Update website with info for capstone 2024 (#211)

* Add note about cloud compute resources

* Clarify a few point in the partner info page

* Standardize capitalization

* Avoid repeating info and updating it in multiple places

* Fix link typo

* Clarify timeline wording

* Avoid overlapping info with qualtrics form and make a few clarifications

* Be more speicifc abot proposal opening date

Co-authored-by: Tiffany A. Timbers <[email protected]>

* Add sample of survey questions

---------

Co-authored-by: Tiffany A. Timbers <[email protected]>

capstone/partner_info.md

@@ -9,54 +9,56 @@ subtitle: For MDS Capstone Projects
 
 ## Benefits to Capstone Partners
 
-- You'll have ~4 data scientists-in-training working on your dataset/project for ~2 months, at no cost. These students will be well versed in modern data science tools and techniques, including statistical analysis and visualizations using R and Python.
+- You'll have ~4 data scientists-in-training working on your project for ~2 months, at no cost. These students will be well versed in modern data science tools and techniques, including statistical analysis and visualizations using R and Python.
 
-- These students could be potential future employees; in addition, there will be visibility for your organization for the whole cohort through various events and presentations.
+- Students will create a data science product for your project (*e.g.,* a dashboard, an analytic report, a set of scripts, a pipeline, or similar). This product is expected to be of high quality, with excellent code documentation and testing.
 
-- Students will create a well-developed product of interest/relevance to your work (*e.g.,* Shiny app, analytic report, scripts/software). This product is expected to be of high quality, with excellent code documentation and testing.
+- The students working on your project could be potential future employees. In addition, there will be visibility for your organization to the whole MDS cohort through various events and presentations.
 
 - This is an opportunity to develop a relationship with the UBC MDS program. These relationships have the possibility of kickstarting research collaborations between the partners and UBC.
 
 
 ## Expectations of Capstone Partners
 
-- You should be able to provide our students with ample data that is relevant to a question/problem faced by your organization. This need not belong to the capstone partner's organization -- for example, it could come freely online. Datasets must be sufficiently clean, and an appropriate and size that the students will be able to load into R and/or Python in a reasonable amount of time and effort.
+- You should be able to provide our students with ample high quality data that is relevant to a question/problem faced by your organization. This need not belong to the capstone partner's organization -- for example, it could be available freely online. Datasets must be sufficiently clean, and of an appropriate size that the students can load into R/Python with a reasonable amount of effort.
 
-- The partner must be available to meet with MDS students working on the capstone project (in person ideally) on a weekly basis during the duration of the capstone project.
+- The partner must be available to meet with MDS students working on the capstone project  on a weekly basis during the duration of the capstone project (ideally in person).
 
 - The partner should be on board with the educational goals of the capstone project, and understand that this partnership isn't simply "free data scientists" for two months. 
 
 - The partner must come to an agreement about data and product sharing, licensing and intellectual product rights. The MDS program will support agreements that benefit both the students and the partners. Please note that it will be key for the students to share some aspect of the project during their job search following graduation from the MDS program.
 
 - The partner consents to the organization's name and project title being listed on the UBC MDS website.
 
+- If cloud compute resources are required, the partner organization will provide them. The MDS program is not able to provide compute resources for students during capstone.
+
 ## Student Expectations
 
-We expect our student groups to
+Student groups are expected to live up to the following professional standards:
 
-- communicate productively, identify sub-problems that could be worked on individually by team members, and integrate contributions of team members into a final product;
-- work at least four full-time days per week on the project;
-- document and present their work at UBC (using written, oral, and visual means) at various points throughout the course.
-- optionally (but strongly recommended), present their final product and findings to the capstone partner's organization.
+- Communicate productively, identify sub-problems that could be worked on individually by team members, and integrate contributions of team members into a final product;
+- Work at least four full-time days per week on the project;
+- Document and present their work at UBC (using written, oral, and visual means) at various points throughout the course.
+- Optionally (but strongly recommended), present their final product and findings to the capstone partner's organization.
 
-## Project Expectations 
+## Project Expectations
 
-Successful MDS capstone projects...
+Successful MDS capstone projects meet the following criteria:
 
-- pose an interesting and open-ended question/problem that can be addressed using data science for which data is available or obtainable.
-- pose a multi-faceted question/problem, containing enough dimensions to be addressed in a multitude of ways.
-- are sufficiently deep, such that a useful data product can be made in two months that makes a solid advance on the problem.
-- can be split up into milestones, such that concrete progress can be made in two months.
-- draw on various tools and topics the students have learned in their [courses](https://ubc-mds.github.io/descriptions/) during the MDS program.
+- Pose an interesting and open-ended question/problem that can be addressed using data science for which data is already available or easily obtainable.
+- Pose a multi-faceted question/problem, containing enough dimensions to be addressed in a multitude of ways.
+- Are sufficiently deep, such that a useful data product that makes a solid advance on the problem can be developed in two months.
+- Can be split up into milestones, such that concrete progress can be made throughout the two months.
+- Draw on various tools and topics the students have learned in their [courses](https://ubc-mds.github.io/descriptions/) during the MDS program.
 
