Geog 476 Project assignment

Introduction

The final project project is learning through direct experience and practical application. Students demonstrate mastery of the laboratory exercises and course concepts through project design and implementation.  Good projects have a clear connection between purposful design, choice of GIS operations and realized outcomes. The data are not as critical as the logic and deliberate analytic strategy employed. Project outcomes where expected cause/effect or expected relationships are inconclusive are acceptable if you can validate choices made during analysis.

Project teams and resources.

Projects are done in teams of three.  Teamwork helps to share the challenges of project requirements and the resources to engage in projects of greater significance. The instructor will propose project teams following student statements of their project interests and will facilitate changes to these teams to insure all students topic ambitions are met.  Students are expected to act in a professional manner toward their teammates and willingly share in the obligations established during development of the project proposal and implementation plan.

Coordination among team members and progress through the project milestones listed below is essential for a successful project outcome. For this reason timely submission of all project assignments is required.  Each student must submit the team and individual assignment deliverables to their respective D2L drop boxes before the assigned due dates to receive a passing grade for the course. Similarly, prompt delivery of the project assignments reflects team communication and individual participation. Documents developed collectively by the team should be submitted by each member of that team where individual assignments are delivered by each student. There are D2L drop boxes dedicated to each project assignment with their respective due dates.

Each project team will have a project folder located in the Z://Geog-476 folder. Each team member will have permissions to read and write files to this folder so the entire team can share data and ArcMap projects. Project teams are responsible for backing up the contents of their project folder and loss or corruption of files does not affect assignment due dates.

Project teams will also have their own D2L discussion forum exclusively dedicated to support their communication, coordination, tech support and engagement with the instructor.

Individual contributions.

Successful projects divide the problem statements into components and each team member accepts responsibility for one of these components as their individual contribution. Individual contributions include a minimum of two data sets and two spatial analysis operations that make a meaningful contribution to the project outcome.  This requirement sets a minimum standard for relative complexity and investment in project efforts. A spatial analysis applies a measurement framework to integrate two or more data layers and includes any work needed to prepare data for analysis. Selection of data, analytic design and meaningfulness of outcomes contribute equally to project outcome.  Adding irrelevant data or nonproductive analyses will discredit team and individual performance.  Individual contributions are reported as appendices to the team final project report. 

Project timeline    

The project is marked by a set of milestones to ensure that projects make regular progress and are in coordination with lecture and lab topics. Each milestone becomes a direct contribution to the project report. 

Totals:    Individual 15, project team 10

Final reports

Final reports are a team effort and should revisit your original objective(s) and the actual objective attained. It will show the steps followed and draw some conclusions based on the materials produced.  This includes description of project design, synthesis of individual contributions, limitations encountered, outcomes, interpretation of outcomes and suggestions for improvement.

Each team member will contribute an appendix to team final reports that addresses in greater detail their responsibilities for data sets and analysis operations described in the implementation plan. Appendix details include the process of data acquisition, suitability for use, preparation for analysis, and analysis outcome.

Project grading

The project is worth twenty-seven points: eleven are for team effort and sixteen for individual contributions.  All milestone deliverables except the final report receive full credit with the following adjustments:

Final team reports and individual appendices are worth full credit with the following adjustments: