• Project Proposal 10%
• Midterm Portfolio 40%
• Final Project 50%

NOTES:

Offering: We will start by offering this class in Spring 2017, but consider offering it in both Fall and Spring terms in subsequent years.  

Duties of the Faculty Lead:

•  review proposals and select students for the course (with SIAT faculty committee)
• organize and lead the weekly seminar
• hold regular office hours in order to meet with students on an as needed basis
• organize and curate a final graduation show
• review and grade the project plan (focusing on high level aspects and scope rather than the specifics of the topic)
• review the grading of final projects to ensure there is consistency across grading done by faculty mentors and assign final grades  

Duties of the Faculty Mentors:

• approve the project proposal submitted to the course (prior to the submission deadline)
• fill in project proposal areas on BA/BSc suitability, and 6-credit hours suitability
• meet with students on a weekly basis in-person and over email
• review project plan and suggest a grade to the faculty lead (focusing on the specifics of the topic)
• review midterm portfolio and suggest a grade to the faculty lead (focusing on the specifics of the topic)
• review final projects and suggest a grade to the faculty lead  

Duties of the Industry Mentors (if applicable):

•  meet with students on an as needed basis in-person and over email  

Syllabus

Weeks 1 and 2: Project Planning and Completed Project Proposal Students will learn how to plan the procedures and methods needed to carry out a large-scale interdisciplinary project. They will build on skills learned in course prerequisites (e.g., IAT 309W) to develop a graduation project proposal that describes a project of significant size and scope. Students are expected to have a more developed and detailed project proposal prior to our first class, and will present their project vision, framing, size, scope, and plan for execution with an accompanying presentation on the first day of class for group critique. The project proposal will be due during this period.  

Weeks 3 and 4: Project Research and Professional Ethics Students will conduct research around their chosen topic area, present background knowledge and projects of a similar nature to the class, identify the opportunities for their project that differentiate it from prior work, and receive project feedback from the faculty lead, mentor, and peers. They will be taught professional ethics around their topic area and how to engage with various stakeholders. Results will be reported weekly for critique and discussion.

Week 5 and 6: Early Explorations Students will create and present early mockups, sketches, storyboards, or scenarios of their project outcomes and receive feedback from the faculty lead, mentor, and peers.  

Weeks 7 and 8: Refined Artifacts Students will create and present refined project artifacts that show iteration and adaptation of their early ideas and receive feedback from the faculty lead, mentor, and peers. The midterm portfolio will be due during this period.  

Weeks 9 and 10: Report Writing and Showcase Students will learn how to write reports of their graduation project and how to properly showcase their project work for the general public. They will produce early reports and plans for the graduation showcase. They will receive feedback from the faculty lead, mentor, and peers.  

Weeks 11 and 12: User Testing and Refinement Students will present their near-final project artifacts that show iteration based on prior feedback and receive feedback from the faculty lead, mentor, and peers. They will conduct any necessary user testing or refinement based on feedback.  

Weeks 13 and 14: Graduation Project Showcase Students will plan and present their project as a part of a graduation showcase for the general public and other SIAT faculty and students.   Due to the potentially highly diverse set topics and approaches employed in student projects, the specific class content and activities may be adapted to better suit student project needs over the course of the semester.  

Evaluation Scheme: Project Proposal 10% Midterm Portfolio 40% Final Project 50%  

Application Process: Students must read the IAT 499 course outline before applying to the course.  Enrollment is competitive – each term SIAT will enroll a maximum of 20 students (as teams or individually) based on the strongest student project ideas and CGPA. Students can apply to work individually or in teams of two. Due to the expectations for the course teams of more than two students will not be accepted.   Students must submit a project proposal to apply for the course.  

First, download the project proposal form here: http://www.sfu.ca/siat/undergraduate/support_for_students/forms.html  

Then, complete and submit this form as a PDF file including all necessary signatures and copies of your advising transcript(s) to SIAT advising (siat_adv@sfu.ca) either via email or in-person before noon on November 7th, 2017.  

