3MT Initiation Activity

This guidance helps you to facilitate the 3MT initiation activity. The goal of this activity is to have a shared expectations and clear 3MT structure to guide the team’s work on the 3MT PPT moving forward. The expectation is not to have a completed 3MT PPT at the end of this session. This work will be required for submission in Gradescope.

Before the workshop, the TA should:

Overall Purpose Introduce the purpose of the session: This facilitation follows a similar structure to the poster session. It helps teams translate PD 10 3MT critique feedback into clear Team 3MT Expectations that guide their 3MT strategy and PPT initiation. Walk through the agenda and expected outcomes

Before starting your 3MT expectations and initiation, guide the team to define the purpose of 3MT. Ensure the team clearly recognizes that: 3MT is about clear, focused communication of the project in three minutes to a non-specialist audience. It is not a technical deep dive or full project summary. It should focus on why the project matters, what the core idea is, and what impact it creates.

Emphasize WHY over WHAT

If needed, use prompts:

Outcome: Commonly understood purpose.

Once the team aligns on purpose, transition to PD 10 critique insights.

During PD 10, students completed the 3MT Critique assignment and should already have a sense of 3MT expectations based on their evaluations and written feedback. This activity moves students from individual critique to shared team-level expectations.

Step 1: Individual recall Ask each student to review/recall the feedback they previously wrote for both 3MTs, focusing on what they identified to replicate and avoid within based on the rubric category.

Step 2: Pair discussion Have students form pairs. Each pair discusses their feedback using the following questions:

Step 3: Insights Sharing Based on the discussion, ask each pair to write two sticky notes describing elements to replicate, and two sticky notes describing elements to avoid. Emphasize that each sticky note must clearly reference a specific 3MT category (from rubric). Pairs then share their notes with the entire team by placing them on the board next to the corresponding category.

Output: Board with sticky notes clearly linked to each 3MT rubric category

The board now contains multiple sticky notes from each pair. Actively lead this activity by reviewing the board category by category. Facilitate discussion to help the team reach agreement on a shared team approach for each 3MT rubric category. Guide the team to clearly identify what should be replicated and what should be avoided in each category. If a category has no notes, support the team in defining expectations by leading a short discussion on what should be included and what should be avoided for that section. If the team is quiet, directly invite a specific team member to respond to initiate discussion. When helpful, use the Honorable Mention 3MT examples (linked here) to prompt ideas and guide the discussion. Once completed, take a snapshot of the board and assign one team member to convert it into a file and save in MS Channel by the end of Sprint 10.

Output: Completed Team 3MT Expectations Board & File saved in the MS Teams Channel

Guide the team through initiating the 3MT PPT utilizing Expectation 3MT Board when necessary. This initiation only covers PPT creation.

Make it clear that TDM requirements differ from the official 3MT format. Original 3MT allows only one static slide, TDM requires more than one slide (that’s why on the last slide you can see example screenshots of 4 small ppt slides to highlight this expectation). The idea is that your team can provide good vision and flow highlighting - introduction, demo, images, business values etc. The team may create as many slides as needed, keeping in mind the 3 minute time limit for presenting.

Note: Ask team to consider flow and transitions between slides. You can refer to the commonly understood 3MT Purpose.

Output: 3MT PPT with defined structure and flow saved in the MS Teams channel.

Important Notes: