This is a truly “independent” project. For those of you who are familiar with the way startups work, you can think of the Professor (Pito) as your Board of Directors (“BOD”). BODs don’t do any work, planning, communicating, coding or anything. They just oversee the company and try to make sure that it stays out of trouble. In a startup, a BOD meets maybe once every three months.
The Professor will meet with all students (of all teams) once a week. At the very start of the semester we will find an hour time slot that is doable for the majority of the students based on their schedules.
Every week, every student is required to submit a status sheet (as a google form) with very brief update on what they achieced and the hours they spent on each item. The purpose of this is to allow the professor to keep their finger on the pulse and detect possible roadblocks or problems early.
Like any Brandeis course, there is a serious expectation that to be successful each student needs invest an average of 12 hours per week in work on the course.
To the partner, as an example, 4 students @ 12 hours is a full person week. They have high expectations. I hope they come away impressed.
This course has no homework and no exams. Therefore it is totally up to you to generate momentum, set and commit to goals to each other, set milestones, meeting times and schedules.