Writing the Team Contract

Steven J Zeil

Last modified: May 11, 2022

Contents:

1 Between Four and Seven Days Before Your Recitation Section

2 Between 72 and 24 Hours Before Your Recitation Section

In this course you will be working in teams. During this session, you will work together to draft a team contract outlining your expectations of one another.

This is a mandatory meeting.

The meetign will be conducted via Zoom during the time period set aside for your recitation section.

You will need a PC with a good internet connection, a microphone, and headphones for this meeting.

Headphones, not speakers! Even if it’s just a pair of earbuds you normally use for listening to music.
When you use speakers, there is a significant chance of the sound from your speakers being picked up by your microphone and sent out to everyone in the conference. At best, this creates an unpleasant echo effect. At worst, it creates feedback making the audio useless for everyone.

1 Between Four and Seven Days Before Your Recitation Section

Check your microphone and make sure that it works. Do this early enough so that you can find an alternative if yours is not working.
Watch for an announcement on Canvas of the Zoom link for this meeting.

2 Between 72 and 24 Hours Before Your Recitation Section

Navigate to your recitation section (not the lecture section)in Canvas. In the “My Groups” area, you should see that you have been added to a “Project…” group. Enter your group’s Discussion Board.
- If you are the first person here, create a new thread titled “Counting Off”. Post your @odu.edu email address.
- Each subsequent person should reply to that post, adding their ODU email address. (“Reply” means reply to the original post, staying in the same thread – do not start a new thread.)

3 The Meeting

Log into your ODU email to be sure that your browser is logged in under your ODU account rather than any personal GMail/Google account that you might also have.

You may need to explicitly log out of your personal GMail account before logging into your ODU Account

Using the Zoom link provided by the instructor in Canvas, join the Zoom meeting.

When it is time for the meeting to start, the instructor will send you to a breakout room with your other team members.

Go to Google Drive.
One of you should
1. Create a new Google Doc document.
2. Click in the title area and title your document “CS350 Team Contract: ” followed by your group name/number (from Canvas).
3. Exit the document and return to the Drive directory page.
4. Right-click on your new document/drawing and select “Share…”. Enter the email addresses of your group members with “Can Edit” permission.
  - Also add the instructor’s email, tj1kenne@odu.edu, to the shared list.
  - It’s important that you share via an @odu.edu email address, not an @cs.odu.edu or personal GMail account.
  Tell your tema members when you have completed these steps.
The remaining team members should check the “Shared with me” area in Google Drive and should be able to spot the new shared document.
Working together, draft your contract according to the guidelines given here.

The instructor will not directly participate in your contract negotiation process. He may pop in briefly to make sure that there are no problems/issues or if he cannot see your shared contract document.

However, if you have questions, you may ask the instructor to join your breakout room by using the “Ask for Help” button at the bottom of the Zoom window.

4 Immediately after the Meeting

Log in to Trello, creating a new account (unless you already have one).
All team members should sign up for an account on GitHub (unless you already have one).
Go to your group’s discussion board in Canvas and add your GitHub/Trello account names to the ‘Counting Off’ thread.