WEEK 2

 Part 1: Review and Reflect Learning Strategy

What are the top 3 items that you are good at.

The 3 areas I think I am good at are getting main ideas, extracting important details, and taking notes. 

What are the top 3 areas you feel you are weak in?  

The 3 areas where I need improvement are adhering to a consistent schedule, creating an outline before writing an essay, and studying skills(the SQ3R method will be helpful). 

Part 2 Preview Time Management Skills

Part 3: Project Management Basics

We learned about projects. A project is a complex temporary initiative that is taken to obtain a specific goal. It has three constraints: time, scope(the goal plus the work), and the cost. A company or organization may start a project for many financial and or non-financial reasons, such as meet customer demand, keep up with competition, save the company from financial or legal troubles, improve public relations, or provide some social good. A project after being approved by upper management is managed by a project manager. They are responsible for ensuring the project achieves its goal, assess the viability of the project, and negotiate for changes in the goal or for additional resources. A project manager must possess business knowledge and leadership skills to manage, coordinate, and boost the morale of various teams. They must also demonstrate professionalism, ethics, and reliability. 

Projects are broken down, using a hierarchical (WBS) work breakdown structure. The project is broken down into a series of work streams that are broken down into major deliverables which further breakdown into sub deliverables, which may breakdown into more sub deliverables. The WBS should have clear labels, no duplicates, deliverables and deliverables on top should be defined by the deliverables below. The WBS is a fundamental project management tool that can help a project manager to determine valuable information and govern the project. It is often used in combination with a Gantt chat. A chart with activities in the Y access, time in the X axis, and a key to define symbols. Rectangles represent activities and their duration. A vertical line is used to represent the current state of the project in work. 

Part 4: Check Out Previous Capstones

Three capstone projects that caught my eye:

Project 1

The Open energy dashboard project contributed to the development of an open source resource that helps organizations be more energy efficient. They worked on RTK migration from ReactJS components to improve performance and contributed to the UI. This project was well done, providing sufficient information to understand the its goal, strategy and challenges. The team did a great job presenting the project with a good use of visuals and B-roll. 

Project 2

Out of Mana was a 2D rogue-lite video game development project using the Open source game engine Godot. The final product looks like an enjoyable game to play. The developer did a great job of explaining the type of game he wanted to develop and the challenges he faced as the solo developer.

Project 3

In the national AI campus project the developer contributed to a life saving service by improving the accuracy of a brain tumor detecting algorithm. The project and presentation were well crafted with a clear strategy outline and explanation of important concepts. 

Part 5: Summarize Your Week on Your Learning Journal

CST 349

This week we discussed our studying strategies. For our collaboration assignment we created a fictional company with our teams that included a mission statement, the services we provide, and a short bio of our fictional work experience/qualifications. Part of our required material included a lecture about how innovation is accelerating rapidly through seven main factors: computation abundance, time abundance, capital abundance, demonetization of technology, communications abundance, increasing genius (BCI), and the increase in lifespan. We read an article on software engineering. It covered topics such as past and present programming standards, the future of the industry, challenges, and current trends. We also watched a lecture where we gained valuable insights into effective communication and collaboration within a team, as well as strategies to overcome communication barriers. We also learn the key components of being a great team member, which include being capable, humble, helpful, flexible, and purposeful. 

CST 300

In CST 300, we learned how to create a well-structured APA citation page and when and how to include in-text citations. We were also provided with valuable resources for obtaining high-quality references and tools to enhance our upcoming Industry analysis paper. For assignments, we had to take a quiz on APA citation and complete our APA citation page.