Probs to Props Project

 

Description

• Probs: problems
• Props: 1) supports AND 2) respect/credit

Like everyone, you have problems. There are some areas in life that create particularly challenging problems for college students. For this project you will work with three other teammates to identify a problem that college students have, and together—using all elements of the Agile Mindset—you will create a prop that can be used to support college students to help them solve their problem. Your course instructor will assign students to teams.

As you and your teammates work together to develop a solution, you’ll earn some props, too, as you learn more about yourself, how to manage a big project that has no obvious “right” or “wrong” way to do it, and how to work with other people who are very different from you.

The Problem

Your team will identify one problem for which you will develop a prop. The problem that your team chooses to work on should be related to one of the following issues for college students:

• Mental Health
• Food Insecurity
• Personal Finance Management
• Democratic Citizenship
• Civic Engagement
• Self-Advocacy
• Work-Life Balance

The Prop

Your Product and Its Format

Your prop is a product that your team will design specifically to address the needs of those who are going to use the product. The prop could take whatever format your team wants it to take: poster, presentation, game, how-to guide, cooking demonstration, exercise program, public service announcement, podcast, or something else. The format that your prop takes should be aligned with the needs, interests, and circumstances of those who are going to use it.

Direct User

While you’ll be designing the prop with the ultimate goal of supporting college students, college students don’t have to be the direct users of the prop. If you’d like, you can develop your prop to help someone else who will use it (or who will use what they learn from it) to support college students. Some examples of non-college student direct users of your prop are these: community members who care about the well-being of college students (for example, doctors, nurses, or clergy members), college professors, or staff members who work with students at a college.

Approach

Your prop needs to use all elements of the Agile Mindset. Use information that you already have and conduct additional research so you can solidly connect the four different elements of the Agile Mindset to your prop.

Collaboration

With Your Teammates

At the beginning of this project, your classmates and course instructor will learn about what kind of problem you would like to work on and what kind of prop you are interested in creating. Based on that, your course instructor will assign you to a team of four students.

Throughout this project, your course instructor will assign you activities that are designed to help your team function effectively and equitably. In order to successfully complete this course, you will need to participate in these activities.

With Your Course Instructor

Unlike work you may have completed in other courses or before coming to Becker, this project gives you extensive freedom and flexibility to define what you want to work on. It’s important, though, that what you work on 1) is aligned with the intended outcomes of the course and 2) is possible to complete within the timeframe of this course. In this course, you will work closely with your course instructor to make sure that your team’s project meshes well with the context of this course. Each team is required to get approval from the course instructor for your problem and prop. Many opportunities have been created in this course to support collaboration between your team and the course instructor.

NOTE: In the context of this course, it might be impossible to develop some props, given their nature. If your team has a prop that you would like to create that seems as if would be too big to develop in the context of this course, explore the possibility of creating a proposal or a plan for the prop instead of creating the actual prop. For example, your team may have an awesome idea for a video game, but you know that the time that’s been budgeted for this project is not enough for it to be fully completed. You work with your instructor and decide that it would be possible to fully develop the concept for the game and to storyboard it, so you work on the project as far as you can in this course and you include information on what additional aspects of the project you would work on if you had the time.

 

Deliverables

When submitting them to the course instructor, all deliverables should always include the following: your project name, all team members’ names, the course name, and the date of the submission. (Because you will complete the outline of the overview of your project individually, only include your name on that submission.)

Work Exhibit (Sharing Your Prop)

Due: Finals’ Week/Week 16, during the time that’s been allocated for the final exam for this course

The format of your exhibit should be appropriate for your prop. Each team should get approval from the course instructor for the format of their work exhibit.Each team will have six (6) minutes to share their prop with an audience. The audience will include all of the students in the class and the course instructor, and it might include othersfrom outside of the class. After your team shares your prop with the audience, four (4) minutes will be given for the audience to ask your team questions and for your team to answer those questions. See the “Work Exhibit” rubric for details on how this will be graded.