Key components of the project proposal include the following:  

1. Bio (100-150 words):Describe yourself, what has lead you to apply to IAT-499, and what you hope to gain/learn/achieve by taking the course.
2. Context (150-200 words): Provide an annotated bibliography with citations for three sources that help to provide and define the context of the project.
3. Audience (100-150 words): Define who the intended audience for your project is and why they will care about the result.
4. Proposed project (300-350 words): Provide a coherent description of the proposed project (what do you plan to do?), followed by a clear purpose statement that explains the intended artifact that will result from the project and why it matters.   Project proposals should address student skills (research, media, design, programming, etc.) that will be applied in project. Proposals will be evaluated for focus of argument and clarity of writing. As with the expectations for IAT309W, proposals must be organized, edited and proofread and include a word count. Students are required to find SIAT faculty mentors and are recommended to find industry mentorship for depth/discipline related knowledge during the course. Students should find mentor(s) suitable to the proposed project.  

Application Deadline: Applications must be received by 12pm (noon) Tuesday, November 7, 2017. Late submissions will not be accepted. Successful applicants will be contacted by November 22, 2017.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS (for students)

1. Why is IAT 499 included in SIAT credit counts for a SIAT minor and joint majors? This will reduce the number of upper division SIAT classes that minors and joint majors need to take outside of IAT 499. However, we want to encourage interdisciplinary collaboration in IAT 499 and having minors and joint majors take it for SIAT upper division credit will help in this regard.  
   
   
2. Why can only one of IAT 490, 491, and 499 be included to meet a student’s upper division requirements? If we don’t restrict this requirement, then a student could get a total of 18 upper division credits from these three classes. This is more than half of the upper divsion credit requirements, which would mean the student takes very few of our other upper division courses and a large portion of their upper division work is self-guided. Such a large portion of self-guided work makes it difficult to ensure that graduating SIAT students have the knowledge offered in our upper-division which is necessary of a graduating SIAT student.
   
   
3. Can Co-op terms be incorporated as part of the graduation project? The tuition and credit structure for Co-op is not the same as regular courses, which makes it difficult to overlap co-op with a graduation project course. As a result if you are interested in pursuing such a combination, please contact SIAT Advising (siat_advising@sfu.ca) to discuss the option.  
   
   
4. Why is there a maximum of two students per team? We want to avoid situations where team members do not earn their grade as is possible with larger teams. Anecdotally, we found this starts to occur with teams of size 3.  
   
   
5. Why do I need a SIAT faculty mentor? To ensure that grades and projects are done within the scope of our program, a SIAT faculty mentor is necessary. You are welcome to seek an industry mentor to help critique or provide further context for the project, but they will not be permitted to grade your project deliverables.  
   
   
6. What is the difference between IAT 499 and Directed Studies and Honours? Undergraduate Honours courses are meant to provide undergraduate students with an opportunity to learn how to conduct scholarly research while supervised by a faculty member in the final year of their program. IAT 499 is not focused on research per se though students will likely do some degree of research in order to complete the project.  
   
   Directed Studies courses are meant to provide students with an opportunity to complete a project while supervised by a faculty member. Directed studies may or may not occur in the final year of one’s degree and their focus is typically on learning new materials or knowledge not taught in other courses at SIAT. This option does not include a graduation show.      

	Graduation Project	Directed Studies	Honours
Types of Projects	Portfolio Project	Research or project	Research
Focus	Synthesis and application    of exisiting knowledge	Learning and application of new knowledge	Learning and application of new knowledge
Output	Paper / artifact / showcase	Paper / artifact	Paper / artifact
Student Credit	One term; 6 credits	One term; 3 credits	Two terms; 6 credits per term

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS (for faculty)

1. Why can faculty gain at most 20 points as mentors? Faculty mentors could supervise more than 2 people/teams but they stop receiving teaching credit after that point. We want to encourage students to work with a broad range of faculty mentors. We also need to ensure the integrity of the points system so faculty are not reducing their teaching load dramatically by supervising a large portion of 499 projects.  
   
