Week 15: Report

So, this is the final report on this project, for now. The past few weeks of wrapping up this project have been hectic but have progressed smoothly. I met with our client, Duren, for lunch last Thursday to discuss future plans with this project. Not to much later that afternoon, he met with the entire team. Essentially, they have given both he and I excellent feedback on making this process work better for Extension and the COE team next time. As for now, I'm putting the final touches on our project and making sure everything is ready for final submission tomorrow morning.

Week 14: Report

We are getting closer and closer to the final studio showcase and completing our project!! These last few weeks will be busy as we pull everything together.

Last Thursday, the 15th, Remi led a session of alpha-evaluation for our project. The team met Sunday to discuss those findings and determine what work needs to be done to improve our project BEFORE sending this to review with our sample audience. (see Week 14 Assignments).

This week is our Thanksgiving holiday, so we will all be likely working on our own to complete our various parts. We've moved the beta-testing to November 26-28 to accomodate our final changes and be sure to allow time to compile the final report. At the end of this project, I think we will all be pleased with all we have to show for our hard work.

Week 13

This week we've been busy getting ready for the dress rehearsal. Our 6200 consultants have provided work to us, lightening our load for formatting images and importing content. We've had a number of impromptu meetings over the past two weeks, to be sure we've got everything covered for tomorrow night.

Tuesday, most of the group met to discuss our showcase presentation and any other details for Thursday. Tonight, Wednesday, a number of us are meeting to be sure everything is ready to go with Unit 1.

Our evaluators have been contacted and our schedule is being formed for when they can review our product and when we will need to have the material ready. This involves studio students for alpha-testing, our subject matter expert for final review, and sample learners for beta-testing.

It's good to see everything come together, although it is still a bit nerve-wracking as the majority of our work to date has been divvied out in separate parts. I hope it fits together as well as possible for tomorrow. Of course, we will have until Dec 6 to finalize any problem areas, but are hoping to be done with development far before then.

The next few weeks will be busy. We also need to finalize remaining documentation and package our product for delivery to our client. The to-do list is a bit insane at the moment, but should be quickly pared down.

Week 12

Team meetings... weekend work session...

Week 11: Report

Since I haven't written over fall break, I have to say the past two weeks have been busy. Contrary to my post for Week 9, our team really did further work on our storyboards -- formatting text, making placeholders for images, adding basic ideas for interactions, etc. Our prototype will likely be the actual work we present at the dress rehearsal. So, that's the work ahead of us.

I've met outside of the studio with a number of team members over the past two weeks. Daisy and I had a productive graphics session, zeroing in on buttons and screen design for our module, as well as brainstorming a basic template for our Flash files to follow. Daisy, Kazu, HueiHsien, and I met to review the Flash file and talk more in depth about how the interactions would be integrated into it.

We did meet last Thursday for another intense work session. We went through all the storyboards again to iron out any issues with content, images to be used, illustrations needed, and further clarification of ideas. Most of our concepts are pretty solid and ready to be put into action.

Yesterday Kazu, HueiHsien, Ahram and I met to determine our approach to building the interactive items. We continued to iron out problems with the sample Flash file and decided to meet this upcoming Saturday for a work session, to output as much of our interactions as possible -- working together will be more effective for us since we can stop and talk about ideas and problems as needed.

Remi and I have been in contact by email and phone, as she's been testing the use of our sample Flash file. My goal tomorrow night is to assign our consultants to help migrate our static content from the storyboards into the Flash file. Remi has noted items that are unclear and need direction. I've also set up directions for our consultants to follow to help format images that we will import into our Flash file.

We're two weeks out from the dress rehearsal on November 15. I hope our work will fall into place quickly after this weekend's session. Remi and I have talked about starting formative evaluations on November 12.

I feel confident that we will get this work done. I realize that my experience with Flash may make me a bit more assured about this than my teammates, considering the degree of interactions we'll need to produce this weekend. If all goes as planned, we could spend the remaining weeks after the rehearsal doing minor tweaks and finalizing our various documents.

Not to forget, all of our documentation to date has been approved. Our client temporarily passed authorization of documents to the PDCs. This was good since they weren't entirely up to speed on the project's current status.

