Intensive courses are hands on, immersive experiences designed to give students time to apply their skills to building original products (website or apps) and practice software engineering skills. The course is a week of coding all day with daily check ins and feedback from instructors on progress, short instructional session on key concepts, and ongoing support from instructors and classmates. We do not have a typical course schedule. In Fall Intensive 1 the focus is on design and user testing as well best practices and steps to build and pitch an original product in a week. The Intensive culminates with each student pitching their product to their classmates on the last day.
INT 1.1 Fall Intensive 1 is for Juniors while INT 2.1 Fall Intensive 2 is for Seniors. Students will work on similar skills with different evaluation criteria and expectations.
- none
Students by the end of the course will be able to ...
- Build from scratch an app or product in your language concentration
- Explain the value of your product via a product pitch
- Provide and receive constructive feedback on your app idea, designs, and code
Course Dates: Tuesday, October 13 – Friday, October 19 ( days)
JUNIORS - Unless marked optional, all sessions are required. Sessions include Scoping, Planning work, and more. Instructors and TAs will be available.
Intensive ends Friday afternoon with each student giving a 3 minute pitch of their product to peers.
| Date | Topics |
|---|---|
| Monday, 10/13 | HOLIDAY - NO SESSIONS |
| Tuesday, 10/15 | Intensive Kickoff Slides, Intensive Kickoff Video |
| Scoping Projects 2.0 | |
| Pygame tutorial [Optional] | |
| Brainstorm Product idea [Optional] | |
| Wireframe Testing [Optional] | |
| Finalize Intensive Proposal | |
| Wednesday, 10/16 | Checkin Standup |
| Project Planning | |
| Thursday, 10/17 | Checkin Standup |
| Product Pitch Training, Product Pitch Training Video | |
| Monday, 10/19 | Checkin Standup |
| Product Pitch Presentations |
- JUNIORS:
- Junior Fall Intensive Proposal - fill out and get approved Tuesday of intensive (see session on calendar)
- Junior Fall Intensive Project - meet the requirements outlined in the linked Product Rubric
- Junior Pitch - create a three slide pitch deck in the format outlined in the linked presentation
- SENIORS:
- Senior Fall Intensive Proposal Fill out and get approved the Tuesday of Intensive. You can work on your Industry Collaboration project, or other projects like past intensives (team or solo, new or old).
- Product - varries based on what was in the proposal
- Pitch - Seniors working on individual project will pitch alone, students working on team project will collectively pitch their projects, specifically, what they acheived during the intensive week.
All projects require a minimum of 5 commits, and must take place throughout the entirety of the course
- Good Example: 10+ commits throughout the length of the course, looking for a healthy spattering of commits each week (such as 3-5 per day).
- Bad Example: 2 commits on one day during the course and no others. Students who do this will be at severe risk of not passing the class.
- Unacceptable Example: 1 commit the day before a project is due. Students who do this should not expect to pass the class.
We want to encourage best practices that you will see working as a professional software engineer. Breaking up a project by doing a large amount of commits helps engineers in the following ways:
- It's much easier to retrace your steps if you break your project/product/code up into smaller pieces
- It helps with being able to comprehend the larger problem, and also will help with your debugging (i.e. finding exactly when you pushed that piece of broken code)
- It allows for more streamlined, iterative communication in your team, as it's much easier to hand off a small change to someone (updating a function) than a huge one (changed the architecture of the project)
Through this requirement, we hope to encourage you to think about projects with an iterative, modular mindset. Doing so will allow you to break projects down into smaller milestones that come together to make your fully-realized solution.
To pass this course you must meet the following requirements:
Juniors
- Attend all class sessions
- Meet the project requirements using the SPD Intensive Product Rubric. Juniors must score at least a 3 to pass.
- Present your project using the Pitch Rubric during the Friday pitch session.
Seniors
- Achieve 2 of 3 objectives on your APPROVED project proposal
- Pitch your project during the Friday pitch session
- Program Learning Outcomes - What you will achieve after finishing Make School, all courses are designed around these outcomes.
- Grading System - How grading is done at Make School
- Diversity and Inclusion Statement - Learn about Diversity and Inclusion at Make School
- Academic Honesty - Our policies around plagerism, cheating, and other forms of academic misconduct
- Attendance Policy - What we expect from you in terms of attendance for all classes at Make School
- Course Credit Policy - Our policy for how you obtain credit for your courses
- Disability Services (Academic Accommodations) - Services and accommodations we provide for students
- Student Handbook - Guidelines, policies, and resources for all Make School students