Coaching Questions Group 2

To help your group and the teachers prepare for the tutor meetings, we would like you to answer a few questions in between sessions. The following paragraphs list the questions for each of the weeks, please write you answers directly underneath the questions.

After the kick-off - Week 1

• What are you expecting to learn during the Robots course?

We expect to learn how to work in an interdisciplinary team on a subject build around robots. We expect to use software and hardware in the form of robots in order to solve a social issue.

• What kind of coaching do you expect?

We expect critical questions which can steer is in the right direction.

• What kind of coaching would you prefer?

We would like the coaches to tell us if we are on the right track by asking us critical questions which keep us thinking.

• What will the coaches expect of you?

They would like us to update the wiki oftenly in order for them to be able to prepare for the meetings and to keep track of our progress. They would also like us to be open for criticism. They will also expect a understandable wiki.

After the first tutor meeting - Week 2

• What is the most interesting thing you learned in the coaching meeting of the previous week and why?

We learned that we need to make our work more defined and our ideas and plans more quantified because it makes it much more easier to work on our task later on as well as give us an idea whether or not our plans are feasible or not.

• How did you incorporate coaches' feedback of the previous meeting in your project?

We decided to make our plans, task and overall structure of our project more defined as well as take into consideration the information Visio gave us.

• What new activities did you undertake during this week? What did you learn from these activities?

We had a phone call with the company Visio in order to get more in depth information about our topic. Unfortunately we learned that the idea for our device had is already been made and in fact it works so good that there is little we could think of in improving it. That made us rethink our strategy and in the end we decided to change our topic. We opted for a education game for blind people. On top of that seeing how effective the optalec easylink12 touch device is made us want to incorporate it in our new topic.

• What did you do to prepare for next week's meeting?

We did what was we had to according to our plan which included working on the preliminary phase as well as incorporating the advice the coaches gave us. We did it to have work to present for the meeting. Other than that we started thinking of new ideas for our project, and researching on it.

After the second tutor meeting - Week 3

• What is the most interesting thing you learned in the coaching meeting of the previous week and why?

That if you find that your idea has already been done, you shouldn't just immediately abandon it. Instead you could try to use your new findings to your advantage.

• How did you incorporate coaches' feedback of the previous meeting in your project?

We tried to look for new interesting projects we could do that have more overlap with the research we did.

• What new activities did you undertake during this week? What did you learn from these activities?

We switched to a different subject. But one that has significant overlap with our previous subject. We created a new wiki, found 25 new scientific sources, wrote the problem statement and some other parts of the wiki and made a new planning for all remaining weeks.

• What did you do to prepare for next week's meeting?

For the next meeting we planed to redo all of the things we had in plan but this time for our new topic. That mainly included the first half of our preliminary phase. on top of that we made a plan for the whole project in order to get effective feedback on it as soon as possible seeing how our time will make our workload a bit more intense

After the third tutor meeting - Week 4

• What is the most interesting thing you learned in the coaching meeting of the previous week and why?

We have learnt that we need to focus on one part of the problem. We don't have enough time to fix a big problem. Furthermore, we need a clear description about what we want to do.

• How did you incorporate coaches' feedback of the previous meeting in your project?

We now have a clear problem to fix, which is visualizing a graph for the visually impaired.

• What new activities did you undertake during this week? What did you learn from these activities?

We went to a school for the blind and the visually impaired in Grave to see how these kids learn. We listened to a teacher and he told us about one of the greatest difficulties in teaching there. There are a lot of ways in which the students can learn but visualizing a graph remains difficult.

• What did you do to prepare for next week's meeting?

Tasks were divided and the wiki was updated. A full description of the visit to Grave is made, a research on the software was done and the things to keep in mind whilst making educational games were described. The problem description was also updated.

After the fourth tutor meeting - Week 5

• What is the most interesting thing you learned in the coaching meeting of the previous week and why?

The feedback was that we are doing well but we need to step up with the actual coding.

• How did you incorporate coaches' feedback of the previous meeting in your project?

We settled on the concept and structure of the game and everyone started working on it or/and learning how to work with Android Studios.

• What new activities did you undertake during this week? What did you learn from these activities?

We learned how to work with Android Studios.

• What did you do to prepare for next week's meeting?

We added a number of sections to the wiki or changed parts of it depending on what was needed in order to align it with the current work.

After the fifth tutor meeting - Week 6

• What is the most interesting thing you learned in the coaching meeting of the previous week and why?

Not a lot of information we did not already know. The one that stood out is that the coaches would really like if we have a prototype to be presented on the presentation.

• How did you incorporate coaches' feedback of the previous meeting in your project?

We all worked on the app and had most of the major concepts settled.

• What new activities did you undertake during this week? What did you learn from these activities?

We continued working on the program as well as editing the wiki depending on what was needed (according to the work progress).

• What did you do to prepare for next week's meeting?

We worked on the wiki and continued making the prototype application.

After the final presentation - Week 7

• What are the major steps of the project? Please list

-Initial research to gather ideas
-Conceptualization if the idea
-Further research in order to check if our idea is good as well as get further knowledge about how to realize it.
-Prototype development
-Testing
-Final wiki edit in order to make sure its reflecting the project prototype properly.

• What is the most important thing you learned in this project? (e.g .about design or working in groups, etc.)

We learned that coming up with, designing, and realizing a state of the art/unique technology is not easy and it involves a lot of dedication and hard work, but the satisfaction matches the amount of work put in the project. We also learned that working in a group requires mutual understanding, respect and the ability to put aside our differences and work together. Everyone has his strengths and weaknesses and the key is to work in a way that allows us to utilize our strengths while minimizing the effect of our weaknesses.

• What do you wish you had spent more time on or done differently?

We wish we realized earlier that our initial idea was already on the market and was something we could hardly improve on.

• What was the most enjoyable part of this project? Please explain why

The most enjoyable parts were the fact that despite our differences we liked working together and made a good team as well as the visit to Grave where we had a first hand look in the lives of visually impaired people. It was an eye opening experience. The kids there were doing things we never thought they were able to do. They delve into anything that is provided to them with such enthusiasm. It gave us the motivation to provide them with more options.

• What was the least enjoyable part of this project? Please explain why

There weren't many unenjoyable experiences but probably the research gathering as it was quite exhausting to look for suitable resources that are close enough to our chosen topic. While it is a necessary part of the project it felt boring and tedious as the amount of resources we had to go through was high due to our topic being a rather unexplored on yet.