Weekly Tasks

Every week each student is responsible for a set of tasks assigned during the mentor session. Those tasks live in GitHub issues, not in a document.

Requirements

After each mentor session, and by midnight that same day, each student must:

1. Open a GitHub issue (or issues) in the project repository describing their tasks for the coming week.
2. Include clear acceptance criteria for each task (see below).
3. Post a link to the issue(s) in the weekly Slack thread for the project.

By default, if a student has multiple tasks they may all live in a single issue with a checkbox per task. Splitting tasks across several issues is fine if the mentor, TA, or student prefers it, but it is not required.

Writing Acceptance Criteria

Acceptance criteria are the specific, checkable conditions that make a task “done.” A task without acceptance criteria cannot be graded and should not be assigned.

Good acceptance criteria:

• Are written as a checklist.
• Describe an artifact that can be delivered on GitHub within one week of work.
• Are specific enough that someone else on the team could tell whether they were met.

Note that a task is not complete until the pull request addressing it has been merged to main.

If a task does not involve writing code (for example, reading a paper), the acceptance criteria must still produce something publishable on GitHub — normally answers to a specific set of questions posted as a comment on the issue.

Issue Template

### Task: <short description>

**Assigned to:** @github-handle
**Week:** <week number>

**Context**
One or two sentences on why this task matters for the project.

**Acceptance criteria**
- [ ] <specific, checkable outcome>
- [ ] <specific, checkable outcome>
- [ ] Code is committed and pushed in a pull request
- [ ] Pull request is reviewed and merged to `main`

**Notes / resources**
Links to data, papers, prior issues or PRs.

Carrying Tasks Over

If a student did not finish last week’s tasks (meaning nothing was merged to main), the mentor decides which of the following applies:

1. Larger than expected. Enough work remains that the task can be re-assigned as this week’s task.
2. Poorly scoped. The task was not doable or is no longer relevant. Close the issue as not planned and open a new issue that references the old one.
3. Nearly done. Only a small amount remains (for example, replying to TA review comments). The student opens new tasks for the coming week and must also finish the old one, referencing it in the new issue.
4. No effort. The task was well scoped and the student simply did not work on it. The task is repeated and the student is docked participation.

Grading

Weekly tasks are graded on a 0-5 scale. See the Weekly Tasks rubric.