The following Use Case domains are created for discussion at the First Authoring Summit. More specific use cases should be included as sub-sections within them.
Roles (feel free to add more if needed)
Linda Walsh, professor of chemistry
James Smith, instructor, introductory computer languages
Nick, professor of history
Eizabeth Cantor, high school math teacher
Ling Wu, graduate student
Carlos Ramirez, undergraduate student
John Hanson, IS administrator
Celeste, subject librarian for history
Lucy, government documents librarian
1. Site pages (CARET Portal, Anthony & Josh's tool)
Independent of how sites are organized (existing portal, GoogleTools, etc.), there is a need to allow users to easily create pages that can be linked to other pages. These should be as flexible as possible in terms of layout and allow a rich set of content elements to be added to a page, including: marked up text, lists, tables, media objects (video, audio, flash, applets, etc.), and embeddable tools (GoogleTools, Widgets, synoptic Sakai tools, etc.).
1.1 The CARET Use Case
1.2 Syllabus Authoring
An instructor wants to build a home (or other) page for the site that gives students an outline of what will happen in the course. Potential organizational structures include thematic and calendar-based. Each section of the syllabus has a place for the instructor to write a description of that section and to link to relevant resources and activities that the students need.
(to be written)
2. Educational Content (SCORM, Sousa)
Sakai has long had a need for the authoring and delivery of educational content. Such pages need to permit very rich content, be very flexible in terms of layout, support interactivity (questions, etc.), and be grouped into larger structures (sequences, linked navigation, modules, packages, etc.). Ideally, educational content should support existing and emerging standards such as SCORM, OCW, IMS-QTI, IMS-LI, IMS-TI, etc. Such content should be assignable, gradeable, trackable, timed for release, and re-usable (templates, easy copy and edit, etc.).
2.1 The SCORM Upload Use Case
An instructor has access to an existing SCORM page, perhaps a guided tutorial on using a Mass Spectrometer.
Prof. Walsh has found a very nice tutorial on the use of Mass Spectrometers offered under the Creative Common license. She'd like to add this to her graduate course on organic chemistry, since students will be using equipment like this in the lab portion of the course.
She downloads the package to her computer, logs into Sakai and navigates to her Organic Chemistry 654 course site. Use the Sakai SCORM tool, she uploads the MassSpec package, which installs it on her course site. The SCORM tool asks her if this will be assigned for a grade. Giving it some thought, she decides to make it a required assignment and tells the system to make it an assignment, contributing 5 points towards the total course grade. Later she will decide when to assign it.
Students who access the MassSpec content are presented with a sequenced set of pages. These pages may have static content (pictures, text, etc.) or may be interactive (questions, exercises, games, etc.). Progress though the tutorial is monitored. Students can save their current location and resume it later (this might be automatic). Reaching the end of the tutorial, having completed the exercises included in it, the student is assigned a grade for the assignment, automatically posted to the course gradebook.
2.2 The SCORM Authoring Use Case
(to be written)
2.3 The Sousa Authoring Use Case
James Smith is teaching an Introduction to PHP programming course for the coming semester. He's setting up the course to include a series of implementation exercises that conceptually build as the course progresses. Each course module will be presented as a lecture in class followed by a programming lecture. After all of the students have passed in their programs, Mr.Smith would like to provide a step-by-step look at how he wrote that program.
Mr. Smith presents his lectures using PowerPoint in class. He would post them as a Sakai Resource in PPT form, but not all of his students have PowerPoint (hard as it is to believe). The slides are posted in PowerPoint form, but for those that don't have it, they are converted to a series of images and loaded as a Sousa presentation. Sousa has a bulk load feature (TBD) that makes this easy.
For the review notes, instructor Smith creates a series of Sousa pages that progressively show how the program was written. He takes advantage of Sousa's grid layout to put the code in one cell and comments in another. Where a user interface or database schema is needed, these are easily added as images in a third cell. After writing several of these pages, a pattern begins to emerge, so Smith creates Sousa templates for the common page structures. This speeds up the content entry and provides a sense of uniformity to the presentation.
After the pages are created, they are grouped together as a Sousa presentation. This is published and made available with a timed release date. While the review is not required, Mr. Smith is interested in who looks at it, so he turns on tracking to monitor which students read it and how much. This will give him feedback as a teacher in how effect this approach is.
2.4 The OCW Use Case
Part of Prof. Walsh's grad course on organic chemistry will focus on the chlorophyll molecule. After a quick search on a few OCW repositories, she find a nice one from Utah State that includes some great molecular structure diagrams. She downloads the OCW package and installs it in Sakai using the OCW tool.
The material on chlorophyll goes into too much detail that Ms. Walsh feels will distract the students. Using the Sakai Resources tool, she works her way through the loaded content deleting what is not needed. The result is a bit choppy, so she creates a few pages that tie things together once more and put them into the context of the course she is teaching.
3. Search and Research (Sakaibrary)
(Jim Eng to describe the high level Search and Research scenario)
3.1 The Sakaibrary Use Case
Context: Nick is teaching J300, a history class titled Foreign Relations in the American Century. He assigns his students to write a 15-20 page research paper using both primary and secondary resources. To complete the assignment, students will need to use print, digitally created, and licensed electronic resources.
Nick contacts Celeste, the subject librarian for history, and explains to her the parameters of the research paper assignment and his expectations. Celeste works with Lucy, the Government Documents Librarian, to use the Research Guides tool in Sakai to develop a class assignment research guide based on a template from an existing collection of templates for different types of guides. The Research Guide tool enables Lou and Celeste to collaborate and develop the guide together.
Based on the requirements of the assignment, the librarians include the following in the guide:
- Links to and search tips for the "best" or most relevant licensed databases, in this case America: History and Life, Worldwide Political Science Abstracts, Politics and International Relations: A Sage Collection; and Historical Washington Post. These databases are selected from a list organized by subject, as in the "Search Library Resources" function in Citations Helper.
- Predefined clickable searches against relevant databases and catalogs, selected from a list organized by subject
- Predefined search boxes constrained to execute a "Search Library Resources" search against relevant resources selected from a list organized by subject
- Lists of citations to individual books and articles potentially relevant as background material for the assignment
- Original text to guide students through the research process for the course assignment
- Links to assignment-related instructional guides or tutorials on the library's web site or the open web on topics such as evaluating information sources, avoiding plagiarism or citing online sources, identifying best search terms, etc.
- Contact information (e-mail, phone, and/or embedded chat) for selected librarians and the undergraduate library reference desk, obtained from the library web site's content management system via a Web Services request
After the librarians publish the guide to make it available to Nick and the students in his course through the Research Guide tool in Nick's course site, Nick then edits the guide to add some additional citations and suggestions that he thinks will be of value to his students.
4. Portfolio
(Someone to describe the high level Portfolio scenario)
4.1 The OSPI Use Case
(to be written)
5. Other
5.1 Other Possible Scenarios
We may want to make a distinction between support for established research projects vs. student research projects, the former being more formal and may even have imposed documentation practices and standards.
5.2 Other Work
Some initial work has been done to define requirements and describe existing applications. See:
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What Should an Entity Look Like? (DG: Development (Building Sakai))