Guidelines for Professor Thom's 2003/2004 Clinic Team
Guidelines for Professor Thom's 2003/2004 Clinic Team
Purpose of this document
Clinic is a difficult but rewarding course.
To help you enjoy and structure this experience, this document identifies what I expect from you as your clinic
faculty advisor and how you will be graded. Many of the ideas presented here were motivated by
Kuenning's Clinic Grading Guidelines.
Since his rubrics influence my views on grading, you should familiarize yourself with that document.
| Clinic Project: | Medtronic DDMS API design and development |
| Team Members: | Jessica Fisher (PM), Aja Hammerly, Mark Fredrickson, Jonathan Huang |
| Mailing List: | medtronic03@cs.hmc.edu |
| Project Web-site: | TWiki |
My participation as faculty advisor (FA)
My purpose is to monitor the team's progress, direct the team in important decisions, sign off on the final
deliverable given to the client, and assign grades.
Getting a hold of me
Please feel free to contact me any time you need to discuss something clinic related, be it technical, administrative,
or interpersonal. My weekly schedule is posted on the Web for all
to see. Please feel free to drop in with your questions (and feel free to knock, I am often in my office when the door is closed). Even if I am busy, at least I'll know
that you need to talk to me and we can setup an appointment.
Email is a great way to get a hold of me,
but for technical content, I ask that you use the clinic group mailing list because this ensures that each member is "in the loop."
Also, feel free to call me in those circumstances where this is the most efficient form of communication
(607-9662; 982-9247; no calls after 10pm please).
My grading policy
I will assign each member a grade individually. Your grade will be based on four relatively equal-weighted considerations:
- How constant and reliable are you as a group member?
- What is the quality of your technical contributions?
- What is the quality of your oral and/or written contributions?
- How well does your attitude facilitate a healthy, functional group dynamic?
Within the A to D range, my grading scheme is a relatively linear function of your
performance, evaluated with these considerations in mind.
As a result, maximizing your grade can be accomplished by performing well on each of these fronts.
However, if you do not meet the minimum time threshold described below, you risk not passing this class.
Time commitments
In the CS Department's clinic handbook, clinic is described as a 10 to 15 hour a week commitment.
In order for you to pass clinic under my guidance, you must demonstrate that you have spent no less
than 9 hours per week on clinic (including meetings).
Your weekly ability to meet this goal will be assessed via:
- The content of your weekly status report.
- The opinion of your project manager.
Should an emergency arise, exceptions can be made from time to time, but it is your responsibility
to ensure that this exception does not negatively impact the group by working out a make-up schedule in advance.
Exceptions must be approved by myself and the project manager.
Group work block
The safest way to ensure that you meet this minimum 9-hour a week commitment is to set up a regular 6-hour block of
time in which all team members work in concert. One of the main goals in our first meeting will be to
examine each member's schedule and identify a block of time that is feasible for this purpose.
Mandatory administration
The other 3 hours can then be easily met with the following mandatory requirements:
- 1 hour: attend general clinic meeting, Tuesday, 11 - noon, BK-126.
- 1/2 hour: attend weekly geoup meeting with faculty advisor, Friday at 3pm .
Note: during many of these meetings, phone contact with the liaison will be initiated.
- 1 hour: attend weekly group meeting without advisor, TBD.
- 1/2 hour: compose your weekly status report.
I will keep a record of your status reports and your attendance at the general and faculty advisor-based meetings.
For other meetings and the 6-hour work block, the project manager will keep records.
Individual team mamebers should record any additional time they spend on clinc in their lab notebooks, and
I will collect these for review several times during the semester.
Status reports
Each team member must submit a status report weekly (except during week-long breaks).
This report is extremely important because it allows me to independently assess your performance.
It is also important that these reports (as well as your attendance to meetings) be on-time
because they are a very direct measure of your constancy as a team member.
Weekly status reports are due on Sunday evenings at midnight and must be sent to
clinic group mailing list.
Regarding report content, detailed and useful information must be provided so that I can make a fair assessment
of your contribution that week. Finally, careful attention to writing quality should be paid because, during the
course of the year, this will give you ample opportunity to improve on this skill (which in the long run will
make your reports easier to write).
Sign-off policies
I must sign off on the team's oral presentations and written documents before their final due dates.
I will not be flexible regarding deadlines, especially draft due dates.
These dates are outlined in your clinic handbook and you should be intimately familiar with them.
Although I do not require that all members speak at all presentations, I do require that each member's
active participation be evident in each presentation's content. Per presentation, I also expect to
attend no less than two practice talks, the first taking place at least two days before the actual presentation
is scheduled.
All members must attend all practice talks, even if they are not speaking.
Regarding written reports, I expect each team member to significantly contribute (e.g. one reasonable model would be every member
writes at least one chapter).
Regarding the final clinic deliverables, note that, although meeting the sponsor's reasonable expectations is a key concern,
clinic is an educational experience.
Ultimately, I am the one that will need to approve of and sign off on your team's final deliverables.
Your input
Periodically throughout the year, I will schedule individual meetings with team members so that we can chat about
your clinic experience. These meetings will help me address issues or concerns you might have and will also provide
me with an idea of how well your team is functioning as a group. Expect at least one interview per semester.
Towards the end of each semester,
I will also have each of you assess your own personal contributions and
the contributions of each of your colleagues.
This information will be considered when I assign grades.
Project manager (PM)
The PM's key duties include:
- Managing the resources available to the team (most importantly, the team's own time and labor).
- Monitoring individual team members' progress and motivating them to complete their assigned tasks.
- Dealing with attitude and personality problems among team members should they arise.
- Maintaining at all time effective communication between the team, the faculty advisor, and the liaison.
To ensure that these goals can be met, I will meet once a week with the PM for about 1/2 hour, time and place: Monday 5 PM.
At that time, we will review the PM's log book, paying special attention to records concerning meeting attendance,
minutes, and individual member's work contributions. At this time, we will also agree upon that up-coming week's
work-plan. The PM will then distill the results of this meeting into a weekly task-plan memo, where each member's
anticipated contributions for that week will be detailed. The PM is responsible for sending this plan to
clinic group mailing list by Monday at midnight.
As a result of the additional work-load that these management duties will have, the PM need not contribute as much
technical content. At the same time, the PM must directly contribute to some aspect of the project's technical
development. To ensure that this is possible, the PM should identify early on some well-contained piece of code
that they can take ownership of.
Team Members
Whatever each member's relative strengths, every team member should be involved in all aspects of the project,
including technical work, written, and oral presentations. The purpose of the weekly status and task-plan memos
are to ensure that these goals can be met.