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Project

General Instructions

  • Each student team is required to complete a project. This involves preparing a project report and making a presentation.
  • Topic: Your team is free to select any topic that is relevant for this course. You should get instructor’s approval for the topic you have selected.

What should you do?

  • Your team should conduct library research on the topic selected, identify key issues pertaining to the topic, analyze the issues, review solutions that have been used in the past, and recommend any new solutions. Alternatively, your team can conduct library research to describe in detail the status quo of a particular concept/issue that is related to green IT.
  • Your research should involve reading relevant journal/magazine/newspaper articles and/or books that will help you identify issues and solutions in or describe the topic area you are studying.
  • Additionally, the team can also interview people in the industry who are familiar with your topic about current practices in the industry. However, this is optional.

Project breakdown and milestones

The project report and presentation carry 400 points (described in our syllabus). I will split those 400 points as explained in the following subsections.

Topic selection and brief description (10 points):

I have created a Google Doc titled ‘Project Topics/ideas’ with the list of teams and space for each team to identify a project topic. Here is what I would like each team to do:

  • Identify a project topic and specify that in the team list table in the ‘project topics/ideas’ page.
  • Create a new google doc with your project topic as the title and input a brief description of your project.
  • Create a link to this google doc on the project topic from the team list table.

Here are the details I would like each team to provide as part of their project description in the project topics Wiki page:

  • What is/are the question(s) that your project will be answering?
  • A rough outline: This can include some section headings, any data collection involved, if so the source of data, what kind of literature you will be surveying, etc.

Project Plan (10 points):

The objective of creating a project plan is to document the different milestones your team sets up and completes, the responsibilities of different team members, and specifically the contributions made by each team members. Each team is expected to create a google doc and share that doc with me. The google doc should have the following documented:

  • Milestones (such as project topic selection, outline creation, literature search, data collection, write-up of specific sections identified in the outline, etc.)
  • Assignment of specific responsibilities to different team members
  • Deadlines for different team members by which they need to fulfill their responsibilities
  • Meeting minutes documenting the dates, duration, and discussions of team meetings. You can also add email exchanges, chat exchanges, etc. that are relevant to the team’s project discussions.
  • Percentage contributions from each team member.

Note that these should documented as and when the team meetings and milestones are handled. That is, this document should be updated throughout the semester and not just at the end of the semester.

Project Report (80 points):

The structure of your report is flexible. Depending on the focus of your project, you could either have problems/alternative solutions/recommendations or have a completely different structure if you are describing the status quo of an issue.

  • Length: Maximum of 10 pages, double-spaced. This page limit does not include references and appendix (for any supplementary material). Including references and appendix, your page limit is 15 double-spaced pages.
  • Font: Times New Roman, 11pt
  • Due dates: Specified on the schedule page
  • Late submissions will not be accepted.

Project presentation slides:

  • Prepare a set of slides that you can use for a presentation that will be scheduled in one of the last few class sessions in the semester.
  • Total number of slides: This is up to your team. You can decide what would be appropriate number of slides that will help your team make a 25 minute presentation.

Project presentation (100 points):

Your team will be allotted a slot during the last few weeks of the semester (please see course schedule page). Every student in the team should present a portion of your team’s presentation.

  • Duration of presentation: Maximum 25 minutes.
  • Duration for Q&A: 10 minutes

Submission Instructions

  • Unless otherwise stated, all deliverables are to be submitted electronically through the ‘Assignments’ section in blackboard.
  • What are you expected to submit? You need to submit one PowerPoint file (with your presentation slides) and one MS Word file (with your project report) zipped into one file. One submission per team is sufficient. The zip file should be named with the first and last names of all your teammates. You will also need to submit the other components that have been explained in the sections above (any updates required on Wiki pages, Google docs, etc.)