Lessons Learned

What are the lessons learned from the project?

• Sometimes it's useful to change your plans - try and recognise blind alleys sooner rather than later! Developments in technology since the submission of the proposal resulted in a significant change in the direction of the work planned for mobile technologies. The time taken to make the decision about the change was, in retrospect, too long especially considering the short duration of the project
• Don't underestimate the time needed for consultation and user needs analysis in collaborative projects
• Where possible, design project activities to have side-effects with immediate direct benefit to stakeholders. This approach was valuable in securing further buy-in and support from the stakeholders concerned
• Focus groups need to be carefully planned and co-ordinated, and run in a formal, structured way (context: postgraduate students, work package 5). The focus groups were run in a very carefully controlled format with fixed questions and small numbers of participants with audio recordings made of the focus group (so that facilitator can concentrate on facilitating the session rather than trying to write notes). The approach is necessary to keep the discussion focused on the matter in hand, to ensure that the views of all participants are heard, and to make sure that the focus group delivers useful results. The approach received very good feedback
• Collaborative projects need to be designed and developed iteratively, incrementally and flexibly. This is becoming a common way of working in software development, but is especially important for a collaborative project such as this one, where existing systems are being made to interact
• Don't assume stakeholders will think your project is the best thing since sliced bread! In retrospect the project team felt that they should not have been surprised that there were user acceptance issues in relation to the use of personally owned mobile phones for educational purposes. Learners need a clear purpose and idea of what the benefits are for using their mobile phones for course-related services otherwise this may be perceived as an intrusion into their personal lives
• Be prepared to sacrifice functionality in favour of developing a workable solution. During the information gathering phase for WP5 it became clear that certain functionality would not be possible unless significant changes were made to existing systems, and that the owners of these systems would not be willing or able to do this within the project timescale