Documentation and reporting are useful, although awaiting approval for the next steps isn't always how things work here internally. More often it's the case of getting a project done and delivering a final product -- with meetings for Q&A along the way.

Week 9: Report

A good bit has happened since my last posting. Our Task Analysis, Performance Objectives, User Profile, Hardware/software Specs, and Formative Evaluation Plan were all approved by our client.

Daisy has done more work on our screen design and treatment rationale. This document will be coming together very soon with the supporting info for the learning system design. This part of the project will be designed in a pre-set template, so this shouldn't be too much to add.

Kazu, HueiHsien and I have brainstormed ideas for our interactions and test items. We presented these to the team in our last meeting. This past week, while Daisy has done more graphic development, the rest of us have each worked on a prototype for a particular lesson. These should be based on the storyboards presented last week, as well as our team discussion. We're using a basic screen design to determine how much space we have for content and activities in our prototypes. This work will help us line up work for assembling our module. Some of our interactions will require a bit of creative programming and our SME's support through providing and approving test content.

I've also recruited Myra, one of our 6200 consultants, to help look at the page flow of our content, as well as final edits. I really hope we'll be able to divvy out work to our other 6200 consultants soon. I expect we will have graphic work and other parts that we'll need help on.

I've consolidated all of our storyboards into one document that details our project from the top of the learning system to lesson activities. With a little bit of elaboration, this should serve us well for the learning system documentation.

Week 8: Report

Our team meeting tonight was lively, as usual. We went through the project timeline I provided and discussed various deliverables and actions listed. We reviewed Daisy's most recent screen designs and discussed elements to add to it. Ideas of interest from that discussion:

• Captivate suggested as a tool to teach the learner about our module (how to navigate, what to expect, etc.)
• Add navigation to module (help, back/foward buttons, icons for diff activities)
• Use different objects in interface for exercises in particular units.
  • Unit 1: identification, imagery, and case studies (folder with tests, documents)
  • Unit 2: client interactions (phone call)
• Adapt the notebook object to record a synopsis of the lesson, perhaps as closing summary.

The evaluation section of the project timeline was reviewed. Remi, suggest edits as needed. For our beta evaluation, Remi has suggested having 2 tests - one for each unit of our module. I will talk to Duren about who we can ask to do this, as well as timing. The beta eval will probably be near Thanksgiving, which could be difficult if we don't plan ahead.

We've decided to keep up with our time on our blogs, not in a separate spreadsheet. Be sure that you do this!

I suspect our 6200 consultants may be getting antsy from not having had much assigned yet. We are entering our development phase, so we should start distributing tasks very soon.

• Week 8 Assignments

Week 7: Report

This week Remi, Ahram, HueiHsien, and Kazu worked on flowcharts for each of our 3 goals. There is some concern about the size of our content, which we will need to discuss as a group. We've decided on a direction for our treatment and Daisy has been developing those screens. Emily has been working on the flowchart of the online learning system and will be putting together our presentation for the studio briefing tomorrow night.
Our weekly assignments are posted here:

• Week 7: Assignments

Most of our documents and content have been uploaded to the documentation section of our blog:

• Documentation

Hopefully we will begin major development work on our module this next week. We are all beginning to feel the crunch at this point in our project and are anxious to see development underway.

Week 6

The ICC team has spent more time with the task analysis, performance objectives, and test items this week. After reviewing the ordered and somewhat revised content, a number of changes were needed to bring our tasks in line to the plant pathology content. The team has split into sub-groups to develop parts of this tasks and objectives. We will still request a review of this documentation before sending it to our client for sign-off.

Drafts of our formative evaluation plan, hardware/software specs, and user profile have been reviewed by our group, designated 6200 volunteer, and have been sent to Dr. Clinton for review.

