Master Project Evaluation

6/2/2000

Yasuhisa Kato ()

Compliments:

  • Nice story at the beginning!
  • Good recovery from the runaway PowerPoint.
  • Nice choice of project – this is a community that is probably quite willing to provide feedback
  • Nice analysis on needs and problems
  • The background of the project was well-explained
  • Provided practical solutions
  • Great accomplishment overall
  • Your structured approach has paid dividends in that you have solid results to show for your efforts.
  • The problem you're addressing with your project is one that has been active in academic technology circles for the past few years. You raised several interesting questions and points, particularly the need to develop relationships prior to the successful use of the tool. That has been proven in recent work on campus with these tools.
  • Your description of the CASTL Program was comprehensive which helped set the stage.
  • A well-organized presentation of your thoughtfully designed project. Your slides did a fine job of giving the background on Carnegie and Workspace. The handout was helpful, too, in following the flow of your story.

Criticisms:

  • The presentation flow was little unclear (in terms of the structure, data and examples demonstration, etc.
  • Lack of theoretical framework for the design
  • Could have used “situated” examples and data to present the new system
  • Could have focused on few “Big” problems with the current system and made his presentation around those problems.
  • Demo or sneak preview should be much longer!
  • Face to face meetings are great, but there are opportunities to create and enhance relationships (rather than just support ) that exist only on-line
  • Knowledge capture and the need for moderation would be a nice component to address in the presentation.
  • A more thorough demonstration of the system itself would have been interesting and helpful. The short demonstration left me with a lot of questions.
  • The glimpses we got of the design that is under development were intriguing. I wish we could have seen more. The rationale you gave for the project as a whole was excellent. I'd like to see more detail on the rationale for the main features of your design.

Suggestions/Comments:

  • This is a huge project and we have been tackling dozens of problems to redesign the system. Yasu’s contribution has been really significant to us. Thanks.
  • What is next? What is the potential for this redesign in application?
  • I would have enjoyed the chance to ask you more detailed questions about your findings and thoughts on use of technology-based communication tools
  • How do you assure meaningful and sustained use of the tool? Must someone prompt usage by asking questions, tossing out ideas, or managing a project through this communication mechanism?
  • What are the factors that contribute to, or detract from successful use of the tool. Gender, culture, and personality issues are often discussed. How can you use the tool in a way that allows contributions from all the members of the community?
  • How do you structure peer editing using an online environment? For example, you showed a sample of a Word document being placed online for others to review. Does the author receive comments privately or is a discussion started? Is the original work annotated in some way? Why would you suggest a particular method?
  • If you're interested in similar projects, you might check into two efforts at Stanford to understand how communities use technology to communicate and share ideas. The Stanford Learning Lab is studying this topic in conjunction with several classes at Stanford, and Rich Holeton in Residential Computing studied the use of technology in dormitories. His findings are at: The Learning Lab work is focused on project teams working at a distance (similar to your work) and Holten's work is focused on the human factors. While it is not closely related in content, the human factors are common to all such efforts.
  • Lots of these ideas would also be valuable for LDT next year. I'd like to talk to you about setting some of them up on the ldt server maybe as prototypes.
  • Since time pressures are so great for teachers, I wonder if it wouldn't be good to think about ways to avoid duplication of effort. As it stands now, if I were to use Workspace, I'd have to do all that I normally do in writing papers, planning, etc., and then in addition, use Workspace. Suppose there were a way to have Workspace be my desktop interface, so that I could call up Word from it when I wanted to write and just do a Save As to post a document on Workspace and on my hard drive, too? Suppose I could keep my scholarly research agenda on Workspace, my research schedule, drafts of papers, etc. - all my research-related stuff on Workspace…. That way I wouldn't have to spend any additional time adding things to Workspace.
  • Maybe you could design some tools that further scholars' research on teaching. For instance, suppose Workspace prompted them on sections to include in a research proposal, prompted them to get feedback from peers on research ideas, to identify the other scholars worldwide working on related work, etc. and have them enter all this directly into Workspace. Then this might generate a list of people to send preprints to or to ask for preprints from, and the like. Sort of mentor the user to use good scholarly practices in research on teaching.
  • Maybe Workspace could allow users to 'call' for group responses. For instance, users might call for a brainstorm or a critical review or suggestions of related research. The call would go out from Workspace via e-mail and a discussion forum would be set up automatically for people to respond to.
  • I liked the idea of a host or moderator, too.