Archive for May, 2008

05.30.08

Reflecting on Project Management for Students

Posted in Learning at 11:43 am by Chris Champion

Well today was the final day for my students to present their programming projects.  I’ve been keeping two wikis for my two sections:

http://cpavts.wikispaces.com/ -  Juniors/Seniors pick their own topics

http://learningbasic.wikispaces.com/ -   Sophomores work in teams towards the same project specifications

So my reflection:

“How you are going to be graded” can NOT be said enough.  I went over it with my students at week one (of five), but when I went over the project specifications with them again (which remained the same on the website over the five week period) at week four nearly all of the students panicked because they didn’t realize the scope of the project.  Next time: have a meeting each week re-addressing the “Project Specification”.

“I’m done” means I’m stuck but I’m too embarrassed to admit it.  Especially when students work in teams – I found that there were leaders and followers, and when the leader didn’t get it, they didn’t want to look “dumb” in front of their peers. Next time: in the weekly meetings have teams show off their work thus far.

There CAN be misunderstanding in a rubric.  Some of my students skipped things in the “Project Specification” because the rubric didn’t specifically mention them.  Next time: write the rubric at the same time as the project specification. Because this was the first time, I wanted to be fluid and I tweaked the project as we went along, writing the rubric at week three.  I just forgot to say “and yes you also must do x”.

All in all, my students had a great experience.  I had some real flubs, and I had some particularly amazing results.  One student admitted that he spent about 50 hours out of class (10 hours per week for 5 weeks) writing the code for his project, and he even played sick one day to stay home because he wanted to dedicate the whole day to catch up on his personal computer.  I was very impressed with his work.  His mom is a SysAdmin/dbAdmin (computer nerd) so the apple does not fall far from the tree.