An assignment list was not posted this week, although the following items were assigned:

• Ahram, Remi, Daisy review and develop tasks and objectives for:
  • 1a. plant disease
  • 1b. plant disease triangle
  • 1c. pathogen groups
  • 2a. communicating with clients
  • 2c. sample collection
• Emily, HueiHsien, Kazu - review and develop tasks and objectives for:
  • 1d. integrated pest management
  • 2d. sample submission
  • 2e. interpreting sample diagnoses and recommendations
• Myra review the following docs:
  • Formative evaluation draft (Remi)
  • User profile (Kazu)
• Notify 6200 consultants of duties, timelines
• Daisy develop screen design based on group direction in meeting
• Emily ask Duren about access to agents for evaluation
• Emily ask Holly about items for pre- and post-testing

Week 5

The team has been working on a number of documents this week, as outlined in our assignment list. Audra and Brent, two 6200 consultants, along with our SME Holly, have been helping Emily make the content more understandable and functional as lesson material.

• Week 5 Assignments

Duren approved the Scope document and Needs Assessment this week with few changes. He is concerned about CAES-OIT's commitment to developing the system we mock up and has contacted the OIT director with a formal request for service.

• Project Scope - 9/16/07
• Needs Assessment- 9/17/07

Our task analysis and performance objectives have been reviewed by Dr. Clinton. These should be ready to send to our client this weekend or early next week. Our plan is to share these with the SME first, as she is the expert on the subject.

Week 4: Project Documentation

Team Meeting
The team discussion centered on documentation and on the content analysis from the client. The projects’ Instructional goals and objectives were narrowed down.
Team divided required deliverables.
HueiHsien made changes to the Scope document
Kazu made changes to the Needs Analysis document
Ahram Daisy and Remi continued development of the Objectives and Task analysis.
To do for next week: By Tuesday, September 18
Submission of earlier documents to Client for approval
User profile
Treatment Rationale and Description
Hardware/Software Specifications
Screen design Specifications
Formative Evaluation Plan

Week 3: Scope and Needs

The team has been collaborating on the scope document and needs assessment. We've determined a design for our documentation and divyyed up tasks among our group. Remi has taken the place of PM in Emily's absence. Duren has been contacted with a brief timeline of upcoming reports and notification of our current progress.

Our tasks for this week can be seen here:
Week 3: Assignments

(note - this entry is backdated to fit into our timeline.)

Week 2: Defining the Project

Thursday night our team met to discuss items developed last week and to start the activities for this week. We are still waiting on content from our SME. I met with Holly on Monday morning to flesh out what we need from her and give her a general direction for delivering content to us. Hopefully we'll be collecting that on Wednesday. Our client answered a number of our questions regarding the goals and needs of the project, as well as information to describe our learners. At the moment, our needs assessment and project scope are being developed and have been shared with the group for comment. I expect that we will have content tomorrow to review before our next team meeting.

We also presented our project to the 6200 class to recruit consultants. Six people have asked to work with us -- I think they will be great additions to our team. I hope that we can define their objectives in enough time to use their time well. Although we've been getting answers from our clients, it does feel like our project is languishing a little bit in this start-up stage.

To do for next week:

• Outline consultant needs for job fair
• Draft analysis document
• Draft project management plan
• Draft scope document
• Start project activity logs
• Send notes on system and scope to client for approval/negotiation
• SME to provide content outline and rough material by Monday
• Schedule meeting for Week 2 w/ SME Met Monday AM
• Stakeholders to provide direction for agent perspective
• Email roles and responsibilities to all (project and client team)
• Review content with team
• Define team tasks with content to support task analysis
• Initiate task analysis (if content satisfactory)

Week 1: Team Formation

Our first week has been very productive. Thursday night we met after class to plan for our upcoming week. I answered the team's questions about our project and we briefly discussed scope.

We met with our client, SME, and stakeholders on Tuesday. This was an excellent opportunity for our team to gain further clarification on the project requirements, the client's expectations, and our SME's ability to provide content. We also defined the responsibilities for each person on our client-team (who answers for what, has the final say, is able to provide what, etc.). After talking with this group, we narrowed our content to providing a basic introduction to plant pathology and a section on using plant pathology in a county agent's job. This will provide us a context to situate the lessons.

After our client meeting we delegated roles and upcoming tasks.

To do for next week:

• Outline consultant needs for job fair
• Draft analysis document
• Draft project management plan
• Start project activity logs
• Send notes on system and scope to client for approval/negotiation
• SME to provide content outline and rough material by Monday
• Schedule meeting for Week 2 w/ SME
• Stakeholders to provide direction for agent perspective
• Email roles and responsibilities to all (project and client team)