Some as-of-this-moment answers to questions people have posed to me.1 You may pose additional questions in the forum below.
Traditionally, a “capstone” experience provides the student with an opportunity to pull together what she has learned in her major and demonstrate the level of mastery she has attained in at least some parts of it.2 Garage Experience (GE) tracks with that. In some capstones students do “original” work – a senior thesis on a topic they select, a laboratory project on a problem they come up with; GE tracks with this.
The GE capstone is different in how much of your senior year it allows you to devote to a project. When capstone experiences are designed around individual student projects, the amount of time students put into them tends to vary. At the low end, the instructor has to provide the motivation to have students put in enough time. At the high end, instructors and students struggle to find enough time in a student’s schedule for all the work they want to do. The most common experience students have of a capstone is the constraints due to it being a single course credit. The Academy’s capstone has been imagined as a much less bounded experience. In order to provide the flexibility necessary to take full advantage of the training in the Academy curriculum and its vision of creating disruptive ventures, the course is longer and wider than the typical capstone.
It is also different in the broad range from which you independently select a project – in other capstones there tend to be disciplinary restrictions (e.g., you can come up with your own chemistry project but it has to be a chemistry project) whereas we are explicitly inter- and multi-disciplinary in both technique and object.
Each component page of the syllabus wiki has a "Talk" tab that connects to a forum about that component.
Yes, just navigate to the Recent Posts page.
The current iteration of the course has three levels of “mentorship”: Academy faculty serve as project supervisors (3-6 projects per faculty member), a lead faculty member serves as project advisor for all projects, and outside “industry” mentors will be assigned as appropriate
This course meets formally for 200 minutes, twice a week with the expectation of an additional 16 hours of outside work per week. The course includes exploration, experimentation, and self-directed work on projects that build on previous Academy courses. The course also includes labs, workshops, demos, and formative and summative critiques designed in conjunction with members of the class. A general framework of major milestones and objectives and key results will be adapted to individual projects.
In addition to the particular project each student is working on, the object of the course is to reprise specific skills and, especially, the interplay and application of those skills.
There will be three different types of class sessions in the course:
Project Management and Accountability (PMA). These classes involve check-ins with project advisors and/or lead instructor and are absolutely mandatory - student progress on objectives and key results is evaluated in these sessions. This is the basis of the grading for the course.
Project Planning and Advisor Meetings
Milestone 1: Start(ing) Up
Milestone 2: The Problem Version 0.2
Milestone 3 Deliverable 0
Milestone 5: December and 2018
Milestone 4: Bell Laps
Milestone 4b: Bell Lap
Public Presentations & Critique
Participation in a Creative Community (PCC). On multiple occasions during the course we will meet together as a class or in smaller groups to focus on one another's project. We will take collective responsibility for contributing to one another's success and treat these class sessions as equally important whether we are on the giving or receiving end of feedback.
Milestones, Meetings, Mentors.
Peer Critique Six Individual Projects
From Problems Toward Solutions
MVP Fair
In House Presentations
In-House Presentations
Master Classes (MC). Throughout the semester we will have a series of master classes in skills relevant to innovation and entrepreneurship in general and topics related to projects being undertaken by members of the class.
On the course schedule, this course meets for 2 x 200 minutes = 6 hours and 40 minutes of formal contact time per week. This corresponds to 8 academic hours. To this attaches the expectation (at 2:1 ratio) of 16 hours of work outside of class.
Creativity, of course, does not respect the ringing of alarm clocks and the stamping of time cards, but we will be imposing some temporal discipline derived from the world of startups by thinking about our work during the semester as subject to a certain “burn rate.” As managers of your own projects we will ask you to be mindful of the ~24 person hours your project consumes each week and help you to hold yourself accountable for having something to show for it each week.
The default expectation is that members of the class are physically in class for 6 hours and 40 minutes each week. Some of this time will be designated for more formal instruction and some for workshop/lab activity.
We do not at present plan to distribute the class digitally. Moving forward, we will identify needs in this area and deal with on case-by-case basis.
Short answer: you will know because you determine it. This class is a part of your continued training in professional practice. As a part of this, each student will set – in consultation with project supervisor and advisor – her objectives and a time line of key results leading to those objectives (OKRs).
You will review your key results with project supervisor/advisor at each meeting and one part of your grade will reflect your record of meeting or failing to meet these measurable expectations of key results and achieving the objectives you set.
OKRs will be set up at the end of the first two weeks of the semester which are devoted to project planning. They can be modified in advance of deadlines by mutual agreement with supervisor/advisor.
In the current iteration of the course we anticipate four types of feedback. Project teams will meet (likely weekly) with project supervisors for brief check-in on the progress of the work and project advisor will circulate to offer feedback at a similar frequency. At weeks 2, 5, 9, and 13 there will be structured feedback around milestones set for each project with project supervisors. Twice during the semester each project will present at a structured whole-class pitch and catch session called “Workshopping YOUR project.” Each project will be the subject of a grilling by prepared team of catchers for about 30 minutes. Finally, at least once during the semester and at semester end we will have formal multidisciplinary critiques.
We will manage the natural tension between “team attention,” “project attention,” and “individual attention” in a pedagogically reasonable manner.
https://policy.usc.edu/files/2014/02/intellectual_property.pdf
And, for the record, things like laser cutters and 3D printers, ordinary equipment ordinarily available, don't tend to trigger the "significant institutional resources" clause.
(1) Might also implies might not. (2) Thinking through a project idea and writing a proposal that conveys it’s promise and feasibility is a useful experience all by itself. (3) The variety of projects generated by the whole class is valuable for opening up the mental space of all of us. (4) Free-rider problem. (5) Teams break up. (6) You might surprise yourself.
The original calendar had proposals submitted in March and then time for teams to form during April. The idea was (1) each person works up the outlines of a promising idea; (2) we all reveal our ideas to one another; (3) some of us recruit a classmate, some of us petition to join up on another person’s project.
These joinings up can still take place. We ask you to inform the instructor if teams do form since the number of teams will affect how class meetings are structured and how mentors are assigned.
Garden variety pivots and following tangents in interesting directions is expected. But if you change to a project that is not arguably a variation on the one that got approved then you should re-propose.