Logistics for Clients

From Computer Laboratory Group Design Projects
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This briefing information is provided for potential client/mentors of group design project teams.

Preparation

We will work with you to define a reasonably open-ended one-paragraph design brief, in a technical and business area that interests you. For more information, see What makes a good project?.

We collect potential project ideas in September or earlier, and the design briefs are finalised in October. Projects are pitched to students in November, after which they express their preferences. A few briefs are usually cancelled at this stage.

Kick-off

Students are assigned to projects, in teams of 5 or 6, at the start of term in mid-January.

Progress meetings

The group project course runs for 8 weeks, in January-March each year. Client contact with the groups involves four one-hour progress meetings in weeks 1, 2, 4 and 6 of the project. Actual dates in the current year are advertised in the course timetable: https://www.cst.cam.ac.uk/teaching/part-ib/group-projects/important-dates

Note that clients are not required to attend the briefing lecture in November or project kick-off session in January. They are welcome to attend the public screening of the final video demonstrations and prize-giving, or view these online, but this is not essential.

Each meeting is planned within a three-day period and the student group is tasked with agreeing a meeting slot with you in that period. Meetings can take place online, although students appreciate the opportunity to meet their client in person, where this is convenient for you.

Please let us know if a student fails to come to a meeting. Attendance is compulsory, and vigorously enforced. If a student does not turn up, this is most often a welfare problem, so it is important that we learn of it as soon as possible in order to get assistance from the student's college.

Deliverables, Resources and Ownership

During the project, the team will deliver a frozen version of working documents by email to you on the day before the meeting. Email delivery must be copied to the course administrators.

Although we use the term "client" to describe this mentoring relationship, no payment is involved, and the projects involve no formal transfer of intellectual property. Some further detail is provided in the page on Intellectual Property

As an undergraduate course, the group projects do not have a research budget for special equipment, compute resource or data licenses. We therefore ask client companies to either loan or donate any specialist resources necessary.

Public demonstration

At the end of the term, groups are required to demonstrate their achievements in pre-recorded videos, accompanied by a public exhibition/demo session.

Presentations are followed by a vote, and the award of prizes to the groups voted the best in three categories. We hope you are able to participate, but it is not essential.

A selection of presentations from previous years:

Correspondence

Please send all official correspondence, especially notes on attendance or other problems during the project, to group-project@cl.cam.ac.uk .Email sent to this address is received by the course directors (for projects in Lent term 2025, these are Alan Blackwell, Tobias Grosser and Rob Harle), and by the undergraduate student administrators (in 2024/25, these are Dean Dodds, Helen Neal and Becky Straw)

Assessment

The client is not required to assess or grade the students. It is Computer Laboratory policy to award a flat mark (called a “tick”) for adequate participation in a group project (actually four ticks – one based on group performance, and three on performance of each individual within the group). The standard of adequate performance is determined by independent examiners, based on project documentation submitted by students. Clients are simply requested to inform the course administrators if any group member fails to attend, or seems unwilling / unable to contribute to discussion. These precautions are mainly motivated by concern for student welfare. Reports from the client are not the sole grounds for withholding a tick, but students are told that if they fail to attend meetings, this will jeopardize their chances of getting the tick. It is important that we know this as soon as possible, so that students can receive tutorial or pastoral support if necessary.

Data Protection

We publish the name of the client, and keep these in an open public archive as with academic publications. Personal details can be removed from the archive on request, but please note that personal mentorship by a named professional is an essential feature of the course.

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