Content Management Tools & Scenarios

Content Management Tools (Heuristic Overview)

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Scenarios (Cognitive Walkthroughs)

Scenarios describe user activities.  They include the context in which the activity happens and may include one to many tasks to complete the scenario.  To truly understand users needs in a product we want to look holistically at how tasks are related; the order in which they happen, how information is shared across them, what needs to be remembered across them, etc.  For this reason we want to evaluate Sakai based on scenarios (or activities) rather than tasks(or use cases). 

During product design we typically flesh out a scenario in story form (for an example, see the Functional Requirements"Lightbox" scenarios).   For purposes of the UI walkthrough, we'll use fairly high level scenarios.  It will be up to each evaluator to utilize their knowledge of users in determining the details of the activity.  Having several evaluators focus on the same scenarios will help ensure we cover the various typical paths through a scenario.  Capturing the steps you take through scenario is valuable information. 

Content management scenarios

We've decided to use high level scenarios rather than specifying the exact steps to complete the scenario as we want to understand how people find their way in Sakai.  Many activities can be completed in various ways.  Use the path that makes most sense to you as you are "being Sarah".  Capturing the steps you take is important and will be valuable information as we analyze our results. 

Remember that as you walk through these scenarios, you are taking on the role of the specified persona..."climbing in their head, if you will". 

Instructors (see Sarah)

  1. The term starts in 2 weeks and you need to get your course site ready.  Setup your course site and include making applicable course materials available.   This has been purposefully left vague for you to determine what materials and when you want to make them available.  Some example materials are:  syllabus, course readings, assignments, discussion topics, schedule, etc.  Knowing how stretched thin Sarah is, it's likely that she does the set up over several sessions.
  2. You would like students to comment on a discussion topic each week.  In addition, they'll need to respond to at least one other post.  Get your Forum tool read.
  3. You're schedule has changed because of a conference you need attend midway through the term.  You won't be available to lecture so you want to provide students with a hands-on activity to complete during the week.  Update your syllabus and class materials to reflect the change.
  4. Create an assignment for students to complete next week,  make it available to them and let them know when and how to get started.
  5. Get the term's weekly assignments set up and available on the site.  Your plan is to make the assignments accessible to students 1 week prior to their due dates.
  6. You'll be teaching the same class this term that you taught last year.  Get your course site setup for the new course.  You are making a few tweaks to the course but it is essentially the same as the last time you taught it.
  7. You've just run across some really interesting articles about next week's class topic.  Make the articles available to students and make any needed adjustments to your course schedule, syllabus, etc.
  8. There's a public event coming up in 2 weeks that you think might be of interest to your students.  You can assume there's a website for the event.  Let student's know about it.
  9. Your lecture today included comparisons of various images of Berkeley over the years.  You want students to be able to review and study those images in your course site.  Make them available.
  10. For the midterm, you want students to write a 10 page paper reflecting on the lesson's learned at this midpoint in the term.  They should include a discussion of any areas of concern.  You are giving students 2 weeks to do the midterm which will be due 2 weeks from Thursday.  Get it all ready to go.  Make sure student's will know it's available at the appropriate time.
  11. You know how students like to take lecture notes right on your ppt slides so you've promised that they will be available 1 hour before class meets.  Make this afternoon's lecture slides available.  Lecture is only 1 1/2 hours away so you may want to alert students that they are available.
  12. Provide students with the "study sheet" for the upcoming exam.  This is left vague intentionally but one note is that you may want utilize some of the material already on the site.
  13. You provide students with a new website of interest with each week's topic.  Make usabilityfirst.com the site for next week.
  14. You just saw an interesting news article on-line.  Give students access to it in the site and let them know it's available.

Teaching Assistant (see Yu Jin)
To do these scenarios, you'll need to create sections in your site.  Let's say there are 4 discussion sections along with the main lecture.  You are 1 of 4 TAs, each of you is responsible for 1 discussion section.  Assign yourself as the TA for one on the sections.

  1. Post your sections discussion topics for the term for YOUR students.
  2. Yesterday's discussion was brainstorm on the state of the business schools.  You captured the discussion from the chalk board and want to share it with YOUR students via the course site.
  3. You collaboratively created a final exam study sheet with the other TAs for the class.  Share it with students.
  4. You are responsible for grading assignments from the students in your discussion section.  Make the assignments available to them.  You should create at least one assignment that Ed will then complete and you'll grade. 
  5. Once Ed has completed his assignment (below), grade it.
  6. Others?

Student (see Ed)

NOTE:  the instructor scenarios will need to be complete prior to completing student scenarios 

  1. (tick) Your instructor has made next week's assignment available.  You are to write a 10 page paper reflecting on what you've learned half way through the term.  Complete and turn in the assignment (since this is a paper you likely do this over a number of sittings).  NOTE:  You must have created this assignment as an instructor first. - Kathy Moore
  2. (tick) Each week you need to post a topic and comment on one other student's post.  Do your homework for this week's topic.  You can respond to your own comment. - Kathy Moore
  3. (tick) Figure out what the instructor expects you to do this week for class. - Kathy Moore
  4. You've been assigned a group paper to write.  Share the final version with your group (you are the final editor) and ask for feedback by a particular deadline.
  5. Turn in your group assignment from above.
  6. Manage (author, view, organize) deliverables for my group's semester project.  Once in final version submit to instructor.
  7. Take a quiz your instructor has made available on the course site.
  8. You having a particularly busy week.  You want to quickly see if there's anything you need to pay attention to in your course site for the week.  Do it.
  9. You are a student in a HCI course.  The instructor has requested you create a project site and use the wiki to create a project overview.
  10. Complete and turn in the assignment posted by your TA.

Researchers (see Andrew)

I'll create an account for everyone in bSpace so you can create project sites.  For several of these scenarios we'll probably want to coordinate and be the team members...that are authoring a document together for instance. 

  1. Setup your project site including giving your team of 8 access to the site.
  2. Author a document with your research team (perhaps we can team up on this for it to work)
  3. Share a document (other objects?) with a select subset of the research team
  4. Create and share the project plan and progress with the rest of the team
  5. Share reference information for the project (websites, documents, etc.) with the rest of the team.
  6. Your research group is planning a conference presentation. Create it together using your project site as the collaborative space.