Read the final project description then write a project proposal with your team.
You should brainstorm a long list of ideas, the narrow it down to a couple that are feasible given your knowledge of R, the time constraints and available data. Write the proposal for one of these ideas, but you should keep a couple backups in case the original project doesn’t work out for some reason.
The point of this exercise it to think though a reasonable project (and get feedback from the instructional staff). You will not be held to doing exactly what you say you will do in this proposal; expect to adapt your project as you continue to work on it (just ask Robert Burns or Mike Tyson.) The more you put into the proposal, however, the better your life will be 2 weeks from now.
Write a one page proposal which discusses:
What questions will you try to answer? List 5-10 possible questions.
What datasets will you use? You should have already found and taken a first look at the datasets. Make sure the data is clean enough to reasonably use and actually has the information content to answer your questions.
What are some things you will do with the data to get at your questions? For example, what are some plots you might make.
On a second page include a list of 3 other ideas you brainstormed with a couple bullet points of detail.
Meet once very early for an initial brainstorm. Have everyone go off and explore some ideas. Meet again for a final brainstorm. Then write the proposal.
Look at the datasets you plan on using to make sure they aren’t awful. If you plan on creating a dataset (e.g. by scraping a website) convince me this will be feasible (you don’t have to have the scraper working perfectly).