17 Dec 2009, 11:30am - 1pm EST, Sakai002 Conference Bridge (+1-812-856-7060/156.56.240.9, Code: 350#, PIN: 72524#)

We will be using Breeze for screen sharing at: http://breeze.iu.edu/libsakai/

Where We Are

• Since our last meeting, all 10 participating institutions have completed user interviews. We have a total of 25 interviews completed.
• Debriefing sessions with 9 schools covering 18 interviews have been completed.
• Debriefing sessions and analyzing notes (including those that have been debriefed) continue.

Agenda

1. Introductions
2. Update on the interviews completed - who have we talked to?
3. Preliminary trends based on analyzing interview notes and debriefing sessions
4. Where we are headed with the data - personas, workflow models, revisiting problem/vision, scenarios, potential second-round interviews & observations, requirements
5. Setting a new time to meet in 2010?

Meeting Notes

In attendance

Sorry! We weren't able to catch names for all the individuals attending - please feel free to add yourself or send Gaurav a message if you do not have a wiki account!

Summary

Thanks to everyone who was able to make it to the meeting! The focus of our meeting was summarizing the 25 instructor interviews and observations recently completed as part of the research phase of this project. The rest of this summary is broken down into the following sections: Interview Summary Stats, Preliminary Trends, Next steps

Interview Summary Stats

We have completed a total of 25 interviews: 20 faculty, 3 GSIs and 2 staff assistants. Many more faculty have been interviewed than GSIs and staff assistants. Twenty faculty interviews is a great starting point, however, and as we work through faculty data, we can determine what other groups should be represented. We will likely need to consider students, librarians and instructional designers at some level. What level that is depends on the time and other resources we have available.

We have good distribution across different department areas.

For more details on the distribution of our interviewees, please see our Interviewee Recruitment Summary spreadsheet.

Preliminary Trends

Our main research question for this user study was: Why and how do instructors use scholarly resources in preparing and conducting their courses?

We asked interview questions and did observations to understand more about instructors in the following major areas:

• Motivations and Goals - What are the instructor's goals? What does the instructor enjoy doing?
• Mental Model - How does the instructor think about work, resources, services & systems?
• Activities - What kinds of activities does the instructor perform? Do they occur regularly or occasionally?
• Opportunities - What are the instructor's problems and frustrations? What tasks or activities do they avoid?
• Interactions - Who or what does the instructor consult or work with and why?
• Process - How does the instructor make decisions and perform tasks? What information do they need or use?

We have a few basic, preliminary trends that we have observed based on interviews and debriefing sessions so far. As we continue collecting and analyzing the data, these preliminary results will likely change as we learn more.

Motivations and Goals

• Almost all instructors cited interacting with students as the most enjoyable part of their jobs as instructors. They demonstrated various ways in which they try and keep up with how students are progressing and creating new opportunities to interact with students.
• Many instructors cited sharing their enthusiasm for their subject with students as the most enjoyable part of their jobs as instructors. They demonstrate a desire to make courses engaging, current and more relevant for their students.
• Some instructors seem heavily influenced by career security in their jobs as instructors. They demonstrate a priority on research, publishing and gaining recognition in their field.

Mental Model - How instructors think about and see scholarly resources

• Some instructors hold a traditional view of scholarly resources. They use only peer-reviewed academic work and other "library resources." They have their favorite, respected, "go-to" journals and databases that they use almost exclusively.
• Some instructors consider anything and everything useful for learning and teaching. They are almost offended by the "scholarly" label for only certain resources and think that learning can be found anywhere.
• Most instructors have a hybrid view of scholarly resources. They make distinctions between scholarly (peer-reviewed) and non-scholarly (Wikipedia, YouTube, popular news articles) and use both, depending on the context.
  • Question: Are these distinctions primarily based on the discipline and the context of the course they are teaching?
    • Not sure. We have not broken down the findings by discipline as yet.

Activities - Major activities that use scholarly resources

• Many instructors use scholarly resources as readings and for assignments in their courses. These can range from peer-reviewed journal articles to popular news stories. Some instructors expressed a very specific idea of the criteria they used to select these resources while others had a much more ambiguous process. One theme that emerged was choosing readings to suit the appropriate level of the students.
• Many instructors use scholarly resources in building their notes and lectures to be presented in class or shared online. To stay current, instructors will look for relevant news, applications to students and debatable topics. To stay engaging, instructors are looking for multimedia: images, videos.
• Many instructors use scholarly resources for general preparation work for their courses. Instructors that have taught a course before or inherited a course from a previous instructor will spend time updating previously used materials: adding new examples, updating references, etc. They also do personal reading to stay up to date in their field.

Problems and Frustrations (Opportunities)

• Some instructors complained explicitly of too many clicks to get to full text. Others were not explicit, but mentioned it would be nice to know as soon as possible whether full text was available for an article. Others demonstrated that if there was not full text available for an article, they would abandon it completely, even if it was a good article.
• Though not immediately related to scholarly resources, grading was mentioned almost across all instructors as the least enjoyable part of their jobs as instructors. It can be a tedious task and the systems they are working with (i.e. Sakai Gradebook) are often inflexible in a variety of ways.

Next steps

• January 21 Mapping Interview Data
  • For our January Web Meeting, the Data Analysis Group will present patterns found in the data and variables that have been identified to create personas.
  • Before the meeting, the Data Analysis Group will reach out to interview teams with any necessary follow-up questions specific to their interviews.
• February 18 Personas, Workflow Models
  • For our February Web Meeting, the Data Analysis Group will present personas: user archetypes representing different key characteristics and behaviors of interviewees that can be used as design tools. Workflow models detailing the process of important instructor activities will also be presented.
  • Feedback from the interviewer group and larger community on the personas and workflow models is welcome before, at and after the web meeting. Feedback will be incorporated into the process before moving on to the next phase.
• March 18 Context Scenarios, Requirements
  • For our March Web Meeting, the Data Analysis Group will present context scenarios and requirements. Context scenarios are the beginning stages of communicating an actual design. They describe ideal user experiences that can be reviewed and iterated on to arrive at a list of requirements.
  • Feedback from the interviewer group and larger community on the context scenarios and requirements is welcome before, at and after the web meeting. Feedback will be incorporated into the process before moving on to the next phase.

Setting a new time to meet in 2010?

This will be discussed via email, though it looks like the Thursday, 11:30am-1pm Eastern time will remain as only a few have come forward with hard conflicts.