How to approach complex, ambiguous projects

Students may be in projects that are complex or ambiguous.

One overarching concept to remember is that you need to be proactive and organised to work on a complex or ambiguities project.

It’s no secret nor a new revelation that active learners who inquire, debate, seek, problem-solve do better than passive students whose objective, in Freire’s words, quietly “bank knowledge” to help them pass their next test.

From“Help your students help you teach” by Howard Rheingold

Here are some suggestions on how to handle this situtation:

1. Research and ask questions about the overview of the problem and its nuances. Test your understanding by drawing a diagram and check it with a Subject Matter Expert. This should be added to the public wiki.
2. Ask for a workflow and get the raw data, workflow script, and the results (data) of running the workflow with that data. Preferably this would be public data. The workflow should be in GitHub, the data should be in a public repo like figshare or Zenodo, and your technical diary should be in Sharepoint.A technical diary would show command line and errors you have run or encountered.
3. Run the workflow and data on the HPC and try to get the same results as expected. As before, document errors, command line information into your technical diary in Sharepoint.
4. Now you have a base, look at ways you can contribute to the solution. This should be written up in your technical diary, in your presentation, and the wiki.