[Building Sakai] [DG: Teaching & Learning] Tell us about your users: Rethinking the capabilities of learning activities tools, such as Tests & Quizzes, for 3.0

[Daphne Ogle]

Hi Keli,

This looks like great stuff!  How or where do we sign up for the kick  
off meeting in September?

-Daphne

On Sep 11, 2009, at 4:24 PM, kamann at stanford.edu wrote:

> Hello
> Early in 2010, Stanford plans to begin rebuilding the core  
> functionality provided by Tests & Quizzes 2.x releases (aka Samigo)  
> in the new 3.0 environment. However, we do not want to simply  
> rebuild it based on the current design. Sakai 3.0 allows us the  
> opportunity to make the functionality formerly associated with tools  
> accessible in other contexts; in other words, the functionality of  
> T&Q and similar tools can now be modularized so that users can  
> create or complete activities without necessarily entering a  
> specific tool. Working in 3.0 will also allow us to utilize Web 2.0  
> interaction styles that simply weren't around when T&Q was initially  
> designed.
>
> We plan to sponsor a 3-month investigation phase beginning in mid- 
> September to help us understand the range of people who use Sakai to  
> create, manage, complete, and assess learning activities and how  
> they think about their work. We want to have a solid understanding  
> of the historical issues, user types, and user goals before we begin  
> designing in January. We believe that understanding how various  
> users really think about their work will lead to new ideas for how  
> workflows need to be structured and interrelate to each other. In  
> other words, it should help us to understand the commonality between  
> workflows that currently occur in multiple tools in multiple ways.  
> Also, although we are not immediately integrating with the workflows  
> of communication, scheduling, and grade reporting, we would like to  
> know how and when users expect their work surrounding learning  
> activities to integrate with those workflows.
>
> This investigation will conclude with an analysis of our findings,  
> including key user types and their functional needs; this phase will  
> lead directly into recommendations for design. Therefore, we hope  
> that a broad range of institutions will contribute to this  
> investigation, especially by providing end-user profiles based on  
> local interviews of instructors and students regarding the work they  
> do with tests, quizzes, and other graded assignments.
>
> If you are interested, please read more about participating in the  
> investigation and sign up for a kick off meeting in mid September  
> 2009 at
>
> http://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/UX/Investigation+Phase
>
> Although it's likely that instructors and students at Stanford are  
> similar in fundemental ways to many users at other schools, it's  
> also likely that other schools have different classroom structures  
> (difference in class size, involvement of assistants or  
> instructional designers, distance learning, and pedagogy) that will  
> have implications for how their users need to work; we want to take  
> these into account as well.
>
> If you have any questions, please let us know.
>
> Keli Amann and Jackie Mai
> User Experience Specialists
> Stanford University, Academic Computing
>
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Daphne Ogle
Senior Interaction Designer
University of California, Berkeley
Educational Technology Services
daphne at media.berkeley.edu
cell (925)348-4372