 What a capstone project is **not**:
 
 - Setting up and/or maintaining a database.
-    - This project should focus on a data science problem.
+    - The capstone project should focus on a data science problem.
 - A pre-specified approach, such as applying a particular machine learning algorithm to a particular data set.
     - This type of project is too narrow, not open-ended, and has only one or a few solutions. We expect our students to creatively come up with their own data science approaches to address the capstone partner's over-arching question/problem (with advice from the capstone partner on data science approaches).
 - Data cleaning.
-    - Although we expect some data wrangling to be involved in the project, we ask that you provide data that is mostly clean and "ready-to-go". If you need help with this, [ASDa](https://asda.stat.ubc.ca/) from the UBC Department of Statistics might be able to help for a fee.
+    - Although we expect some data wrangling to be involved in the project, we ask that you provide data that is mostly clean and "ready-to-go". If you need help with this, [ASDa](https://asda.stat.ubc.ca/) from the UBC Department of Statistics might be able to help for a fee. Projects where the students are required to spend a significant amount of time to create/obtain the data are likely to be rejected.
 - Software development.
     - Although our students learn some basic principles of software development, they are not generally equipped to build production-level software systems. Software development projects would also typically be less well aligned with the students' interests and the learning objectives of the capstone course.
 
@@ -67,7 +69,7 @@ Here are answers to some frequently asked questions regarding our capstone cours
 
 #### 1. Is there a fee to participate as a partner? Do students get paid?
 
-No, there is no fee involved anywhere in the process, and we ask that partners not pay our students.
+No, there is no fee involved anywhere in the process, and we ask that partners do not pay our students.
 
 #### 2. Where do the students work on the capstone projects?
 
@@ -83,7 +85,7 @@ Yes, assuming you are willing and able to supervise multiple capstone projects s
 
 #### 5. Will the students sign a non-disclosure agreement?
 
-Yes, this is possible. The preferred option is to use UBC's standard NDA template.
+Yes, this is possible. The agreement would be the UBC's standard NDA template.
 
 #### 6. Can the proposed project be "solved"?
 

capstone/proposal.md

@@ -4,11 +4,9 @@ title: Proposals
 subtitle: For MDS Capstone Projects
 ---
 
-**Capstone Project Proposals for Spring 2024 are now open! You can access the applications at the links below.**
+**Capstone Project Proposals open in late summer/early fall each year, [see the timeline for this year's submission deadlines](/capstone/timeline).**
 
-**The soft deadline for UBC Capstone proposals is Nov 1st. And the hard deadline is Nov 30th.** Proposals sent in by Nov 1st will receive feedback (that will hopefully increase their chances of being selected).
-
-Partners may choose to submit a capstone project(s) to the [MDS Vancouver](https://ubc-mds.github.io/about/) program (general data science) and/or the [MDS Computational Linguistics](https://ubc-mdscl.github.io/program/aboutme/) program (language-related data science). If you're unsure about which program to submit your project to, read more [here](#should-i-submit-my-proposal-to-mds-vancouver-or-mds-computational-linguistics).
+Partners may choose to submit a capstone project(s) to the [MDS Vancouver](https://ubc-mds.github.io/about/) program (general data science) and/or the [MDS Computational Linguistics](https://ubc-mdscl.github.io/program/aboutme/) program (language-related data science). If you're unsure about which program to submit your project to, read more below.
 
 Proposal forms can be found here:
 - [MDS Vancouver proposal form](https://ubc.ca1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_9WxuDBcVfCVvQLs).
@@ -18,50 +16,22 @@ Proposal forms can be found here:
 
 ### Should I submit my proposal to MDS Vancouver or MDS Computational Linguistics?
 
-The MDS Vancouver (MDS-V) program covers all aspects of data science, including topics of data wrangling, vizualisation, dashboards,  statistics and machine learning, amongst others. You can read more about the program [here](https://masterdatascience.ubc.ca/programs/vancouver) and can see the [capstone page](/capstone/about) on this website to learn more about the type of projects MDS-V addresses in capstone.
+The MDS Vancouver (MDS-V) program covers all aspects of data science, including topics of data wrangling, visualisation, dashboards,  statistics and machine learning, amongst others. You can read more about the program [here](https://masterdatascience.ubc.ca/programs/vancouver) and can see the [capstone page](/capstone/about) on this website to learn more about the type of projects MDS-V addresses in capstone.
 
