Class Group Project: Develop a COP/OC for students learning about COPs/OCs

 

Project goals

The goal of the project is to develop a community of practice/online community for students studying this topic. In other words to develop the resources and communications media needed for a COP/COI. Special attention will be needed to ensure that the COP has good sociability and usability.

 

The COP platform could be available on the Internet or it could be contained within an Intranet. This will depend on how the project shapes up, what you as the community developers want, and what we decide is technically supportable and should/should not be on view to the outside world.

 

Another goal is for each of you to experience working in a development team. To do this you will be a member of small team that has responsibility for a particular part of the development. Your team will also need to liaise with the class team. This will involve you in developing schedules, managing your own work and collaborating with others.

 

Project deliverables

The overall deliverable is a functioning community of practice/online community for students learning about this topic.

 

Development

The project will be developed by six teams working collaboratively within their team and with other teams as needed.  You will broadly follow the iterative participatory community-centered development approach described in Preece, 2000 (Chapters 7-10). This development methodology will be presented in class on weeks 10/6 and 10/20. The initial part of the cycle focuses on understanding users’ needs and requirements. Since you will be developing for a user group like yourselves, you have an advantage but you still need to put considerable effort into brainstorming what you and those like you want.

 

Coordination between teams

At points during the semester we (Drs. Dicker and Preece – your project directors) will work with the whole class to review progress and problems and help to facilitate progress. You will also have half and hour, and sometimes more, at the end of each class to do project work, so from now on it will help if you come in and sit with your project team. In previous classes this time has been used informally. We circulate around the teams discussing and offering suggestions and the teams mix and liaise with each other as they need to. Indeed part of the aim of the class project is for you to gain experience of working in a large team to create a COP.

 

Drs Diker and Preece will be the overall project directors, but each team manager needs to make sure that their team not only does its own work but also liaises and cooperates with the other teams. This can be a wonderful experience but at times it can also be frustrating. You need both to be organized and patient with your peers. Some students find team work daunting initially but in the end we have received much more positive feedback than negative feedback from students doing team projects.

 

The team managers and liaisons are as follows, and a general schedule of class activity is presented below. This schedule will be adapted to meet your needs as we progress and the project develops. At this stage it is possible only to present a general guideline of activities.

 

Teams

 

Team

Manager

Liaison

Content

Laudie Baer

To be decided

Design

Abigail Rudman

Anne Parrera

Editorial

Terry Darr

Lynne Plettenberg

Implementation

Rachel Bradley

Paul Matthews

Sociability

Viva Weinraub

Jennifer Tate

Usability

Tracy Thompson

Rachelle McCord

 

Schedule

 

Date

Activity

10/6

Review project goals and deliverables.

Meet other teams. Start by focusing on the team most closely associated with your work. For example: content & editorial, design & implementation, sociability & usability. Try to determine what they will do and what you will do and where there will be overlaps. Eventually you will interact with all the other teams individually and collectively.

Determine and schedule your own team’s work and plan coordination with other teams.

Work as a class to understand the user requirements and scope the project.

10/13

No class – Jewish holiday

10/20

Continue project with input as needed from Drs. Diker and Preece.

10/27

Mid-project review of progress.

5-minute presentation of the status of each team’s work.

11/3

Continue project with input as needed from Drs. Diker and Preece.

11/10

Continue project with input as needed from Drs. Diker and Preece.

11/17

Mid-project review of progress.

5-minute presentation of the status of each team’s work.

11/24

No class – Thanksgiving

12/1

Review and identify any tasks that need to be completed by the 12/8 deadline.

12/8

Completed project – time to celebrate!

 

 

Individual project team work and deliverables

Each team will be responsible for determining its own activities within the limits suggested below. Each team will also determine the details of its own deliverables in collaboration with the other teams and the Project Directors. Each team will also document the choices it makes (see below).

 

Content team

The content team will be responsible for collecting content for the site. They will collect the individual Netscan projects, the individual presentations and essays. You will decide how to present them. For example, you should expect to categorize them, write overviews and introductions, maybe provide a catalog so that it is easier for readers to find what they need; maybe write additional content if an aspect that you consider to be important is not covered. Search for good websites and write an introduction to the links. Add other content as you consider appropriate.

 

The project manager should record what the team decides to do, who is responsible for each task and what the schedule should be. In order to do the latter, the project manager will need to work, supported by the liaison, with other teams to make sure that your material is ready when needed and acceptable to the class as a whole. So for example, the editorial team will be pleased to get material as soon as possible to edit. They do not want to receive everything just before the end of semester. They will also want to talk with you about editorial standards. The design team will want to discuss how to present and structure the material.

 

Design team

The design team will work on the overall design of the web material and the communication component. They will work with the class and usability and sociability teams to refine input about users needs in order to determine what kind of functionality is needed. They will then work with the implementation team to identify and suggest modifications to the software. The design team will not write code but you are expected to produce sketches and mock-ups of screens to show how the community site will appear. This includes recommendations about sequences of screens and justification for those recommendations.

