Meeting on 05/27/09

Present: Betsy, Mike, Sonnett, Lisa

Quick Agenda:

-Status of proof-of-concept testing (Mike)
-Walk through the flow of the inquiry. Are we all on the same page at each step? http://lao.ucolick.org/twiki/bin/view/CfAO/InquiryTemplate09
-Review of timeline. I have posted the time for each section of the inquiry on the inquiry template page. Do these all still seem reasonable?
-Sketch out some synthesis content- what do we hope students will learn, and how will this be presented?
-Look at rubrics. I have posted a start to a rubric to assess students when presenting to the engineers. Is this on message?

Proof of concept testing:
Manoa Meeting scheduled for next week- Mike C., Nassir and Sonnett
-Go over the three inquiries.
-Check out the three challenges.
-Starter telescopes are being shipped, will arrive?
-Mike will then work on worksheet

General news:
We have a second room!
This could potentially be darkened- so perhaps resolving a faint object could be a challenge. 

Walking through the inquiry, from the top:

Starter- Mike is on top of the worksheet

Gallery walk- students will pick their own groups. They should be sufficiently experienced form previous inquiries to make good, productive choices.
Do we perhaps withhold something from students so they have to interact with us to get the full description/all the details of the challenge?

Design Time-
Problem- will students get done stuck?
-Need more constraints (to achieve goal of tradeoffs)
-Give students more materials?
-Mike thinks with too many materials, they will get too stuck in the beginning parts.
-Suggests when students get stuck, have them optimize their design more.
-Sarah thinks it's okay to achieve goal of time management
-Consider additional materials once we have had a first test of this inquiry setup.

Students have design time, and then an additional 30 minutes after the break. What is this time for?
-cleaning workspace up
-putting it together (prototype for engineers)
Stress that what you build must be able to come apart
-respect for materials

Students can make more documentation after their review?
Hopefully they will document things beforehand

Preparing students for Review Panel:

Before the review, want to tell students to transfer the documentation and notes they have made.
Clean it up and enlarge it for the engineers

When do we tell students about tradeoffs so that we are guiding them to meet the goals we have set? How do we let them know about the tradeoffs? Do we have the engineers prompt them? Maybe some of this (briefing the engineers) as well as an explicit prompt.

After the break- Remind them they are presenting to the engineers.
Will need to explain design,  defend decisions
Give students a poster prompt
-Schematic
-3 major tradeoffs and why?
-Use pencil and draw large(this will be revised)
BUT maybe marker is easier to see, and it is important to have versions showing your progress.
So just stress that this is a first draft? The will make a final one later.

Engineers will give them verbal feedback... but it will be a discussion. Envision this as less of a presentation and more of a back and forth.

Assessing student presentations to the review panel:
Rubric to really focus on the explanation
Make sure that they are really focusing on the claim- or solution within requirements.

We spent a lot of time talking abut and continuing to develop the Design Review rubric at this point. I believe most of these changes are reflected in edit1 / edit2 of this document on the wiki.