This final instructor meeting will be focused on presenting and discussing the current status of the software and the remaining improvements that will be made by the end of the course.
The instructor meeting will be 25 minutes long and roughly structured as follows:
Because the team meetings are scheduled back to back, time management will be an important concern, and meetings will generally not be permitted to run long.
This part of the meeting is mainly concerned with demonstrating what the team has built so far, and collecting feedback from the instructor. To ensure that you present this part effectively, you must follow these criteria:
Focus on the user. For the explanation of your system to be compelling, the instructor must understand the mind of the user. What is the user’s context/background? What are their goals in using the system?
Focus on the UI. Similar to the user focus, the presentation should focus on the user’s view of the system—namely, the user interface (and your sketches thereof).
Focus on interesting user tasks. Some tasks are more central to your system’s value or goals than others. Given the limited presentation time available, you should focus on those tasks which are more interesting or fundamental to your system.
Avoid getting lost in the button clicks. Feature presentations that devolve into “this button does this, that button does that” tend to lose sight of what’s really important. Thus, when button clicks are explained, it should always clearly be in the service of a higher-level user task or goal.
Don’t step through the list of requirements. The requirements should implicitly become clear through your user-centered presentation of the UI. There is no need to go through your list of requirements.
These instructions are the same as last time.
One (and only one) team member should play the role of meeting leader. This person should present the first two parts of the meeting, and act as facilitator during the discussion part. In performing this role, the meeting leader should follow these criteria:
Be organized and prepared. The leader may use slides and should have well thought out talking points.
Be clear. Make sure to explain thoroughly anything the instructors might not know. (Assume that the instructors know very little for the purposes of this presentation.) Also, make sure the audience is always clear about (1) why the material being presented is important and (2) where the talk is going.
In selecting the meeting leader, the team must rotate presenters such that each team member serves at least once as instructor meeting leader or interactive demo booth operator.
Note that there is an A&B reward for serving as instructor meeting leader. See the Above and Beyond Points document for details.