-The MDS Computational Linguistics (MDS-CL) program covers similar topics to MDS Vancouver but with a focus on analyzing language/text-related data and building models that can extract insights from this data. Particular areas of expertise include deep learning, sentiment analysis, and multi-lingual methods such as machine translation. You can read more about the program [here](https://masterdatascience.ubc.ca/programs/vancouver) and can see the [MDS-CL capstone page](https://ubc-mdscl.github.io/capstone/past_projects/) to learn more about the type of projects MDS-CL addresses in capstone.
+The MDS Computational Linguistics (MDS-CL) program covers similar topics to MDS Vancouver but with a focus on analyzing language/text-related data and building models that can extract insights from this data. Particular areas of expertise include deep learning, sentiment analysis, and multi-lingual methods such as machine translation. You can read more about the program [here](https://masterdatascience.ubc.ca/programs/computational-linguistics) and can see the [MDS-CL capstone page](https://ubc-mdscl.github.io/capstone/past_projects/) to learn more about the type of projects MDS-CL addresses in capstone.
 
 ## Instructions for filling out the capstone proposal form
 
-Detailed instructions for filling out the capstone proposal form can be found below.
-
-### About your organization
-
-Briefly introduce your organization
-
-### Brief description of the problem/question
-
-Just a brief description of the problem. If you'd like, you can suggest data science approaches that the students can take to address the problem, but this is not necessary.
-
-### Available data
-
-Describe the data that you will make available to the students:
-
-- How much data is there? 
-- Do you have an existing data dictionary/data schema?
-- What type of features are available? 
-- How clean is the data?
-- In what form will the data be available to the students?
-- Does your organization provide any computational resources (e.g., cloud computing, virtual machines) to handle large scale data analysis?
-
-### Data Product
-
-What product(s) would you like to receive from our students, and what (in general) should it communicate or have the ability to do? Examples:
-
-- A dashboard, such as a [Shiny](https://shiny.rstudio.com/) or [Dash](https://plot.ly/products/dash/) app, to explore an aspect of your data
-- An R or Python package with documentation to simplify an analysis
-- A data pipeline that includes some data science model
-- A report outlining student findings
-
-### Legal info
-
-If your project requires confidentiality and IP assignment, please read our [legal page](https://ubc-mds.github.io/capstone/guide-to-mutual-nda-ip/) on how we handle these before submitting your captstone proposal. During the proposal submission, we will ask you which types of agreements are necessary for working on the project. **_For non-UBC Capstone partners whose projects require confidentiality and IP assignment, we strongly recommend that partners show the UBC template documents to their legal counsel and get their agreement to use these documents before submitting the capstone proposal. We cannot sign alternate agreements, nor amend our agreements in any way._**
-
-We understand that you may require some restrictions to be put in place, but we also would like for our students to have some freedom to talk about the work they've done when applying for jobs. We want our students to know about these restrictions up-front so that they can make an informed decision about the project. In the proposal, please be as concrete as possible: do you anticipate students will be able to open-source the code they write? Publish a blog post about their work? Discuss it in a private job interview?
-
-This section should also include any other requirements of students participating in the project, like background checks, etc.
+The proposal form will ask you to fill out general information about your organization
+and information specific to the project your are proposing.
+We are specifically interesting in understanding the problem/question
+that students will be working on,
+details about what the data for the project looks like,
+and what data product the students are expected to deliver at the end of the project.
 
-### Conflicts of interest
+You can find more details about the required information in this year's proposal form,
+linked above.
+If the proposal form is not open yet,
+you can [view this PDF with the questions that were asked in a previous year](/capstone/capstone-survey-sample.pdf).
 
-Declare any conflicts of interest. For example, if a current MDS student or family member is involved with your organization on a professional or personal level, this should be declared along with a short explanation. These situations are generally not problematic, but we prefer to disclose them to the students before they rank the projects.
+**NOTE** If your project requires confidentiality and IP assignment, please read our [legal page](https://ubc-mds.github.io/capstone/guide-to-mutual-nda-ip/) on how we handle these before submitting your capstone proposal. **_For non-UBC Capstone partners whose projects require confidentiality and IP assignment, we strongly recommend that partners show the UBC template documents to their legal counsel and get their agreement to use these documents before submitting the capstone proposal. We cannot sign alternate agreements, nor amend our agreements in any way._**