 

The project manager should record what the team decides to do, who is responsible for each task and what the schedule should be. In order to do the latter, the project manager will need to work, supported by the liaison, with other teams to make sure that your material is ready when needed. For example, you will work with the implementation team, usability team and the other teams. It is likely that the design team will need to do the most liaising with other teams.

 

Editorial team

The editorial team will have to work with the content team to make sure that they are not left will all their work at the end. The editorial team should have a say in some design decisions too. For example, they will want to influence which font to use, which colors to use for which kinds of texts and buttons. They may want to develop a style guide into which the content will be entered. This would avoid accidental changes to fonts. The editorial team will also ensure that diagrams are readable and not ambiguous and that they are appropriately placed. They will edit English and check grammar and punctuation. They could also produce a glossary or help determine keywords if keyword searches are provided. Copyright is also be an editorial issue. The trick will be to get as much work done upfront as possible and to get as much material from the content team as early on as possible.

 

The project manager should record what the team decides to do, who is responsible for each task and what the schedule should be. In order to do the latter, the project manager will need to work, supported by the liaison, with other teams to make sure that your material is ready when needed. For example, the editorial team will work closely with the content team.

 

Implementation team

The implementation team will be responsible for working with the design team and usability team to identify an appropriate software platform and then to implement any additional software and content. Having worked with several teams we strongly recommend that you should not select software that requires a lot of coding or special features and servers to run it. Accessability and ease of use are important criteria that you should strive to achieve. You could certainly use Blackboard or WebCT if you wish. Alternatively you could design a website using a tool such as Dreamweaver or Frontpage and then link in an open source bulletin board and or blog but this would be a lot more work. So you need to consider the trade-offs. Remember the goal is to select software that is easy to access and has good usability but also does the job.

 

The project manager should record what the team decides to do, who is responsible for each task and what the schedule should be. In order to do the latter, the project manager will need to work, supported by the liaison, with other teams to make sure that your material is ready when needed. You will need to liaise closely will all the other teams. You will probably work mostly with design, usability and sociability early in the project but gradually you will need more contact with content and editorial.

 

Sociability team

The sociability team will think about what sociability issues must be considered in order to make the community function well. For example, should there be a registration page, what kind of rules and policies are needed, how should presence be represented for individuals and the community, how can we encourage people to contribute, how can we reward participation or donations of content to the community. Is a moderator or manager needed?

 

The project manager should record what the team decides to do, who is responsible for each task and what the schedule should be. In order to do the latter, the project manager will need to work, supported by the liaison, with other teams to make sure that your material is ready when needed. The sociability team will work closely with the usability team to design and test sociability ideas. They will also work with the design and implementation teams to test out their ideas and provide advice.

 

Usability team

The usability team will work with the design and other teams to help understand the users’ needs and ensure that software is selected and designed that supports those needs. In particular, the usability team will focus on ensuring that such things as navigation, feedback, control and access are good for all users. As the design is developed the usability team will work with the design team to test their design ideas with potential users. They will provide feedback from these tests that influences how the design is developed and how it is implemented. They may use several different testing methods depending on when in the design cycle tests are needed. Likely methodologies include: informal interviews and observations, formal interviews and questionnaires and user tests to check for specific usability problems.

 

The project manager should record what the team decides to do, who is responsible for each task and what the schedule should be. In order to do the latter, the project manager will need to work, supported by the liaison, with other teams to make sure that your material is ready when needed. The usability team will work with the design team to test design ideas that are created to support user requirements. The team will also work with the implementation team to test the design as it is implemented. Since we know that usability and sociability often overlap you will need to liaise often with the sociability team.

 

IMPORTANT NOTE to All teams

All teams and team members need to record the DECISIONS that they make, WHAT they do, WHEN and WHY they do it? Each team will write up an account of its activities and contribution to the community development. The Editorial team will then be responsible for reminding team managers that their members must attend to this and for collecting and editing the reports into a single document which will be presented on the community site. Whenever possible your document should provide references or refer to user tests, or conversations with the class, to justify why you make the decisions that you make. Fulfilling this requirement is an important part of the learning experience that will often involve you in additional research.

 

The goal of this part of the project is to provide a clear, authoritative description of the design process and decision making for visitors to the community. The story will start with the goal of the project and how the team collected and tied to understand the needs of the user population and progress through all stages of development. Another way of looking of thinking about this, is that you are providing a real-life case study of the method discussed in Preece, 2000. Your description will provide the missing details and document how you adapted the method for this instance of its use.

 

The team should credit itself and individual team members for the work that they do. We expect this document to be the equivalent of several pages long with links, references, illustrations etc. If you wish you may include photographs of your group and artifacts that illustrate your work – e.g., design sketches, questionnaires, action pictures, etc. We will assume that the COP will be public on the Internet so take account of privacy and safety as you work.

 

Finally, having thirty people (32 including Drs. Diker and Preece) work on a project may at times challenge us organizationally but we should be able to produce a really impressive COP that will provide a valuable resource for you, future students at UMD and researchers and others in the broader community who are interested in this topic.

 

We know there will be many questions along the way so use this document as a general guide for your work.

 

Good luck and enjoy the work!