CS357: Foundations of Artificial Intelligence - Team Formation Survey (10 Points)

Purpose, Task, and Criteria

Purpose: To form semester-long teams around compatibility of schedules and working styles — the strongest predictors of team friction — so your team's energy goes into the project instead of into calendar archaeology.

Task: Answer a short structured questionnaire about your availability, working style, and project interests, individually, in the LMS survey.

Criteria: Graded on completeness and thoughtfulness only, never on the content of your answers, with specific and self-aware responses scoring highest; see the rubric below for the full breakdown.

Assignment Goals

The goals of this assignment are:

To provide the structured information about availability, working style, and interests that the instructor uses to form compatible semester-long project teams, as the first step in collaborating to develop a strategic intervention (Goal 13)
To reflect on your own habits, energy patterns, and values as a teammate before joining a team

Background Reading and References

Please refer to the following readings and examples offering templates to help get you started:

The Assignment

This short, individually submitted survey is the first milestone of the Project Thread. Your answers are the data the instructor uses to form the standing teams you will work with all semester. It is handed out at the first class meeting (wk0.0) and due before the second week begins (wk1.0); teams are announced at wk1.1.

How teams are formed — full transparency. Teams are formed by the instructor from this survey using the practice supported by the CATME Smarter Teamwork research program (catme.org): teams are homogenized on logistics — members are grouped so that meeting availability windows overlap and deadline styles are compatible, because mismatches there are the most common cause of avoidable team conflict — while interests and perspectives are allowed to vary. In other words: you will be placed with people you can meet with and whose clocks run at your speed, not necessarily with people who think like you. You will not be asked to self-select teams, and friend requests are not part of the algorithm. Honest answers therefore serve you directly: the only way to end up on a team that fits your actual life is to describe your actual life.

Key Concepts

Term	Plain-English Definition	Why It Is on the Survey
Availability window	A specific block of day + time you could reliably meet outside class (e.g., “Tue/Thu after 4pm,” “Sun afternoons”).	Teams are built so windows overlap. “I’m flexible” cannot be scheduled against.
Deadline style	Whether you naturally finish work well before a deadline or ramp up as it approaches. Neither is wrong; mixing them without warning causes friction.	Teams are homogenized on this — it is the most common source of “my teammate doesn’t care” misreadings (see catme.org).
Energy source / drain	The kinds of work and interaction that leave you energized versus depleted (e.g., brainstorming energizes you; long silent work sessions drain you — or the reverse).	Helps your future team assign work with the grain rather than against it.
Pet peeve	A specific teammate behavior that reliably frustrates you (e.g., silence for days, last-minute rewrites of others’ sections).	Named early, a pet peeve becomes a charter norm; unnamed, it becomes a week-6 conflict.
Project domain	The real-world area your team’s Project Thread problem will come from.	Used as a secondary matching signal after logistics.

Part 1: The Survey

Submit your answers individually via the LMS survey (link in the LMS; do not email answers). The questionnaire asks the following — shown here so you can think before you type:

Logistics (matched on directly):

Meeting availability: List every recurring weekly window (day + start/end time) in which you could reliably meet a team outside class. List at least three.
Deadline style: When do you genuinely do your best work — well before the deadline or at the deadline? Choose one and add a sentence describing your last group project’s rhythm.
Time and energy preferences: When in the day do you do your best focused work? How many hours per week can you realistically commit to this course’s project beyond class time?

Working style (shared with your future team):

Challenges: What is genuinely hard for you in team settings? (Examples: speaking up in groups, asking for help, saying no to extra work.)
Energy sources: What kind of teamwork leaves you energized?
Pet peeves: What teammate behavior reliably frustrates you? Be specific.
What matters most: Complete the sentence: “For me, a team is working well when __.” Take a position.

Interests (secondary matching signal):

Project-domain interests: Rank your top two or three domains you would find meaningful for a semester-long, stakeholder-grounded project. Example multidisciplinary domains (you may propose others):
- Health (campus wellness, public health information, accessibility)
- Sustainability / environment (campus energy, food systems, local conservation)
- Education (tutoring, advising, K-12 outreach, study support)
- Finance (financial literacy, budgeting, local nonprofit operations)
- Arts (archives, exhibitions, creative production, arts organizations)
- Campus life (student organizations, residence life, dining, events)

Confidential (seen only by the instructor):

(Optional, confidential) Is there anyone in this course you cannot work productively with? This field is read only by the instructor, is never shared or acknowledged, and requires no explanation. Answering it has no effect on your grade; it exists so that a known-bad pairing never has to be explained publicly.