Overview of Your Team’s Probs to Props Project

Individual Outline Due: Week 8

Team Outline Due: Week 9

Team Essay Due: Week 9

Develop an overview of your project. The overview of your project should include the following components:

• Statement of Problem
• Statement of Goals
• Brief Description of the Prop and Its Format
• Connections Between Your Project and the Agile Mindset

You will develop the overview in three steps. First, create an overview on your own, as an individual, using an outline format. Include ideas that reflect the ideas that your team has shared so far on what you all would like the project to be, AND include new or different ideas that are your own, that you would like your teammates to consider. Share this outline with your teammates so you can develop an understanding of each others’ ideas. You will use these outlines as the basis for a discussion in which you’ll decide together on what project you’d like to do together.

Second, as a team, jointly develop an outline of the overview for the project you all have decided to do together. This outline should answer the following questions:

• What is the problem? What are the different dimensions of the problem? What are the causes of the problem? What are the impacts of the problem?
• Are particular groups of college students especially affected by this problem? Is this problem especially relevant to college students who are, for example, in any of the following groups: first-generation in their families to go to college; from a low-income household; from the foster care system; of a particular gender; of a particular race or ethnicity; in a particular year of their studies; experiencing certain learning challenges; responsible for taking care of others, like children or ill family members; experiencing particular physical challenges; etc.)?
• What is the goal of your project? What do you want to achieve through your project?
• What prop are you developing in your project? What is the format of this prop? How do you expect this prop will contribute to reducing or eliminating the problem? Why do you expect this prop will benefit college students in the way you anticipate? Are there certain things you can do with your prop that will increase the chances that it will be beneficial? What evidence exists that supports your approach? Who will be the direct user this prop?
• How is your project connected to the Agile Mindset?

Third, after you get feedback on that outline and critically review it as a team, revise it and use it as the basis of an essay-style overview of your project. While you should use your answers to the questions above to guide you, the questions do not need to be addressed in order, and your team’s overview should not be written as a set of answers to a set of questions. Instead, the piece should be written in a clear, concise, and logical way that coherently unites the problem, who the problems affects, the goal for your project, your prop and its format, and the Agile Mindset.

See the “Overview” rubric for details on how each of these steps will be graded.

Annotated Bibliography

Due: Week 10

Compile at least 16 research articles and/or other resources that contain information that you will use to do the following:

• Develop and convey your team’s understanding of the problem
• Develop and convey your team’s understanding of possible solutions to the problem
• Explain the connections between Agile Mindset, the problem, solutions to the problem, the prop you are creating, and the format of your prop

All sources must have a properly written APA citation.

See the “Annotated Bibliography” rubric for details on how this will be graded.

Project Background and Rationale

Draft Due: Week 10
Final Due: Week 12

Your Project Background and Rationale is a richer and more coherent version of your project overview. This essay-style piece should be a compelling narrative that answers the following questions:

• What is the problem? What are the different dimensions of the problem? What are the causes of the problem? What are the impacts of the problem? Is this problem related to the Agile Mindset? If so, how?
• Are particular groups of college students especially affected by this problem? Is this problem especially relevant to college students who are, for example, in any of the following groups: first-generation in their families to go to college; from a low-income household; from the foster care system; of a particular gender; of a particular race or ethnicity; in a particular year of their studies; experiencing certain learning challenges; responsible for taking care of others, like children or ill family members; experiencing particular physical challenges; etc.)? Is the Agile Mindset relevant to this particular group of college students? If so, how?
• What is the goal of your project? What do you want to achieve through your project? Is what you want to accomplish through your project related to the Agile Mindset? If so, how?
• What prop are you developing in your project? What is the format of this prop? How do you expect this prop will contribute to reducing or eliminating the problem? Why do you expect this prop will benefit college students in the way you anticipate? Are there certain things you can do with your prop that will increase the chances that it will be beneficial? What evidence exists that supports your approach? Who will be the direct user this prop? Is your prop or its format related to the Agile Mindset? If so, how?
• In case it is not discussed in relation to any of the specific questions above: How is your project connected to the Agile Mindset?

