Engineering 100-980

Project Review

Contents

• Project Review
  • Contents
  • Purpose
  • Task
  • Criteria for Success

Purpose

Project reviews are a type of presentation that shows your teachers/bosses where you’re at in a project and (successfully!) convinces them you’re ready to continue. As such, you want to create and deliver a succinct and engaging verbal and visual account of your work. The project review is an opportunity to develop your skills in conveying technical content efficiently and accessibly, slide design, visual communication, and verbal delivery. As you begin your career, you’ll find that your ability to give effective presentations will significantly affect how employers and supervisors evaluate your competence and work, so it is a skill very worth investing in.

Task

The teaching team is looking for polished technical presentations that make effective rhetorical choices to communicate the work you’ve already completed and show that you’re on track to successfully complete all remaining work. Give particular emphasis to the decision-making aspects of your work, as discussing critical decision points will help tell the story of the evolution of your project.

Your review will be delivered as a slide deck that includes the following:

1. Team information

   • Team number, name, members, logo

2. Area of focused refinement/analysis

   • Build, CAD, sensors, or simulation. Whichever you pick will shape your end-of-semester deliverables.

3. More detail on area of focused refinement/analysis

   • How you have already implemented build, CAD, sensors, or simulation? How you will continue to?
   • Note that all teams must complete all requirements listed within the project sub-sections. This is simply your choice as a team of where you’ll spend additional time and energy.

4. Level 1 requirements for project

   • See Requirement lecture slide deck

5. System-level block diagram

   • This is very much like your schematic, but simplified and with connections (5V, 3.3V, analog, digital)
   • Note: You don’t need to show every connection, such as ground wires, but rather give an overview of the important connections between components.
6. Sensor board physical specifications
   • Any important specifications about the sensor board. For more details go to the sensor board spec page.
7. Chosen rocket with justification

• Image and preliminary measurements
• Note: Again, it isn’t required that you build the rocket that you present. You may find out the rocket you selected won’t work well for the final build, or it may not be an allowed rocket! That’s part of why we are giving these presentations.

1. Mass budget spreadsheet
   • Note: If you do not have any concrete numbers for the weight of some components, search it up online or simply ask an IA if you can weight that component during Lab or OH! Make sure to watch out for sig figs.
2. Simulation design/results

• Explain your simulation design strategy. Show any initial simulation results if available; otherwise, the simulation design strategy will suffice.

1. Testing strategies/results

   • Hint: look at the testing strategies laid out in the Go / No-Go Testing Section of the course website

2. Division of labor

   • What team members are responsible for what elements of the project

3. CPM/Trello board information

   • How are you using your Trello board for project management? How are you implementing CPM project management strategies?

4. What are next steps from here to the end of the semester?

5. Summary

   • Succinctly restate your review’s most important ideas

6. Reference slide

   • Formatted in IEEE

7. Questions you have for the teaching team

   • This will make up part of your Q\&A

With the exception of points one and fifteen, all of the above will have both slide deck and oral narration components.

Total presentation time is no longer than twenty minutes: ten minutes to present and up to ten minutes for Q\&A.

Formatting specifications:

• In-text citations at the text/image level (if more than one citation on a slide) or at the slide level (if single citation on slide)

• Reference page formatted in IEEE

Criteria for Success

Excellent submissions are characterized by the following criteria:

• Clarity & Organization: Context of project is clear and concise; explanation of design, testing, area of refinement, teamwork, and project management are clear and logical; technical content was conveyed accessibly and accurately; slide progression follows logical structure; one main idea per slide articulated as assertion and/or main takeaway in title and evidence in body of slide; main ideas are summarized at end of presentation; formatting requirements are followed

• Design: Text on slides is legible and processable at a glance; slide design is not cluttered; elements of slide design work together to create a cohesive idea per slide; design elements follow best practices discussed in lecture and discussion

• Delivery: All team members present; members introduced; members had roughly even speaking time; appropriate volume, pace, tone, and word choice; faced audience; prepared but natural delivery (single notecard per member allowed); smooth transitions between speakers; does not exceed ten minutes; ask at least one question of the teaching team during Q\&A

• Visuals: visuals support main idea(s) and are meaningful inclusions; visuals are referenced and explained; figures and tables formatted according to best practices discussed in class

Each criterion will be assessed according to the demonstrated competency level. The final score is the average of the 4 criteria scores.

Full Competency—Work demonstrates full competency	40 points
Moderate Competency—Work demonstrates moderate competency with minor areas for improvement	35 points
Some Competency—Work demonstrates some competency but requires significant improvement	31 points
Little Competency—Work demonstrates very little competency	0-30 points
No evidence provided—Partial submissions may receive some points based on completeness