Requirements Discussion

Michael Appleby We've come up with some scenarios that this tool will need to address:

• Professor Smith wants to hold office hours for students in any of her introductory courses. The tool should allow for sign-up across Sakai sites.
• Professor Jones wants to meet with students for twenty minutes to discuss their term papers. The tool should allow for a number of one-to-one 'slots' within one meeting time; students can sign up for any available slot.
• The German department's tutor can meet with up to three students at a time for conversation practice. The tool should accommodate one-to-X 'slots' as well.
• Professor Baker would like to hold a review session for the final exam, but needs to know how many will attend in order to book a room. The tool should allow for unlimited sign-up for a single session.
• Professor X logs in to Sakai precisely once a semester - to post a syllabus. He might also post his office hours for the term. The tool should allow for (1) recurring events and (2) events that do not require sign-up.
• A TF wishes to hold office hours for her sections only. The tool should be group aware.
• A TF and student talk after section and agree to meet at the beginning of the regularly scheduled office hours. The tool should allow the owner to assign a 'slot' to a student.
• Professor Appleby would like to cancel office hours if no students plan to attend. The tool should allow sign-up to be closed at a designated time prior to the meeting.
• Professor Frankfurt wants to meet individually with students. There are more students than "desirable" meeting times. The tool should allow the professor to assign timeslots on a first-come, first-served basis AND The tool should allow for students to choose their first, second, third,...n, choice so that Professor Frankfurt can set up individual or small group meetings with students' preferences in mind
• Professor Smith needs to cancel office hours. The tool should send email to notify attendees of the cancellation.

Jason Shao We did a requirements process for a similar tool oriented around student-organized ad-hoc study groups. Currently, the tool most commonly used at Rutgers for this task is Facebook. The metaphor that seemed most appropriate was Meetup, but with a twist that for this particular purpose it seems very useful to constrain the possible meeting times (before/after lecture, before/after recitation, sun evening) and locations (classroom, library, student center, etc.) Our thoughts were the basic workflow would look like:

1. Students should be able to create a meetup invitation
   • Meetups can be sent to their class/section/group/arbitrary people.
   • Canned subject lines/types like: Do HW, Work on Project, Exam Study, Lecture Review
   • A short list of common times (before/after lecture, recitation, sunday afternoon) should be available for selection
   • A short list of common locations (classroom, library, student center, other: freeform) should be available
2. Recipients should be able to
   • Reply Yes/No/Maybe
   • See who the other invitees to an event are
   • See the status of other invitees (yes, no, maybe)
3. Students should be able to reply to an invitation indicating their status, and possibly a comment

In terms of notification, this would probably look like an INbox (perhpas with a synoptic view?) ideally there'd be either email, IM, or SMS hookins for notification as well.

We also had some more ambitious thoughts about our tutoring center having a role in these interactions – either offering space, suggesting events inline they might have (e.g. tutoring sessions for a particular subject/class) or even having a report/notification where if a certain # of people agreed to meet, they would be asked if they would like a tutor sent to the meetup.

There's also likely some interesting instructor scenarios where instructors might be able to get a view into how their students are organizing, and what they are doing.