   
2. Why are there faculty mentors and not just a single faculty lead? We considered not having faculty mentors and instead just having the faculty lead be responsible for all students. However, we felt that there was only a small number of faculty that might have the knowledge required to supervise students across the breadth of topics they may explore at SIAT. This might restrict the course to only being taught by a small number of individuals. Instead, we wanted to expand students’ abilities to work with faculty who are experts in the topic area of their choosing. This will hopefully engage them more deeply in their learning and foster increased undergraduate engagement in faculty research (the project is not research-based but will likely have some ties to a faculty mentor’s research or primary teaching area).  
   
   
3. Why do we need a faculty lead? Couldn’t the course just be run by faculty mentors? We considered this option as well. Without a faculty lead, there could be widespread variation across the depth and scope of projects. We also wanted to have someone who could facilitate a joint seminar/class amongst all students to promote peer feedback and oversee and organize a final graduation show. In addition, the faculty lead will be providing additional breadth knowledge to students during the seminar about project planning, proposal writing, professional ethics, etc. that can be taught to all students at the same time. This will reduce some of the workload of the faculty mentors.
   
   
4. How is grading handled by both the faculty mentor and the faculty lead? It is likely that faculty leads do not have the expertise to grade projects across the range of topics that students may work on. Faculty mentors will focus on grading the specifics of the topic. The faculty lead will focus on grading high level aspects and scope rather than the specifics of the topic, as well as review all projects and grades to ensure relative consistency. To try and ensure consistency in grading between faculty mentors, a rubric will be provided to all mentors for grading course deliverables. The faculty lead has final say in all course grades.  
   
   
5. What are the workload expectations of the faculty mentor? The role of the faculty mentor is to help provide an understanding of the area of expertise in which the student(s) are working with and to provide feedback/grade the student(s) work within that context. The faculty mentor is expected to meet with their student(s) on a weekly basis to help guide, critique, and direct their project as it progresses through the term. Three deliverables – the project proposal, the midterm portfolio, and the final project – will also require the faculty mentor’s assessment using a course rubric.  
   
   
6. Why is a signature required for students to submit their application? To ensure that potential faculty mentors have seen, reviewed, and completed their portions of the application form, a signature is required. If you should not be available to meet with the student for the final sign-off – i.e. you are at a conference or your schedules do not align – an email to advising including the student names and ID numbers indicating that you approve of the application will suffice.  
   
   
7. What is the difference between 499 and Directed Studies and Honours? Undergraduate Honours courses are meant to provide undergraduate students with an opportunity to learn how to conduct scholarly research while supervised by a faculty member in the final year of their program. IAT 499 is not focused on research per se though students will likely do some degree of research in order to complete the project.  
   
   Directed Studies courses are meant to provide students with an opportunity to complete a project while supervised by a faculty member. Directed studies may or may not occur in the final year of one’s degree and their focus is typically on learning new materials or knowledge not taught in other courses at SIAT. This option does not include a graduation show. 

	Graduation Project	Directed Studies	Honours
Faculty Roles	Faculty lead + mentor	Faculty Supervisor	Faculty Supervisor
Types of Projects	Portfolio Project	Research or project	Research
Focus	Synthesis and application of existing knowledge	Learning and application of new knoweldge	Learning and application of new knowledge
Output	Paper / artifact / showcase	Paper / artifact	Paper / artifact
Student Credit	One term; 6 credits	One term; 3 credits	Two terms; 6 credits per term
Faculty Credit	120 credits for lead; 10 credits for mentor per student/group	0 credits	10 credits per student

REQUIREMENTS:

Only one of IAT 490, 491, or 499 can be included to meet the 30 credit upper division requirement needed to be a SIAT major or minor. IAT 499 can be included to meet the 24 credit upper division requirement for BA or BSc with the approval of the faculty lead and the faculty mentor.   IAT 499 can be included for the required SIAT upper division credits for a SIAT minor.   IAT 499 can be included within the 21 SIAT upper division credits for joint majors with Communication and Business.