How much is the project worth?

Five values = 500 points of the final grade.

What is the goal of the project?

To create a learning path for someone interested in learning more about one of our themes.

Do I have to do the project?

The project is optional. Those who choose not to do it can have 15 values = 1500 points by doing everything else.

How will the project be evaluated?

The detailed criteria grid is available here.

What if a group member does nothing on the project, do they get the same grade?

On April 26, the evaluation of the colleagues in the project group will take place. At that time, all students involved in the project will evaluate their group members. This evaluation will be analyzed, and, in cases of significant discrepancy, the final mark of the project will be adapted to the different members of the group.

And if someone in the group quits, how do we proceed?

Please let us know ASAP.

I want to do the project, do I have to go to class?

The project classes are optional.

What are the project classes like?

The project classes will be open spaces to work on the project. Tasks will be suggested in each project class that may or may not be followed by your group.

Do I have to talk to the teacher in these classes?

Thanks to your feedback from last year, you will only talk to the lecturer in these classes if you want to 😊 we will have a system that will allow you to call the lecturer when you want. If you're going to be working on the classes without talking to the lecturer, that's fine.

What dates will be important in this project?

  • 21/03/2022: Release of project correction detailed grid for your information :)
  • 22/04/2022, 23:59: Project delivery, with a grace period until 25/04/2022, 23:59 (without penalizations)
  • 26/04/2022: Evaluation of project group members
  • 26/04 to 29/04/2022: Project presentation week
  • 15/05/2022: Project grades release
  • 15/05/2022 to 24/05/2022: Correction period for groups
  • 31/05/2022: Final project grades release

What is this "correction period of the criteria by the groups"?

After receiving the criteria grid and feedback from the faculty, you can re-submit the project and correct three criteria that have not been met or have been partially met.

Can we do the project in Portuguese?

This time, the projects will be in English so everyone can access them - thankfully, we have several international students 😊.

What are the suggested project construction phases?

The following stages are suggested which, depending on the group, may have this order or another:

1. Selection of the group members

2. Choice of theme

3. Choice of the "official" objectives

4. Choice of original objective(s)

5. Choice of the platform

6. Information research and careful recording of sources

7. Choice and organization of sources

8. Construction of theoretical modules

9. Construction of practical modules

10. Testing and feedback

[Choice of group members] How is the choice of the group members made?

The groups will be composed of 2 to 4 people, preferably random, but we accept that most of you want to create a group with whom you already know.  If you wish to do the project by yourself or with 5 elements, let us know.

We still applaud and encourage those who accept to join the group of the brave who accept to work with whom they do not know (yet) 😊.

Preferably we suggest creating groups within the same shift, but we accept any formation of groups, including different shifts, campus and courses.

[Choice of group members] I want to make a group with people I don't know because I feel I learn more that way, how can I do it?

Congratulations on your choice first of all 😊. You can come to the first week's class or find a group on the group_wanted channel on our Discord server.

[Choice of group members] I have a group! How can I give that information to the teaching staff?

Please use this form - https://www.cognitoforms.com/SofiaSá1/ProjectGroupSubmission

[Theme choice] What themes can we choose?

Any of these themes can be chosen for the project:

1. Business communication/ introduction

2. Jargon and technical language

3. Training methods and processes 

4. Professional and positive communication

5. Internal communication

6. Complaints and conflicts

The choice of theme is entirely up to you. Please see which one you are "passionate" about - you will spend some time with it!

[Choosing the theme] Choosing the theme, we can develop it as we wish?

Each project will address six learning goals related to the themes (yes, last time there were 11 :). Of those objectives:

- 4 have to be official and taken from our learning goals page - https://fenix.tecnico.ulisboa.pt/disciplinas/CCEIC2/2021-2022/2-semestre/themes-and-learning-goals

- 1 has to be different from the ones presented on our webpage, created by the group

- The last one can be taken from our official list or created by you

- That is, in practice, you can have 5 "official" (from the page) and one new one or four official and two original ones

[Choice of official objectives] How do we choose the goals?

Go to our list and see which ones make the most sense to you and which you find most interesting to research 😊.

[Choice of original goal(s)] How do we choose the original learning goal(s)?

From our experience, last time, usually the original goal(s) - i.e. those not on our page - are born from research. You can also define or change them at any time during the project's construction. However, some groups made this decision in the very first lesson because they read the list and immediately thought something was missing.

Many groups decided to apply the theme directly to engineering. They used that as an original goal - for example, in the Feedback theme, how to give feedback to code (code review), and how to present an engineering project in the Public Speaking theme.

The possible combinations are as follows:

Five official goals  + 1 original goal

Four official goals + 2 original goals

One of the original goals will have more points, the rest will have the same points as if they were goals from our page. This option stems from the fact that the groups mentioned that the goals they chose independently were more interesting to research and develop. We believe giving this choice would benefit those who want to choose it.

[Choice of original goal(s)] Do you accept any original learning objective?

Yes, as long as it is different from the official ones, yes. There are no unreasonable themes. For example, in the questioning theme, one group researched whether animals ask questions like humans do (spoiler - they don't :), which was entirely accepted.

[Construction of the theoretical modules] [Construction of the practical modules] What parts will the project have?

The project will consist of 6 theoretical and six practical modules (each referring to learning goals).

[Construction of the theoretical modules] What is a theoretical module?

Theoretical modules convey to your students the concepts of the learning goal and the information necessary to understand it.

[Construction of the theoretical modules] How can we get maximum values in the theoretical modules?

- Each of the six learning goals should have an explicit theory module

- You must present at least two different sources on that module (two articles, two blog texts, one article and one YouTube video, two YouTube videos, whatever you want)

- You can present your own text/ideas/examples, as long as they are supported by the sources presented

- Modules without sources will not be considered - your opinion matters as the aim of the project is to research and deepen the themes and, as such, basing the project on sources is mandatory

- The module will present the collected information in a legible, presentable and appealing way - leaving links to entire articles to read will be disregarded

- The conjunction of text with images related to the content makes the reading more engaging. Beware of giant blocks of text - using bold and bigger letters in key concepts helps us identify which parts of the text are more fundamental.

- The sequence to the following practical module should be explicit, i.e. there should be a link "click here to test your knowledge" or "click here for the practical module".

- Here, it is also crucial to decide whether to present the original text - in which case we need quotation marks and a reference - or whether to paraphrase the original text with your own words - in which case you need the in-text reference and the reference, explicitly indicated in the respective module.

[Construction of practical modules] What is a practical module?

- Practical modules are intended to test whether the knowledge conveyed in the theoretical module has been effective

[Construction of practical modules] How can we get maximum values in practical modules?

- All six goals chosen will have a practical module

- You must ask two questions for each learning goal

- Questions can be asked before the theoretical component (exploratory questions), and two questions must still be requested after the theoretical component

- All questions should be given qualitative feedback - that is, explain to the learner what the correct answer is, what the wrong answer is, why the correct answers are right, and the incorrect answers are wrong. In the case of open-ended questions, you may give a suggested correct answer

- This feedback has to be given immediately after the answer and not at the end of the course

- Beware of open-ended answers with validation where the student has to write down correct words to progress - normally it makes it difficult to proceed

- When the student gets it wrong, they can be given a chance to go back, but please keep this optional otherwise, we are held hostage to the correct answer, and the process becomes complex and not very fluid

- The sequence for the next learning module should be explicit, i.e. there should be a 'click here to go to the next learning module' link or similar

- Ask questions that relate directly to the content previously taught:

- Questions such as "and what do you think of this?" - are personal and reflection makes sense, but here we want to test previously taught knowledge - with personal questions explicitly, we are unlikely to achieve this

- Exploratory questions before the theory module make sense on a reflective level but do not test the taught content. These exploratory questions are welcome but do not count towards the practical module

- Construct questions that require the application of the content, with examples, rather than simply making you recite previous learning

- Imagine you define jargon and then ask a question, "Select what the definition of jargon we saw 2 minutes ago was" - it becomes a repetitive process, and we learn little.

 - If alternatively we put sentences in and ask the person to identify which ones look like jargon to them, we have already asked the person to apply the definition of jargon to a specific case, and it takes thinking to be able to answer - this is an engaging and exciting question 😊

[Choice of the platform] How should we choose the platform?

