CSC322 2015F, Class 01: An Introduction to the Course

Overview

Preliminaries

Welcome back. I hope you had spectacular summers!
Congratulations. You are already among the most responsible classes I have taught.
Any activities that would benefit from peer support?
CS Table Tuesday! Topic TBD.
New department academic honesty policy available at http://www.cs.grinnell.edu/academic-honesty-policy.
Upcoming work
- Submit résumés by next week's class.
- Submit ordered list of project preferences by Monday at 5pm.
Attendance.

Workload?
- In class three hours per week
- Outside of class three-four hours per week
How will these products be maintained?
- One year: Hourly wage through Susan Sanning's office
- After that, we hand off

"To do things with real world applications."
- More experience
- Contribute to society! (Yes, computer scientists build more than evil spam filters that spy on you.)
Give structure to process of building software
- Ground the theory from 321 in real practice

Work with the Greater Poweshiek Community Foundation
- they work with a lot of other organizations
Those organizations need people for their boards
We are creating a bank of information about people who would be willing to work on boards.
- Boards can then search the information.
Current status:
- Able to create profiles (as organizations and profiles)
- Able to view organization and user profiles
- Able to filter in various ways
Main project goals
- Need a search function to reach the minimum viable product
Additional goals
- Regular email to remind people to update their profiles
- Download lists of users
- Import information from LinkedIn
- Let admins get analytics
Why should you work on this?
- Learning how to implement search will be useful in many situations.
- The partner is helpful and excited about the project.
- Should be ready for rollout this semester.

Side note: MVP (Minimum Viable Product)

The basic set of core features that need to be there in order for the product to be usable.

A way for administrators and teachers to get in touch with parents (e.g., about closings).
Client: Mid-Iowa Community Actions (MICA)
- Primary target within MICA, Head Start
Close to rollout; may be in use already? We need to communicate with them about that.
Needed for MVP:
- Separate user roles.
- Easy account creation.
- Better UI so less training is necessary.
Used a cool API for doing text messaging.
Why should you work on this?
- Work with cool APIs?
- UI design opportunities
- Could spend some of semester in rollout
- Wes is an awesome mentor and is relatively nearby (Iowa City)

People have applied for funding. Current model is based around Google docs. Very ad hoc.
Building a way for people to submit, update applications, reviewers read and score applications, perhaps provide additional information.
Relatively early in the project - restarted last semester.
Work with GPCF.
One of the big roadblocks last semester was file uploads; they have made some progress.
Lots of usability issues to work on.
Why this project?
- Early on in a project, but not the absolute beginning.
- Returning members!

Support Repository

PDF document of support services
Need easy way to access more easily and with less data
Mid-Iowa Community Action
Why work on this project?
- Just beginning. You get to do big architectural design!
- Think about how you make it easy to add and organize information for non-specialists
- Make a difference in people's lives
- Work with vague requirements.

We're used to working with careful requirements. Working with a community partner learn how to turn vague requirements into better specifications.
Build additional skills, not just coding:
- Working in teams
- Communicate better
  - Team members
  - Client - community representative
    - Less technically savvy
  - Mentor/supervisor (alumni, Sam)
  - Users (perhaps through client, perhaps directly)
  - Your successors - How do you inform people who you won't necessarily meet about all the important aspects of your project?
  - Your peers (in the class and in the department)
Build your portfolio

Welcome to Kelly Guilbeau from the CLS!
StrengthsFinder and StrengthsQuest are the same assessment, but they give different kinds of reports.
- Educational (what we did)
Whoops! Sam stopped typing.

Two weeks of prep
- This week: Learn a little about the class and each other
- Next week: More team and relationship building
Five iterations
Iteration zero is a pseudo-iteration - It's mostly about getting ready
- Third week: Meet partners
- Fourth week: Meet mentors in person
- Fifth week: Code walkthought
- Sixth week: Wrapup
Plus five two-week iterations