Meetings

Each team will be assigned a teaching assistant that will act as a consultant for your project. During the winter studio sections, each team will meet with the teaching assistant each week to discuss the weekly progress and/or the current studio activity. Additionally, your team will meet with the main instructor as needed. In the Spring quarter, you will meet with the TA and the instructor together for 50 minutes per week.

To prepare for the meeting, you are required to send an update email to the instructor, your assigned TA, your client, all of your teammates, and anyone else that is directly involved in your project before the beginning of the meeting (or studio session). The subject line of the email should be as follows:

[EME185] AIO: <team name>

where "<team name>" is replaced with your team's name.

"AIO" stands for Accomplishments, Issues, and Objectives. This email should contain three bullet lists:

what your team Accomplished in the previous week,
what unsolved Issues you encountered during that week and would like help with, and finally
what your Objectives are for the coming week.

Both the accomplishments and objectives sections should indicate who worked on (or will work on) each item and how much time that person spent (or will spend) on that item.

During the Spring quarter, this document should include a snapshot of your Gantt Chart with a vertical line indicating the date of the meeting and the percent complete of each task in the chart. Here is an example of an entire Spring quarter Gantt chart from a previous EME 185 project. You will need to take a snapshot of ~4 weeks centered around the date you submit your AIO. For tips on creating a good snapshot see the Gantt Chart page. The accomplishments and objectives in your AIO should match up with your Gantt Chart.

Here is a template for the AIO and an example:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UwfJnClqgxhBl3WGTrAUeC7bdtJdF-GKWhFn56nzW2s/edit?usp=sharing

Your in-class grade will be affected if you don't send an AIO or if you don't show up to these meetings.

Meeting Agendas¶

Below are loose agendas for the meetings that occur in each quarter.

Winter Quarter¶

If there is a specific studio activity, the following items should be addressed during the 30-minute meeting with your TA:

5 minutes: Each team member takes turns describing their accomplishments.
5 minutes: Bring up and work through any issues that arose.
5 minutes: Make sure every team member has explicit objectives for the next week and update the Gantt chart to reflect this.
5 minutes: Discuss grading, logistics, upcoming assignments, etc.
10 minutes: Collaborate on the activity.

If there is not a studio activity:

15 minutes: Each team member takes turns describing their accomplishments and going through any issues that arose.
10 minutes: Make sure every team member has explicit objectives for the next week and update the Gantt chart to reflect this.
5 minutes: Discuss grading, logistics, upcoming assignments, etc.

Spring Quarter¶

10 minutes: Go over your accomplishments from the week with the instructors. Be sure to bring things to show us, for example photos and videos of the parts you've created or the experiments you run and the results of calculations, simulations, and experiments. You job is to teach us about what you've done. A mini presentation with clear accomplishments, issues and objectives would be ideal. These accomplishments should reflect the goals and tasks in your Gantt Chart.
20 minutes: Explain the issues for the week with the instructors. We will work with you on solutions to these problems. Be prepared to show us the details so that we can effectively help you. We will work on problems with you, help you redesign things, or anything else you may need.
10 minutes: Review your Gantt Chart with the instructors and explain the current status. If you are ahead, explain how you will reallocate resources for the coming weeks, if you are behind be prepared to discuss strategies for getting back on target.
10 minutes: Anything else that needs to be discussed, for example upcoming assignments.

The instructors are here to help you succeed. You are guaranteed this hour with us and you have our full attention and help. But we also highly recommend utilizing office hours with the instructors to help you further.