Syllabus

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Course Info

ITCS 3211/3212 and 1610/3210, Spring 2016
Lecture time: Fri 2-4:45pm
Lecture location: CHHS 122

Contact and Office Hours

Instructor: Stephen MacNeil
E-mail: smacnei2@uncc.edu
Office: Woodward 300
Hours: By appointment
Scheduler link

Course Overview

This course is designed to provide outreach to local communities.

The class emulates a seed accelerator / startup incubator. Students will form teams and identify problems that are socially-relevant. These teams will act as startups with each team-member assuming some role within the startup. The startup will be mentored by the instructor and either a faculty or industry member as available. The startup will develop and market their solution which may or may not be software related. The focus of the course will not be on the project but rather on understanding the roles that are available, how they interact, and how companies can affect society.

Learning Goals

After successful completion of this course and dependent on your course role, you will be able to:

• Identify socially relevant problems.
• Deconstruct problem into its constituent parts.
• Write a proposal that identifies a problem and suggests a well-supprted solution.
• Develop a plan by establishing goals, timelines, and deliverables.
• Create a community: identify stakeholders, perform need-finding analysis, and rally supporters to your cause.
• Use data-driven arguements to support your ideas and establish arguements.
• Manage a team by establishing and implementing an organizational structure.
• Identify roles that exist in typical companies.
• Provide constructive feedback to other team members.
• Have fun and make an impact. See first hand how your work can affect others and change the world.

Grading 1610/3210

The grading criteria is very flexible. Students may take this course for a variety of reasons: giving back to the community, leading a service project, or designing your own service project. The grading scheme may be adjusted to reflect each of these diverse goals.

All students (50%)

• Participate in 5 service outreach sessions (At least 2 external) (20%)
• Written reflections (10%)
• In class discussions / activies (10%)
• Evaludation plan for the semester (10%)

Role-based Grade (50%)

This grade will be determined by the evaluation plan that you create. Both the instructor and the team will agree on evaluation plans for each role within each team. These plans are determined by you and your team because each team will have different roles, goals, and responsibilities.

Extra (<15%)

• Submit pull request to the course website (1-5%)
• Exceed volunteer hours (<5%)
• Class attendance (<5%)

###Example Roles

These are examples of things each role might be expected to do within a team. Depending on the type of project your team chooses these roles may be modified in some way or may not exist at all.

Designer

• Write a project proposal
• Write a funding proposal
• Present a project pitch

Project Manager

• Determine the organizational strategy for the team
• Coordinate with the designer and execute the project plan
• Collect data about the effectiveness of the project
• Collect data about the performance of each team member
• Provide training to team members

Community Manager

• Establish a relationship with the stakeholders
• Perform needfinding analysis to determine stakeholder’s needs
• Maintain team’s website and social media pressence
• Create a brand for your team project

Developer

• Create a development timeline
• List the features that will be included
• Establish milestones for each sprint
• Implementation

Data Analyst

• Generate reports from data collected by project or community managers
• Establish protocols for data collection by team members
• Find data online to support the viability of your team’s project commercially.

Catalog description

Course catalog information for these cross-listed courses

Texts

No textbooks required.

Course technologies

• Communication: Slack
• Project Management: Trello
• Marketing: Twitter, Facebook, Kickstarter

Late work policy

Late work will not be penalized in terms of grading. However, when handing in late work, students will be expected to write an abstract about a topic of the instructor’s choosing. The instructor may also choose to let students submit an relevant video to the resource page of the website.

Collaboration

Collaboration is an essential part of doing good work. In preparing this course, I asked for advice from my faculty mentors: Celine Latulipe and Jamie Payton. Similarly, if you ask for advice or you recruit students to help you with a project, you should give them credit and thank them for helping you. As a leader, it is your job to make the people that you lead look good.

So, if someone helps you in any way (even just as a sounding board) be sure to give them credit in your work.

Academic honesty

I expect that all of the work that you turn in to me is your own. If some aspect of your work came from a collaboration it is your responsibility to not only acknowledge it but also to cite it properly (if in doubt, email me).