Immersion -- Week 9

The "virtues" of virtual communication

As I mentioned before, in order to consider what is possible in this "virtual collaboration center" for T/TAC Online, the design team is going to play with the various virtual communication tools that are available at T/TAC. So we dove right in and decided to conduct a virtual meeting using Adobe Connect. I set up my computer with the various downloads, tested the audio and played with uploading documents for participants to view and sharing my desktop. We started the meeting. Some had our webcams working, which initially seemed pretty cool. Okay, so the video representation of ourselves was about the size of my thumbtip, but at least we could see ourselves, right? And maybe the audio was a bit garbled too. So we decided to turn off our webcams. That seemed to improve the audio quality. I was facilitating the meeting and initially things seemed to go fairly smoothly. Then one person couldn't hear me. We logged off and logged back onto the session. Okay, now we could hear each other again. I shared my desktop so the group could edit a document together. There was such a delay between what I could see on my screen versus what the group could view through the Connect meeting that feedback on what I was trying to edit on my screen was tedious at best. Then someone in the group had to leave. The moment she logged off the session, another team member's audio went out. By the end of the session, I was about to throw my laptop out the window.

So the supposed "virtues" of virtual communication? Right now I don't see any. Perhaps I will have a different opinion if you ask me the same question a week from now. This experience makes me think of the article on Donald Norman's analysis of the failures of the personal computer that we discussed in my performance centered design class. This experience also clarifies exactly how much work we will have to put in as a team to adequately explore all of the limitations of these virtual tools in order to effectively design this virtual collaboration center.

Immersion -- Week 8

I love fuchsia -- can we get more fuchsia in this?

So the Immersion team recently spent some time talking to the "tools" experts within T/TAC - these are the folks that use some of the collaborative tolls I spoke of in a previous post. They use Adobe Connect, Polycom, and sometimes very sophisticated video conferencing equipment to communicate across the state. We also met with the client again to discuss his high level vision of the virtual collaboration/conferencing center. And while this ambitious goal is very attractive to those (like me) who want to explore the capabilities of such technologies, when pressed to determine who else we could talk to (a.k.a. the audience), the client told us to follow up with T/TAC staff in the client's region - when this virtual collaboration center is supposed to be designed with all T/TAC staff in mind - that is T/TAC staff across the entire state of Virginia. Anecdotal evidence indicate that audience members in other T/TAC regions do not have access to these nifty communication tools as do the folks in Region 4, nor do they have the support to operate these tools.

So what are we doing here? The client likes the color fuchsia, so we are going to give him more fuchsia? There is this nagging thought that our focus did not truly match the needs of our audience. As we struggled with determining the scope of our audience, we met with another stakeholder outside of Region 4. While this stakeholder probably would have preferred that we tackle another priority from our Performance Analysis, she warmed to the idea of developing and piloting the virtual collaboration center. Why? She reminded us that the initial concept of T/TAC Online was only embraced by a few people - and it has taken six years to become established as the main resource for public school staff on issues related to students with special needs. She believes that using a key group of opinion leaders to diffuse the idea of the virtual collaboration center to other T/TAC staff would work. We discussed asking one of the T/TAC Priority Project teams that embraces technology to be our "guinea pigs" during the design process. And besides - let's get real here - we only have until mid-May to work on this project. This is where we need to make a realistic decision and move forward knowing that we thoroughly considered all of our options.

Immersion -- Week 6

Completion of the Performance Analysis

We have finally finished our performance analysis! After meeting with a myriad of SMEs on all things T/TAC and T/TAC Online, it looks like we actually have some direction with our project. We met with the client this week and presented some straw (in other words, we gave the client some draft recommendations to respond to). After processing his feedback, we came up with the following priorities:

1. Develop a virtual collaboration center that would enable T/TAC staff to take advantage of existing but currently under-used conferencing and collaborative software resources.
2. Create resources to support T/TAC staff development with respect to their ability to use newer training creation tools.
3. Customize T/TAC Online content for individual users.

Our initial thoughts focused on creating a collaborative working environment for all T/TAC Online users and harnessing the "collective intelligence" of the audience through Web 2.0 tools. However, due to the perceived lack of control over the conversations that could occur in this type of environment, there would not be support for such an open exchange of ideas and information. But, if such an environment was created for T/TAC staff to enhance their ability to deliver training across the state, then this type of "virtual collaboration center" would probably be embraced. We discovered that T/TAC has recently acquired all sorts of neat conferencing tools that will allow T/TAC stakeholders to deliver and receive training virtually. So, the iTeam (Immersion Team) will get a chance to become familiar with such items as Flash, Camtasia, Articulate, Captivate, podcasting, and Adobe Connect. I can't wait to play with these innovative tools. I say -- let the games begin!

So, now that the Performance Analysis is complete, it is onto the Needs Assessment to determine which of the above priorities we will focus on.