TAC Project Submission Details
In addition to your technical project, you must submit the following non-technical parts:
Note: Evaluations must be completed by the appropriate adults and submitted directly to us by them. It is your responsibility to notify and remind them about these evaluations.
The final steps:
The Essay
The Final Paper should be, at most, 3 pages long. It should answer the following three questions. Please note that the bullets below each question are only suggestions of topics to address, and some may not be relevant to your project.
1. How did you define the problem?
- What requirements did your Community Client specify?
- What problem does your application solve?
- What were the constraints (time, money, expertise) within
which the solution had to be found?
2. What solution ultimately emerged?
- Does it work?
- What are the strong and weak points of the solution?
- Has the problem been solved?
- How and why did your solution evolve over time?
- What are the effects on the client? What does the client need to do to use your solution?
- Did you define a plan for maintaining the project?
- What information, training, or documentation about the project did you provide your client?
3. What was the process for arriving at the solution?
- What resources did you use?
- How was the work distributed amongst the team?
- What possible solutions and alternative solutions did you consider?
- What background research did you do?
- What were the type (i.e. in person, email) and frequency of
interactions between you and your client during the process?
Faculty Advisor Evaluation
Online submission form available soon.
This Evaluation is a summary of the project from the
Faculty Advisor's point of view. The following questions should
be answered in this report:
- How well was the problem researched?
- How good/feasible is the solution?
- How and why did the problem and/or solution evolve over time?
- How effective was the team's communication among themselves?
- How did they distribute the work?
- Would you be interested in advising another team for TAC
again?
Community Client Evaluation
Online submission form available soon.
This Evaluation is a summary of the Community Liaison's
experience with the group and TAC process. The following
questions should be answered in this report:
- What requirements did you specify? Were they met?
- How well did the group communicate with you?
(i.e. Did they actively seek you out with questions and clarifications? How often?) - How important is the problem for the community?
- Is the end product (solution you received) simple to use?
- How good/feasible is the solution?
- Is there a plan for maintenance?
Poster Presentation
Do not send or submit the poster with your project. It is not part of judging.
Each team attending the Retreat is required to create a poster/display that explains the process of creating the project and that tells us what was done, what was used, and what the purpose was. Like science or history fairs, the posters and projects will be displayed for CS professors, parents, and other participants to view.
Make sure to put together the poster and bring it with you to the Retreat. You will not be allotted time to work on your posters.
Member Profiles
Each team member should write her own profile.
You may choose which of the following questions you answer but do not answer questions that aren't listed here. You may include a picture if you like. Please keep your profile under 400 words.
- What year in high school are you?
- What are your hobbies?
- What do you plan to study in college?
- After this competition, are you going to include Computer Science in your life more?
- What did you enjoy most about this competition?
- What advice would you give to current teams in the
competition?
Labeling your project
components
Any and all files should have the names of the Team
Representative, the team, and the high school. This should be
either in the filename or in the file itself.
- All Word documents need to have in the header the names of the Team Representative, the team, and the high school.
- Any CDs you send us should also be labeled with these names.
- If you upload a .zip file, please name the file YourHighSchool_YourTeamName_TeamRepresentativeLastName.zip
- Any other files should also be named
YourHighSchool_YourTeamName_TeamRepresentativeLastName-component.ext
For example, my team name is Melancholy Anchovies, my team representative is Samantha Chan, and my high school is IMSA. The filename of my essay would be:
IMSA_MelancholyAnchovies_Chan-essay.doc.
Exceptions:
- If your project has a lot of files, only the main folder containing all the files needs to be labeled this way.
- If your project is a website, you don't need to do this
unless you send us the site in a .zip file.
How to submit your
project
We ask that you submit everything together and not through separate means. For example, if you save your project on a disk and want to mail it in, you must also mail your final paper and evaluations instead of sending them through email. Please use one of the three options described below.
Option 1: Upload (preferred method!)
The upload will go much faster if you zip all your files together. On the PC, if you right-click, you will find an option to do this.
Currently offline.
Option 2: Snail Mail
Label your files and CDs appropriately. If your
project takes up a lot of disk space, please choose this option.
Mail your projects to:
- LaSonya Harris
- 1314 Siebel Center, MC 258
- 201 N. Goodwin Ave.
- Urbana, IL 61801-2302
Option 3: Email
If your project is a website and it already occupies server space, just email us your link and your essay. Option 1 allows you to also give us a link.
The Subject line of your email should be as follows:
[TAC] Your High School, Your Team Name, Your Team Representative
Send to: lharris2@uiuc.edu.
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Last Modified November 13 2007 12:41:06.