Any platform you choose is valid, as long as

- It is the same platform for the theoretical module as for the practical module (this semester, we won't be navigating between two, sometimes 3 and 4 different platforms correcting projects :p)

- Take into consideration that a project that creates an APP with complex code and a project that uses PowerPoint can have the same grade - the complexity of use/construction of the platform is irrelevant in the correction of the project.

- Have no time limit - Kahoots, Quizzes and the like have time limits and limit the future scope of your project and our correction. If to access the project it is necessary to send mails to activate the project or other information, there will be a penalty.

- Be accessible to anyone, computer literate or otherwise - code to compile and discord bots with 20 lines of instructions to access will be penalized

[Choice of the platform] Which platforms did well last time?

Several! Here are some examples:

- Google forms (watch out for feedback to answers made at the end of the project, which this time will be disregarded)

- PowerPoint with questions built with buttons on the slides themselves (Microsoft Forms please no lool)

- Google slides with questions asked on the slides themselves with hyperlinked buttons

- Prezi with exercises done in the "presentation" itself

- Google sites, blogs, word-press and similar with embedded Cognito forms or google forms for the practical modules

- Figma with questions asked internally

- Genially

- Discord bots with simple access

What about plagiarism, how will it be handled this time?

If plagiarism is detected, the group will have to correct it, losing the chance to correct other criteria not achieved or partially achieved.

Suppose we detect two occurrences of plagiarism. As each group can correct up to 3 elements, these two occurrences of plagiarism count as one element of correction, leaving one criterion of the remaining to be corrected. 

If seven occurrences of plagiarism are detected, the group can fix three, and the remaining four will be discounted, even though they must also be corrected. No grades will be posted for projects with plagiarism. Every instance of plagiarism needs to be fixed to get a grade.

What discounts will the project get if plagiarism is detected?

- Theoretical module presented without sources - theoretical module is disregarded

- Theoretical module with sources, but with direct quotations of authors in which quotation marks are not used - 30% of the mark achieved in the module will be withdrawn (and will remain so, even after correction if it is not contained in the three criteria that can be corrected) - remember that in direct quotations of authors it is necessary to put quotation marks, always

- Theoretical module with sources, but with false paraphrasing, i.e. changing one word or another to make it seem that the text is different, being the same text - 30% of the mark achieved in the module will be withdrawn (and so will be maintained, even after correction if not contained in the three criteria that can be corrected) - in these cases please submit the original sentence 😊

- Theoretical module with sources, but no in-text citations - i.e. it is not clear who said what and which text is yours and which text is the authors' - 15% of the mark achieved in the module will be withdrawn (and so will stand, even after correction if not contained in the three criteria you can correct)

If you choose to keep the plagiarism, we keep the grade for us :p and in that case, the one appearing in the grade list is 0.

[Researching information and carefully recording sources] How can we avoid plagiarism?

You can make sure you don't plagiarise at the research and information gathering stage. Just save, with quotation marks, phrases/paragraphs/texts with the indication of the source (which at this stage can be just the link where it came from) in front, for example:

"The world of telecommunications is full of jargon and odd acronyms that even the most technologically-minded can't get their heads around. If you struggle to remember what NTS stands for and can't recall the difference between IP and VoIP, then check out our handy jargon-buster to ensure you can navigate the telecoms language with ease." - http://justtelecomms.com/telecomms-jargon-decoded/

Plagiarism is usually accidental and in our projects is no exception. This is the most important step before organizing the information in order of goals. Please mark it with quotation marks to remind you that it is text from others and please indicate next to the text the source.

[Choice and organization of sources] How do we select the information included in the theoretical modules?

In this phase, the idea is to organize the information by objectives and select the most relevant/pertinent for the theoretical modules to be built, always keeping the original reference. This selection is fundamental for the texts presented to be short, concise and at the same time promote relevant learning.

[Testing and feedback] What is the testing and feedback phase?

In the last project class, the groups (that wish to do so) will correct a project of another group and vice-versa, using the criteria grid. This way you still have time to adjust something that is missing/incomplete until the project date. The faculty will not have access to this correction, it stays in the groups.

I still have more questions!

Good! Let us know so we can add them here :)