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.

Working Project Documentation

Finalized docs (awaiting approval)

Supporting work

• Flash template (in development)
• Screen Design
• Treatment Rationale
• Storyboard: Unit 1, Lessons 1-3
• Storyboard: Unit 1, Lesson 4
• Storyboard: Unit 2
• Learning System Design
• Flowchart: Unit 1, Lessons 1-3
• Flowchart: Unit 1, Lesson 4
• Flowchart: Unit 2

Week 10: Assignments

To do for next week:

• Edits to storyboards (assignments below)
  • changes discussed in 10/18 meeting
  • further development if missing test/activity items
  • review images for your section, specify which ones to use where
  • if lacking images, note what you want and where - including illustrations, graphics
  • if lacking content, note what you need and where (specifically test/activity items)
  • tell Emily what content/images you need

• Lesson 1 - HueiHsien, Emily
• Lesson 2 - Ahram
• Lesson 3 - HueiHsien, Remi
  • HueiHsien add in all content
  • Remi help develop test questions
• Lesson 4 - Emily
• Unit 2 - Kazu
• Prepare flash file for development
  • interface, symbols, design guidelines - Daisy, Emily
  • plan for consistency between files (Flash guidelines - layers, scenes, names, etc.)
• Submit documents for review - Emily
• Contact Holly for content needs - Emily

Team meeting: October 25, 4-6pm, 603 Aderhold
(regular meeting room, Em check availability)

• show group plan for Flash file
• divvy out development work based on storyboards

Prototypes and resources

Storyboards
Coming soon

Edited content for storyboards (10-17)

• Unit 1, Lesson 1
• Unit 1, Lesson 2
• Unit 1, Lesson 3 (in review)
• Unit 1, Lesson 4 (in review)
• Unit 2, Lesson 1-4

Prototype resources

• Prototype_doc (word file - preferred)
• Prototype_ppt (ppt file)
• Working example for IPM
• Graphic resources