Deliverables

The completed survey, submitted individually via the LMS by wk1.0. There is nothing to upload; the LMS survey is the submission.

Reflection Prompts

Answer briefly in your Reflection Notebook (not in the survey):

How should we live together? — Which of your survey answers do you most hope your future teammates take seriously, and why?
If collaboration with a buddy was permitted, did you work with a buddy on this assignment? If so, who? If not, do you certify that this submission represents your own original work? Please identify any and all portions of your submission that were not originally written by you.
Approximately how many hours it took you to finish this assignment (I will not judge you for this at all…I am simply using it to gauge if the assignments are too easy or hard)?

Submission

In your submission, please include answers to any questions asked on the assignment page, as well as the questions listed below, in your README file. If you wrote code as part of this assignment, please describe your design, approach, and implementation in a separate document prepared using a word processor or typesetting program such as LaTeX. This document should include specific instructions on how to build and run your code, and a description of each code module or function that you created suitable for re-use by a colleague. In your README, please include answers to the following questions:

Describe what you did, how you did it, what challenges you encountered, and how you solved them.
Please answer any questions found throughout the narrative of this assignment.
If collaboration with a buddy was permitted, did you work with a buddy on this assignment? If so, who? If not, do you certify that this submission represents your own original work?
Please identify any and all portions of your submission that were not originally written by you (for example, code originally written by your buddy, or anything taken or adapted from a non-classroom resource). It is always OK to use your textbook and instructor notes; however, you are certifying that any portions not designated as coming from an outside person or source are your own original work.
Approximately how many hours it took you to finish this assignment (I will not judge you for this at all...I am simply using it to gauge if the assignments are too easy or hard)?
Your overall impression of the assignment. Did you love it, hate it, or were you neutral? One word answers are fine, but if you have any suggestions for the future let me know.
Using the grading specifications on this page, discuss briefly the grade you would give yourself and why. Discuss each item in the grading specification.

Any other concerns that you have. For instance, if you have a bug that you were unable to solve but you made progress, write that here. The more you articulate the problem the more partial credit you will receive (it is fine to leave this blank).

Assignment Rubric

Description Pre-Emerging (< 50%) Beginning (50%) Progressing (85%) Proficient (100%)

Completeness (50%) The survey is not submitted, or most items are blank The survey is submitted but several items are skipped or answered with a single word where the item asks for specifics Every item is answered, with a minor gap such as availability windows that are too vague to schedule against (e.g., "evenings" with no days) Every item is answered concretely — availability names specific days and time windows, the deadline-style and energy items commit to an honest answer rather than "either is fine," and at least two project-domain interests are ranked (Goal 13)

Thoughtfulness (50%) Answers are perfunctory or copied between items Answers are generic — they could describe any student ("I like teams that communicate well") and give the instructor nothing to match on Answers are specific to you, with at least one item (challenges, energy sources, pet peeves, or what matters most) revealing something a teammate would genuinely need to know, but the free-response items are thin The free-response items are specific and self-aware — the challenges and pet-peeve answers describe real situations rather than abstractions, the "what matters most" answer takes a position, and the whole survey would let a stranger predict what you are like to work with (Goal 13)

Please refer to the Style Guide for code quality examples and guidelines.

Description	Pre-Emerging (< 50%)	Beginning (50%)	Progressing (85%)	Proficient (100%)
Completeness (50%)	The survey is not submitted, or most items are blank	The survey is submitted but several items are skipped or answered with a single word where the item asks for specifics	Every item is answered, with a minor gap such as availability windows that are too vague to schedule against (e.g., "evenings" with no days)	Every item is answered concretely — availability names specific days and time windows, the deadline-style and energy items commit to an honest answer rather than "either is fine," and at least two project-domain interests are ranked (Goal 13)
Thoughtfulness (50%)	Answers are perfunctory or copied between items	Answers are generic — they could describe any student ("I like teams that communicate well") and give the instructor nothing to match on	Answers are specific to you, with at least one item (challenges, energy sources, pet peeves, or what matters most) revealing something a teammate would genuinely need to know, but the free-response items are thin	The free-response items are specific and self-aware — the challenges and pet-peeve answers describe real situations rather than abstractions, the "what matters most" answer takes a position, and the whole survey would let a stranger predict what you are like to work with (Goal 13)