Undergraduate Category: Interdisciplinary Topics – Centers and Institutes Degree: Interactive Media Abstract ID# 215 INTERACTIVE MEDIA CAPSTONE
DEVELOPERS
DESIGNERS
ADVISOR
[email protected] Craig Berry Matt Gowie
Maple Kuo Nicole Nussbaum Sarah Park John Reardon
Mark Sivak
Making group projects easier.
Introduction
Concept
Through our own experiences and a survey of 195 students, we found that group projects are broken: organization is difficult, individuals never have an equal amount of work, and everyone receives the same grade. WeTeam focuses on fostering collaboration and increasing motivation.
Our concept is a website to facilitate group projects. Faculty members create and monitor group projects, define project goals and assign groups. Students are then able to create, assign, complete, dispute, and comment on tasks. ADDS
FACULTY CREATES
Research CREATES
Students are most frustrated by group members not doing their work. Unexpectedly, 0 of the 195 students surveyed felt that “earning the grade” was most important when it came to group projects. Faculty interviews revealed that teachers do not have time to check in with groups. Team dynamics
100
Scheduling meetings
AND
TASKS
CREATES COMPLETES DISPUTES COMMENTS
Examples of low-fidelity and high-fidelity wireframes
Product
129 72
Communication
62
Grade inequality
163
Partners not doing their work
0 Earning a good grade
33
66
99
132
WeTeam provides project management tools for organization and communication, encourages motivation and collaboration between students, and increases transparency among students and faculty.
165
0
Partners doing equal work
Students can navigate between all their group projects.
126
Learning from the assignment
74
A team progress bar tracks how much each person has contributed to the project.
195
Other
0
Market
REQUIRED TASKS
57
Difficulty dividing work evenly
What aspects of a group project are most important to you?
PROJECT
CREATES
CONSISTS OF
Significant Survey Results
What aspects of a group project do you typically not enjoy?
STUDENT
39
78
117
156
195
Our target audience consists of underclassmen and faculty, especially those in engineering, who work on or facilitate group projects that last 2 to 4 weeks.
A project description, uploaded by the professor, is readily accessible.
Students can see which tasks are assigned to which person.
Students can see each group member’s contact information and when they last logged in.
To facilitate communication, students can comment on tasks.
Individual progress bars show the amount of work each student has completed.
TASK
(product-focused)
Analysis of our competitors and the identified opportunity
Completed tasks are stored and can be referred to at any time. COMPLEX
SIMPLE
(feature-heavy)
The news feed gives a summary of all project activity and allows shows when the professor has viewed your group.
(feature-light)
OPPORTUNITY!
Students can choose to dispute a task if it hasn’t been completed properly. MOTIVATION (process-focused)