignment). There should be at least 3 works found by the time of the proposal that have been read at least at a pass 1 level. And at least 4 more that will potentially be useful but only the title and abstract have been read to determine their potential relevance.

The works do not need to be very similar to the research question you are proposing. It is okay if they simply motivate why your research question is relevant (For example, if your research question is about UTAs, a related work could be how novices struggle to learn computer science material, which motivates why UTAs are important).

Overall, for a related work section in any project report, not all of your related work needs to be read at the pass 3 level. In fact, most of them will not need that level of a pass. Only a handful will need to be read at a pass 3, a few more at pass 2, and most of them will be at a pass 1 level. How many fall in each bucket will depend on how similar a given related work is to your research question.

Collaboration Plan

While working in pairs or triples usually does not require a lot of coordination, having a frank conversation on working styles, communication expectations, etc. is important for any team. Therefore create a plan that addresses the following:

1. How will you divide responsibilities? Will some students be responsible for certain portions of the project, or will you be more integrated and decide on responsibilities every week?
2. About how much time do you expect every group member to spend on the project each week, on average? It is ok if this number is higher toward the last couple of weeks of the semester.
3. When and how will you meet? You should plan to meet at least once per week for at least 30 minutes to check in on one another’s progress, get help, and plan for what comes next. Identify a day of the week, a time, and the platform you will use to meet.
4. What platform(s) will you use to communicate between meetings? Will you primarily use email, text, slack, or other chat apps? If you want a more professional enterprise tool, Duke provides free access to Microsoft Teams.
5. Where will you store data, code, writing, etc., so that all group members can easily access shared materials? Duke provides free access to Box and GitLab, which could serve these purposes, but you could also use external services like Google Drive or GitHub. Provide a link to the folder/repository in your proposal to demonstrate that it is created and ready. Remember that data should only be on Duke-provided tools (e.g. Box) and never in a version-controlled repository.

Feedback and Grading Rubric

Each section will be graded on a four-step rubric scale as follows.

• E (Exemplary) – Work that meets all requirements of that section.
• S (Satisfactory) – Work that meets all requirements with only slight mistakes or missing pieces of information.
• N (Not yet) – Work that does not meet some requirements and/or displays developing or incomplete work that needs substantial revision to meet satisfactory standards.
• U (Unassessable) – Work that is missing, does not demonstrate meaningful effort, or does not provide enough evidence to determine a level of mastery.

The entire assignment is worth 100 points.

• 10 points will be allocated for meeting general directions (length, on-time pdf submission, group submission, etc.). You cannot submit a proposal greater than 3 pages. Learning how to be succinct is an important skill.
• 30 points are allocated for each section.

The rubric will be converted to points as follows:

• E = full credit
• S = E_full_credit – 1
• N = E_full_credit / 2
• U = E_full_credit / 5
• Blank = 0

Anything earning less than an E will receive feedback in Gradescope. If your proposal earns less than an S in any section you will be allowed 2 resubmissions to bring it up to the E or S standards for all sections. If your proposal earns E’s and S’s only, you can have 1 resubmission if your group decides to aim for a higher score. Each resubmission must be done within 1 week, starting from when the feedback is returned. This is to limit the amount of time spent on the proposal for all those involved.