July 13-31, 2020
- Project Structure and Schedule
- Data Loaders (Google Colab) for Each Data Set
- Student’s Guide to NMA Projects
- TA’s Guide to NMA Projects
- Mentor’s Guide to NMA Projects
The NMA projects are conducted over 14 days, beginning on the morning of the ‘second’ curriculum day (W1D2) and ending W3D4. The first week is about the process of forming a project. The second two weeks are for executing a project. You are highly encouraged, but not required to participate in a group project. Please think about your project partners, if you decide to join a group, please try to see the project through to the end! On the last day, there will be a presentation of your the projects in small groups within your super pod. These presenations are five minutes and you should have at least three slides--but remember that you have only about five minutes to present, so five or six slides is probably reasonable. After presenting you will have five minutes for question and discussion. We will ask, but not require, that you allow your project to be highlighted across the zone on W3D4 during the closing celebration! We will randomly select a representative sample of projects to discuss and highlight the diversity of NMA projects.
Daily project time can be:
- A zones — Early — 4h before content
- B zones — Split — 2h before and after content
- C zones — Late — 4h after content
Week one is about brainstorming, generating questions, refining ideas and coming up with a simple project proposal. By the end of project day four, project groups should form, with a specific project proposal idea including a question, data set and planned techniques. These will be collected on day five and used to match projects with Mentors.
We suggest using the Miro collaborative board for brainstorming. The project days are:
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Project Day 1 — General discussion — (zone A: Tues; zone B: Mon-Tues; zone C: Mon)
- Extended ice-breaker. Students get to know about each other's research interests.
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Project Day 2 — Project Structure
- Videos: from topic to scientific questions
- Videos: intros to data sets
- Videos: overview of course content
- Pod brainstorm: dreaming big ideas
- We suggest using Miro collaborative board for brainstorming
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Project Day 3 — Refinement (with Mentors)
- In temporary groups of 3–5 students
- Develop projects from idea to plan
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Project Day 4 — Refinement (with Mentors)
- In temporary groups of 3-5 students
- Refine, specify techniques
- Write short proposal uestion
- What is the quesion?
- What data set will you use?
- What analysis or models will you use?
- What do you predict you will find?
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Project Day 5 — Groups (led by TAs) — (zone A: Mon; zone B: Fri-Mon; zone C: Fri)
- Organize into final project groups (projects and the groups will be matched to Mentors)
- Projects are submitted for neuromatching via AirTable
- HARD DEADLINE OF W1D5 (Friday, local time)
During weeks two and three, project groups meet together to work on the projects. Neuromatched Mentors will visit the groups to discuss the projects and provide advice. Remember, this is about the experience, not producing a publication-worthy project! All groups must finish their projects by the end of project day 13 (W3D3).
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Project day 14 — Prepare project presentation
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Groups make a five minute project presentation
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RESULTS ARE OPTIONAL! We would like you to present your experience, and results if you happen to have them
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Optionally, a recording for a group presenation and to allow other NMA students to see the project
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All group members should contribute to the presenation slides and video!
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Example project video one (notice how quickly our mascot black cat jumps continents!)
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PROJECTS ARE DUE PRIOR TO THE INTRO FOR W3D5!!
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Submit your project (only once per group) using this project submission form
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NMA final day — Presentation of projects
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The afternoon of the final day of NMA will include project presentations!
- Project Instruction
- Possible Project Proposals
- Dataset Overview
- Project Presentation Cover Slide (click to download)
| Run | View | |
|---|---|---|
| Steinmetz decisions |  |
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| Steinmetz extra | |
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| Stringer spontaneous | |
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| Stringer orientations | |
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| Kay images | |
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| HCP | |
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| IBL Loading | |
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| IBL Psychometric | |
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| IBL Paper Figures | |
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in small groups to develop a scientific question, select a data set to analyze and work together to develop a project that you will present at the end of NMA. You will be able to see an overview of the curriculum topics to help you brainstorm and we have prepared data sets for your projects. During your project time, you will be meeting with your teaching assistant and mentors, who will be neuromatched to your projects at the end of week one! You should try to :
- How do you develop a clear scientific question?
- What are the limits of a particular dataset?
- How do you select techniques or tools to answer your scientific question given the available data?
- Is the scope of the project something you can complete in two weeks—generate a question generation, analyze data, make a presentation of the findings
We have assigned about four hours per day for your projects. However, we know that you will also be doing a lot of work on the curriculum and we want to make sure you balance your project effort with keeping up with the whole NMA. Make sure that you discuss how much effort you think you can manage with the others in your project group. It’s ok if some people want to do more or less, if you agree on a goal that allows everyone to participate as much as they want. But you must seriously consider the amount of work you are planning to do for your project with the amount of effort your group feels it can handle. Remember, it is better to do less but do it well, than try to do more but not be able to complete the work in the time you have. Finally, if you feel that participating in the Projects is going to take too much time and prevent you from engaging deeply with the curiculum material, you can opt to not join a project group on project day 5. But, we hope you will join a project group—projects are a fun way to build your skills, get to know people and to play with interesting data!
You will have support from your teaching assistant (primarily for code and technical questions) and your mentors, but only for a limited amount of time. Try to organize your questions and have a good discussion with them when they are available so you can use your own time to make progress! More importantly, your NMA fellow students are an amazing resource! Use Neurostars to ask questions and answer questions from fellow students!
The Neuromatch Academy projects are small group projects that will help the students build the skill of taking a question and trying to apply concepts or tools from the NMA curriculum. Teaching assistants are a critical component of this process and you will be providing guidance and support for these projects.
A few important things to remember:
- The exact question and data set is not important, we are interested in the process
- The ‘quality’, ‘novelty’ and ‘depth’ of the question and outcome are less important than completing the full cycle
- You will help guide the students during week one to help them form project groups
- During weeks two and three you only need to provide office hours for the groups (30 minutes per group)
- Remind students about project schedule to keep them on track
- Promote course materials and toolkits provided by the NMA
- Advise students about how to make a good presentation
- If you want to make time availible for answer questions outside of this time, we appreciate it, but it is not required!
- Remind the students to submit their projects at the end of W3D4 using the project submission form
These are student-run projects. TAs are only facilitators, and you are not responsible for the content of the projects.
As a Mentor, you will have two roles:
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Week one — Brainstorming and project idea refinement
- You will be matched to a Pod (larger group of students) and will not be matched based on area of research
- Help the students refine the ideas they have brainstormed into clear projects with goals
- Help the students select tools, models or appraches to answer their question
- The exact question and data set is not important, we are interested in the process
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Week two and three — Guiding projects to completion
- You will be matched to project groups based on your area of expertise
- Help the students pursue their projects
- Suggest ways to move the projects forward if the students are stuck
- Provide space for discusion of the project ideas
- The ‘quality’, ‘novelty’ and ‘depth’ of the question and outcome are less important than completing the full cycle
- You will receive an email with 'match' information from NMA for week one and then again for week two and three.
- You will have contact information (Links for video, emal and names in an 'AirTable')
- If you thin you have any quesrtons, please contact us!