Student Users
From openmichigan
The following are profiles of 3 students who would be typical users of this tool. The profiles consist of a short biography, a list of broad tasks capturing the steps students take to create and publish content. These will be used in user scenarios depicting how the tool will assist the students to accomplish their goals.
[edit] Andrea Silvini, undergraduate student, College of Literature Science and Arts, University of Michigan
Andrea graduated from Central Catholic High School in Pittsburgh, PA in 2005. Growing up, she was a bit of a book worm, sometimes reading 1000 pages a week. However, this did not keep her from staying on top of the current events in the news. Much of her interest lies in US foreign policy dealing with Middle Eastern states and the history of conflict in that region. To study this, she enrolled in the College of Literature, Science, and Arts at the University of Michigan where she is a senior in the Political Science program.
Last year, Andrea noticed on Facebook that her roommate's boyfriend, a senior in physics, was part of a project at U-M called dScribes. From what she understood, the project involved U-M students helping faculty publish lecture notes and syllabi on the internet for African students to use in their classes. "It's kinda like remote learning... what's it called? Oh yeah, distance education." Andrea was excited about the opportunity to help students in a developing country, and being able to work closely with faculty seemed like a good benefit. After meeting the dScribe team at Festifall, Andrea signed up to start "dScribing" her POLSCI 353 course on the Arab-Israeli Conflict with Professor Dan Putnam. Not only was the class supposed to be engaging, but she thought Professor Putnam would be a good instructor to work for since she had taken a previous course with him on U.S. and Middle East relations.
Tasks:
Andrea has already finished the training for dScribes and is about to start on the project. She obtained Professor Putnam's verbal permission to publish his materials and will need to get a signed permission form. Andrea's tasks for the rest of the semester are as follows:
- Obtain and file definite permission from Professor Putnam to publish his course materials under an open license.
- Obtain and file permission from students in POLSCI 353 to publish their notes, weekly commentaries, and final papers under an open license.
- Get the electronic form of all the "to be published" course materials.
- Document the components of each material that need to be edited or that are questionable for publishing (IP, privacy, or endorsement concerns).
- Find replacement components for anything in the materials that needs to be removed.
- Obtain Professor Putnam's approval for any replacements.
- Complete the final editing of all materials to be published.
- Obtain Professor Putnam's final approval for all materials to be published.
- Place the materials on an external server to be viewed and downloaded by anyone with an internet connection.
[edit] John Bezak, graduate student, School of Information, University of Michigan
John came to the School of Information in 2007 for a Master of Science in Information Policy. The Master's program at the School of Information is 2 years and includes mandatory internship experience either during the summer between school years, or during the school year. John studied political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, finishing in 2004 before moving to Washington, D.C. to work for RAND Corporation's International Program: Global Risk and Security. While working at RAND's Arlington, VA office, John came to understand the importance of information distribution and tampering in policy decisions based on some of his discussions with the Renden Group, a strategic communications outfit in DC. This led John to an information school and Michigan seemed like his best bet for policy.
At the School of Information, John met up with some like-minded students who were part of the Community Information Corps--a public service oriented group that discussed information issues in the government and non-profit sectors, and also carried out different service projects around Southeast Michigan. A couple of students in this group were working on a project called dScribes that helped faculty publish course content online with an open copyright license, such as Creative Commons Attribution license. John thought this was a great project because it took all the knowledge compiled for a course and put it out in the open, for anyone to use as they see fit. This kind of project was directly in line with his interests in disseminating trusted information to the public.
Tasks:
Given John's understanding of copyright and his level of education, he came into the dScribes project as an elevated dScribe, also known as a dScribe2. John's tasks are listed below:
- Train dScribes in the process of publishing course materials, including training on copyright, privacy, and endorsement policies.
- Organize permissions from faculty and students for open licensing.
- Manage 2-3 dScribes as they work to publish course materials throughout a semester.
- Answer dScribe questions about course materials and the content within them.
- Help dScribes interact with faculty to publish course materials.
- Make decisions on what content to publish and what content to replace due to policy concerns.
- Escalate problem content to the Legal and Policy Review team (a group of attorney's and project leaders who make final decisions about policy and course content).
- Finalize the publishing process by completing quality assurance of published materials.
[edit] Daniel Mbaya, medical student, College of Health Sciences, University of Nairobi
Ever since he was little Daniel knew he wanted to follow in his father's footsteps and become a doctor. After completing elementary and high school, where he excelled both in sports (made regional teams in both Cricket and Volleyball) and academics (5 A's at O'levels and all A's at the Advanced Level), he opted to begin his medical studies in Kenya instead of going abroad like most of his colleagues. This was partly due to Daniel's nationalistic tendencies, but more a result of his interest in infectious diseases found in the tropics -- he figured there could be no better place to study this than in being in the tropics.
The first year of med school was mostly spent hitting the books, as was his second, which he is about to finish. Daniel is really looking forward to the third year where he gets to rotate through the various medical specializations and meet patients. He has a special interest in Pediatrics and hopes his experience will confirm this passion. Outside school work, Daniel has little time for much else, but given his interest in politics -- which he denies -- he has been involved with the medical student's association representing his cohort. Within the association, he is part of a group that has been advocating for allowances for students to attend conferences. Their reasoning is that just as the lecturers learn new things at conferences, the students can do the same and more readily share it with their classmates.
Daniel, and his group, are aware that this is a lofty goal, and that students might not even have the time to pursue such opportunities, but he really believes alternative/complementary forms of acquiring knowledge is integral to the learning process -- he particularly found the first two years of rote memorization (of the same textbooks his dad used in some cases -- new editions, of course) quite boring and intellectually stagnating.
Tasks
- Keep up with his studies in order to pass his exams
- Find interesting, but not distracting, ways to augment his current studies
- Become an expert in infectious diseases, especially with respect to child health.
