May 10, 2006

VetMed Developer's Meeting

Chris/Dave - Reported on recent CERE student feedback meeting with (a) student in attendance.
User experience the primary complaints:

  • students annoyed with extra tabs - not seeing instructions; possibly need Quick Tips more prominently displayed
  • Help files universally ignored...
  • Some students have difficulty seeing "Login" on initial exposure to the application. After use, no longer a problem.

Other internal notes:

  • Need to update gateway text for pending fall launch. Use iFrame or something that will allow quick updates of text rather than requiring a server restart

Chris - Working on use cases and wireframe designs. Need to determine of goals for scheduling/Ilios for Fall

Rick - Has Captivates for review.
Received some feedback from faculty on sakai:

  • Faculty frustrated at not being able to resort Resources in the desired manner, i.e., by lecture order or to display most recently added or updated material prominently; Jira bug noted on this issue. Noted that version 2.x may have different Resource functionality.
    Currently, Resources are sortable by name or by date - can also create folder hierarchy by name.
  • Client saw 20MB warning message which prompted the client to stop uploading, although file did upload. The CALF team will do additional testing re: spurious error messages and notify Beau via jira.

Rick will be doing an additional Captivate on WebDav and alert faculty that this method is available for adding, moving or organizing content.
Captivate movies are being stored on the media server. Some movie reviewers dislike the scalable movies due to possible bluriness; advantage of scalability for demonstration use in classroom.
Mentioned loadtesting discussion from Content Group meeting including request for participation in live test event.
Additional movie note: when being developed, best practices and/or recommended routines for using sakai coming into question

Beau/Chris/Rick - Discussion of some best practices issues to be decided upon:

  • Course archiving; set user roles to audit 3-4 weeks post course completion;
  • Procedures for copying content into new quarter - use case suggests duplication of content - Resources, websites,etc. Use cases about 50-50 re: blank course or content-loaded course on generation;
  • Request-based course setup (some faculty w/early course setup needs) to mimic import tool setup;
  • Archive courses at 4-year mark, as well;

Beau - New media server is setup as nsf/samba server, possibly using WebDav. Rich media will sit here and be accessible as network mounted content to CERE courses;
URL-referenced vs. WebDav sakai method issues discussed:

  • Multi-course content or content not strictly identified with a particular course;
  • Internet connectivity requirements: current pipe is 100MBx2 - desired load about 60 concurrent users;
  • Content currently distributed on multiple systems, plan is to centralize content pieces;