Here at LAITS, project summaries are something we start working on a few weeks before an STA Semester Showcase. During this event we are tasked to summarize the most important projects we’ve worked on during that time. In theory, it is kind of similar to the STA Blog. However, while the Blog works mostly as a storytelling platform, Project Summaries encapsulate the complete journey of a project including the STAs and other team players who took a part into its development, in a complete and presentable way to an audience.
Project Summaries can start out as a word document in Phase 1, where you wait for one of your projects to be approved. But once it has been approved in Phase 2, you will turn that information into a powerpoint presentation to be presented either live at the Showcase, or as a pre-recorded video (in case you can’t make it to the event). For this part we usually have a time limit of under 5 mins to present.
You can write project summaries as either bullet points or full on paragraphs, but the point is to describe concisely the development of your project and to tackle all of the topics you’ll see below.
Phase 1 – Docs for Approval
In any project summary there are three sections: Who, What and How.
WHO
“Who are you in relation to UT and LAITS?”
- Introduction
- Introduce yourself! Include:
- A Greeting
- Your Name
- Your Job Title, and for how long you’ve had it
- Your Current UT Year
- Your Major
- Introduce yourself! Include:
| Ex. “Hello, my name is ___. I am a Design STA, and I have been working here for __ months/semesters/years now. I am currently a [freshman/sophomore/junior/senior] in [your major].” |
WHAT
“What was the project and why was it created?”
- Project Brief
- How was the project described to you when you started working on it?
- Tip: Go to your Basecamp To Do, and you could find this info in either the notes section or the earliest comments.
| Ex. “LAITS is developing a new tool for professors called ____ that will be available next semester.” |
- Project Contribution
- What part of the project did you contribute to?
| Ex. “I was the lead logo designer for this project.” |
- Purpose and Significance of the Project
- You can also mention the purpose/significance of your specific contribution
- What is the goal of this project?
- What is the extent of its use? World-wide…to the university…to students?
| Ex. “The purpose of this project is to facilitate communication among students and their professors/TA’s. It is a significant tool to improve the learning experience at UT. The significance of my specific contribution relies on visually communicating the purpose of the tool.” |
HOW
“This section focuses on the development of the project, the people that made it possible, and what the experience meant to you.”
- The Team
- Did you work on a project on your own or with a team? If you worked on it in a team, who were your teammates?
- Include all people involved that you know of. These could be:
- COLA Faculty Members
- COLA Staff Members
- LAITS Staff Members
- Fellow STA’s
- Etc.
- Feel free to use the tools at your disposal to figure that out (BC/Slack/etc) or ask Suloni, Valerie, or Maddy if needed
- List them out by name and role
- Make sure to include yourself!
| Ex. “Lead Developer: _____ Lead UI/UX Designer: _____ UI Developer: _____ Logo Designer: _____ (me)” |
- Collaboration
- Who in your team did you personally collaborate with?
- How did you work or collaborate with others?
- What were your interactions like? Were you equally involved? Were you just getting feedback?
- What did you discuss with your collaborators?
| Ex. “During the development of my contribution I mostly collaborated with _____ and _____, who gave me a lot of useful feedback and direction for the development of the logo. For a while at the end I also got to collaborate with ____, the Lead UI/UX Designer to figure out specific details like _____.” |
- Reflection on Remote Working Experience
- Reflect on your experience working on this project remotely; was it easy or was it an obstacle?
| Ex. “I did not find it difficult to work on this project remotely, especially because my collaborators were always available to schedule a Zoom or Slack call if needed, or simply communicate over Basecamp.” Ex. “Remote collaboration was a challenge with this project because _____.” |
- Challenges
- What challenges did you face?
- Were you using a new tool?
- Was communication difficult to maintain?
- Make sure you not only list your challenges, but also how you worked through them
| Ex. “I have never created a logo before, so I faced quite a few design related challenges, especially in the earlier stages of this project. But I worked through those challenges by doing/asking/working with/researching _____.” |
- Takeaways
- What did you take away from this project?)
- New skills?
- New resources?
- New ways of approaching problems?
- What did you learn from the experience?
- What did you learn from your collaborators?
- What did you take away from this project?)
| Ex. “Through this project I got to develop design skills, especially from the much needed advice from my collaborators. I was able to achieve _____. Therefore, my takeaways from this project are both better design skills, and stronger collaboration skills.” |
- Final Reflection
- What did you learn?
- What did you like?
- What did you enjoy most?
- Are you getting future benefits from this experience?
| Ex. “All in all, this was a very interesting and fun project to work on. Not only did I get to strengthen some of my soft and hard skills, but I also got to create my first logo, which as an advertising student it means a lot because _____.” |
Finally, make sure you add as many images as possible as evidence of your work and to make this part easier to assess.
Phase 2 – Final PPT
Now that one of your project summaries has been approved, it’s time to rework the information you’ve already summarized into a powerpoint presentation. The key to this format is to add lots of visible graphics and images and limit the amount of text per slide.
Due to the limited amount of text that is ideal to jot down into a ppt, you will mostly present your project verbally rather than written out. Remember, this should be a more natural presentation rather than an essay you read off in front of everyone.
Also, due to the limited amount of speaking time you’ll have, you might not get to describe specific details of your project. However, it is important for you to tackle as much as you can from the info you wrote down in Phase 1. Remember, these points were listed for a reason, and their order has been premeditated to optimize the flow of your presentation.
Finally, make sure you add some personality to your presentation. There are no clients for this; just you and the LAITS team to show off what we’ve all been working on during the semester. You can have some fun with it.