The questions do not need to be addressed in order, and your team’s overview should not be written as a set of answers to a set of questions. Instead, the piece should be written in a clear, concise, and logical way that coherently unites the problem, the people affected by the problem, the purpose of your project, and your rationale for choosing your prop and its format. It should fluidly convey which aspects of your project are linked to the Agile Mindset and how they are related. It should always support assertions with authoritative evidence.

Writing as a team can be challenging. To encourage high quality writing and a fair distribution of work, please take the following approach:

• Each section must have at least one author and at least one editor.
• At least two team members must read through the entire final document.
• On the final page of the document, note the authors for each section, the editors for each section, and the two final editors who read through the entire document.

Technical Requirements

• About 5 pages long. References are not included in this expected page total.
• You must use sub-headings in your paper (for example, “Course Overload and Cognitive Load” or “The Podcast Prop”)

See the “Project Background and Rationale” rubric for details on how each of these versions will be graded.

Gantt Chart for Prop Creation

Due: Week 10

A Gantt Chart is a project management tool that you can use to help keep your team on schedule. Do some research on Gantt Charts, find or create a template that will work for your team, and create a Gantt Chart that your team will use for the remainder of the project.

See the “Gantt Chart” rubric for details on how this will be graded.

 

Reflection

Due: Finals’ Week/Week 16

This project created many opportunities for you to use an Agile Mindset. As a culminating experience for you in this project, write a reflection in response to this prompt:

In terms of agile mindset, how did working on this project as part of a team make you aware of an area or areas in which you needed to grow? Include specific details about the project, your team, and the circumstances that helped you come to your realization. How will you use this knowledge now, moving forward? Try to create a reflection that tells a story about these things:

• Who you were before you started the project
• How your experience with the project and working with others on the project changed your awareness of who you are
• How who you are compares to who you want to be and how you behave moving forward

Project Grading

Your grade for this project is worth 35% of your grade for the entire course. Your grade for this project will be determined by a combination of points that you will earn as an individual and points that you will earn as a member of your team.

Grade Earned as an Individual

The grade that you receive for your work as an individual on this project will be earned from two assignments: 1) your individual outline of the overview of the project and 2) the reflection you will write at the end of the project. Your individual outline is worth 5% of this project grade, and your end-of-project reflection is worth 15% of this project grade.

Grade Earned as a Member of Your Team

The grade that you receive for your work as a member of your team on this project is worth 80% of this project grade and will be earned from these team assignments:

 

• Overview – Team Outline
• Overview – Team Essay
• Annotated Bibliography
• Project Background and Rationale – Draft
• Project Background and Rationale – Final
• Gantt Chart for Product Creation
• Work Exhibit

 

 

For each of these team assignments, each team member will be asked to indicate the extent to which they believe they contributed and to indicate the extent to which each of their team members contributed. The course instructor will review this information and determine if each team member’s own self-assessment is aligned with that of their teammates. If it is not, the course instructorwill have a conversation with you about it. If the disagreements are too considerable, the whole team will meet to discuss it, and the course instructor will work with you to arrive at a shared understanding. The course instructor will use information on the extent of each team member’s contributions when determining what grade each student will receive for each team assignment.

Biography

This is one deliverable of the Probs to Props Project. Read the description of the entire Probs to Props Project to get a sense of how this project element is related to all of the other project elements. You will be covering the same topic, but you will be doing the project independently.

Compile at least 8 research articles and/or other resources that contain information that you will use to do the following:

• Develop and convey your understanding of the problem that is at the core of your project
• Develop and convey your understanding of possible solutions to the problem
• Explain the connections between Agile Mindset, the problem, solutions to the problem, the prop you are creating, and the format of your prop

All sources must have a properly written APA citation. Refer to the annotated bibliography assignment from the first project to make sure you are doing it correctly.  Each part of the project should be represented in the annotated bibliography based on the research.  This is the research that will help you shape your project moving forward.

See the rubric for information on the elements that this deliverable needs to contain and for details on how this will be graded.