Defining Requirements

Each context will have a different set of requirements and different methods can be used for elicitation.

The University of The Arts uses Wimba within a learning and teaching context and together with a knowledge of the professional group (Photojournalists) and the work of Etienne Wenger, this previous experience helped define the requirements. These included:

• Archiving of presentations for later viewing. The ability to generate mp4 files and present directly from the main site (Ning platform) greatly enhanced this feature. The sessions are archived and hosted on Vimeo
• Webinars available 24/7. This is especially important when working with an international group
• Discussion rooms available easily and at short notice. This can facilitate small group discussions that emerge organically from the main network
• Interface easy to use. For example it was found that the 'backchannel' that was used to amplify and comment on the presentations, was instinctive and caused no problems for the audience
• Capable of hosting large numbers of people. The numbers attending the live Webinars were unknown at the start of the trial and this had to be factored in to the requirements. In the event, up to 50 people attended

Knowledge House used a questionnaire and face-to-face discussions with user groups to elicit KHIS2.0 system update requirements. These can be found in Appendix C of the final report from Knowledge House. The meeting proved very successful and instead of using a whiteboard (as they had done in the past), thoughts were captured via a PC and projected onto a large screen. This method was preferable as it enabled an initial brainstorm of ideas, which could then be cut and pasted to fit into themes. Knowledge House also has a KHIS Champions Group (users from each university + the development team) and that the group meets every month to discuss ongoing/new requirements, problems, etc. KHIS is very much a user-driven development and the system requirements are dictated by the users.

As cost was a major deciding factor for the University of Huddersfield, they used this as their main criteria for the choice of collaborative online tool (Elluminate chosen from Elluminate, DimDim, Webex, and Adobe Connect). However, they examined an alternative tool (Skype), which whilst not being a collaborative tool as such did have 'workarounds'.

Plan, implement, observe, reflect and revise

Action Research methodology

Based on: Hudson, Owen, & van Veen (2006, p.581)

Most of the projects utilised an action research methodology for trialling one or more online tools, consecutively or in parallel.

Northumbria University had two major cycles each with a different tool for the collaborative activities. Due to the timing of the trials, the same group of students was involved throughout. This had the advantages:

• that the students involved in the evaluation of the tools in the first semester, benefited from their evaluation. Indeed, it was a renegade group that realising the limitations of Plone (used in the first trial), used WordPress for their internal group collaboration
• at the start of the second trial, the students had the skills required to use the tools in this context and could then concentrate on the tool itself. The overseas students that were part of this trial hadn't benefited from this earlier experience and it is believed this slowed their initial progress

'The project included two major cycles - plan, implement, observe, reflect and revise - with different partner networks to trial ICT tools to facilitate business and community engagement.'

Northumbria University

Knowledge House developed a test site and invited feedback from its partners using a group of 'project champions'. The level of feedback received depended upon the University's use of the KHIS system -

'During development of KHIS 2.0 a test site was established and feedback invited from the five universities. Some were more active than others due to the perceived importance of KHIS 2.0 within each institution. Several saw the new system as a key business development tool and actively reported feedback, whilst others simply planned to use baseline functionality due to institutional commitments to other CRM systems.'

Knowledge House