All entries for Thursday 16 December 2004

December 16, 2004

Selling Warwick Blogs to Warwick

Selling blogs to Warwick, that's a part of my job. Or at least I should say that part of the still significant task of selling blogs to the University, the whole University, is up to me and the small team of people that I work with. I am the Arts Faculty E-learning Advisor, one of four such advisors, each assigned to a different faculty. I am also one of the people who convinced IT Services and Elab to build Warwick Blogs. Why did I do that? Partly because I want to use it for my PhD, and partly because I wish I could have had it when I was an undergraduate here ten years ago.

If you are reading this entry then almost certainly you have already bought into Warwick Blogs, you have been converted. Maybe you are even addicted to it. But you have probably bought into just one specific idea of what Warwick Blogs is about, one that is quite different to the many ideas that I am trying to sell people. That in itself is OK, but you have to realise this:

Warwick Blogs is a powerful and sophisticated tool. We tell people that it is just a clever kind of notebook or journal, but in fact it is far much more than that. It's potential is huge. It's applications numerous. That's why the team who visited us from Oxford University this week were in awe at what we have done.

There is a need to be open minded about blogs. For all of those people who have done so much to make it their own, to define what it seemed to be to anyone looking at its old homepage, think of the potential uses and the users who might interpret things quite differently. Think of the researcher for whom it might be a useful writing tool, or the international student showing his funders back home what he is part of.

At the moment the system has been occupied by a small percentage of those potential users, using it for a small fraction of its potential capabilities. That's good for them, but we are here to support the whole University in using IT to improve what they do. And this is a big and diverse place. Cultural change in such an environment will always be difficult, and must be handled with great sensitivity. As one of the people who has to sell Warwick Blogs to Warwick, I have a simple message to our current bloggers:

Selling new working/studying practices is really hard. Convincing people to adopt new IT practices is also really hard. Getting people from a diversity of social/academic/national cultures to adopt change at the same time is more than just difficult. The combination of these things makes for a very difficult job, and ensures that selling Warwick Blogs beyond its early adopters is quite a challenge.

I'm the guy who has to do this, and I am telling you that we are facing a big challenge! If the system needs altering to help us to meet that challenge, then it has to be altered. Trust me, I work on this every day. I'm out there talking to people every day.

As a user of Warwick Blogs, you can either help us with this, help us to reach a wider range of people with a wider range of users, or you can decide that you would rather keep the system to yourself, to people just like you. What would be the right thing to do? Here's a little exercise to help you understand (perhaps you could answer it on your blog):

  1. think about why you use Warwick Blogs, list the things that you get out of it;
  2. consider how those values are dependent upon the ways in which you like to do things, and upon your working, studying and social practices;
  3. consider how lucky you are that the University has developed a system to help you do those things;
  4. now try to consider people with different values and different practices – if you can't come up with lots of examples, then you really are narrow minded!
  5. consider if your view of what Warwick Blogs should be like will also provide a system that is attractive to them;
  6. consider if this will lead to an un-feasibly complex system;
  7. now think about the difficult task that eLab has in pleasing as wide a population as possible.

Hard isn't it!

A summary

I think that the changes to the Warwick Blogs home page are about making it more neutral. I am saying that this is essential if we are to sell it to a wider range of people, which we must do.

The old home page presented a view of what Warwick Blogs is being used for now, rather than what it could be used for. Unfortunately, potential users look at the content on the home page and think "that's not for me, that's not what i want my activities associated with". And they turn away. Yes, the changes are a marketing move. The home page was intended as a marketing tool. And as such, it has to represent a wide range of possible uses.


Robert O'Toole : 16 Dec 2004 16:46 |  Tags:   |  Comments (41) |  Report a problem

A long summative list of things I do

Follow-up to Work review, part eight – hardware and software from Transversality - Robert O'Toole

This may well be the most boring blog entry ever written! I have been compiling a list of all the things that I do as part of my job. The aim is to try to rationalise and simplify it all. I want to get an idea first of all of the diversity, which is great. I then want to look for things that i can devolve to other people. I will also look for things that I am good at, things that are easy and stress free, and things for which i don't need training or extra support. Conversely, i will look for the things that are stressful, or which i need training and support, and perhaps things that i shouldn't be doing. That's the next stage. To start of with, here's a rather long list, which i'm sure has some ommissions:

  1. writing communications information about our activities and the university to a range of audiences including students, staff at all levels including senior officers, funding bodies and other external agencies, the general public, the e-learning community;
  2. writing publicity for staff and students about our activities;
  3. writing reports on our activities;
  4. writing reflective accounts on our activities for the e-learning research community;
  5. attending conferences;
  6. giving papers on e-learning;
  7. writing journal papers;
  8. organising conferences;
  9. desigining the e-learning web site;
  10. writing content for the e-learning web site;
  11. reading and reviewing e-learning research from external sources;
  12. planning and carrying out e-learning research;
  13. identifying hardware and software requirements for departments, team and specific projects;
  14. evaluating and chosing hardware and software;
  15. identifying hardware and software suppliers;
  16. evaluating the performance of hardware and software;
  17. managing a pool of loan hardware;
  18. trialling hardware and software within teaching activities;
  19. recording and reporting on hardware and software trials;
  20. keeping track of new hardware and software developments;
  21. ensuring sowfware and hardware integrity;
  22. developing new team, organisation, working practices, plans;
  23. developing team interface and workflows with other teams within eLab;
  24. communicating feedback on new developments to other teams within eLab;
  25. differentiating areas of responsibility between the teams;
  26. communicating new developments from other teams to the clients;
  27. ensuring that developments are wherever possible 'joined up';
  28. forming new IT Services e-learning policies and practices;
  29. contributing to the development and adoption of new generic (not e-learning specific) IT Services policies and practices;
  30. working with the helpdesk and other teams to resolve incidents and identify means of preventing them in the future;
  31. identifying actions and requests that are contrary to IT Services policies and practices;
  32. explaning IT Services practices and policies to clients;
  33. briefing other teams within IT Services on the e-learning implications of their activities;
  34. informing the whole of IT Services about e-learning developments, and the rationale behing those developments;
  35. interpreting and explaining university and government policy;
  36. explicating current workflows and practices;
  37. mediating between competing interests;
  38. identifying implications of adopting IT approaches and modifying current practices;
  39. advising on legal issues;
  40. identifying projects and activities that benefit departments, faculties and the university as a whole;
  41. identifying factors that may impact negatively on staff, students, departments, the university;
  42. identifying ways to develop consistent practices across and within departments;
  43. persuading individuals to cooperate;
  44. responding to individuals in their own time;
  45. advising on costs (time, resource, money);
  46. identifying tasks, project activities, stages, requirements, milestones, deadlines for others to follow;
  47. project managing people without being line manager;
  48. advising on the viability of projects and research funding applications;
  49. providing technical guidance to funding applications;
  50. planning use of and negotiating access to resources;
  51. identifying and specifying requirements;
  52. advocating requirements as important;
  53. proposing solutions;
  54. getting agreement for solutions to be developed;
  55. monitoring development progress;
  56. feeding back development status to clients;
  57. considering training and support implications of introducing new developments (for self and other teams and departments);
  58. scheduling and arranging meetings
  59. definition of agenda
  60. task identification and specification
  61. identification and agreement of roles and responsibilities
  62. delegation
  63. time-slot protection
  64. tracking of progress
  65. communication of progress
  66. prioritisation of projects
  67. prioritisation of tasks
  68. designing sessions to be taught
  69. designing series of sessions
  70. writing hands-on course IT support materials
  71. teaching hands-on technical sessions
  72. lectures & large non-interactive presentations
  73. writing post-course IT support materials
  74. small group (5) technical sessions
  75. focus-groups/consultancy sessions
  76. postgraduate sessions
  77. undergraduate sessions
  78. staff sessions
  79. working with people in their context to identify key functionality that will make a difference to them.
  80. using my own experience of the academic process to understand and empathise with their academic/personal process.
  81. creating compact and self-contained bits of web functionality that add interactivity, community and academic-usefulness to web content.
  82. creating ways of building links between content and activities in separate systems to make a more cohesive experience.
  83. getting feedback from people, seeing it making a difference.
  84. writing flexible, resuseable, extendable OO 'business logic' code.
  85. writing maintainable code using the same approaches as other members of eLab;
  86. good well planned testing.
  87. rapid user interface development (Javascript).
  88. creating data-storage solutions that give power to end-users in an intuitive and easy to access way.
  89. desigining the visual appearance of applications and pages.
  90. creating designs in Photoshop.
  91. creating designs with css

Robert O'Toole : 16 Dec 2004 11:56 |  Comments (2) |  Report a problem

Work review, part eight – hardware and software

Follow-up to Work review, part seven – communications, reporting, and e–learning research activities from Transversality - Robert O'Toole

  1. identifying hardware and software requirements for departments, team and specific projects;
  2. evaluating and chosing hardware and software;
  3. identifying hardware and software suppliers;
  4. evaluating the performance of hardware and software;
  5. managing a pool of loan hardware;
  6. trialling hardware and software within teaching activities;
  7. recording and reporting on hardware and software trials;
  8. keeping track of new hardware and software developments.

Robert O'Toole : 16 Dec 2004 11:53 |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem

Work review, part seven – communications, reporting, and e–learning research activities

Follow-up to Work review, part six – Elab and the ELA team from Transversality - Robert O'Toole

  1. writing communications information about our activities and the university to a range of audiences including students, staff at all levels including senior officers, funding bodies and other external agencies, the general public, the e-learning community;
  2. writing publicity for staff and students about our activities;
  3. writing reports on our activities;
  4. writing reflective accounts on our activities for the e-learning research community;
  5. attending conferences;
  6. giving papers on e-learning;
  7. writing journal papers;
  8. organising conferences;
  9. desigining the e-learning web site;
  10. writing content for the e-learning web site;
  11. reading and reviewing e-learning research from external sources;
  12. planning and carrying out e-learning research.

Robert O'Toole : 16 Dec 2004 11:52 |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem

Work review, part six – Elab and the ELA team

Follow-up to Work review, part five – IT Services from Transversality - Robert O'Toole

  1. developing new team, organisation, working practices, plans;
  2. developing team interface and workflows with other teams within eLab;
  3. communicating feedback on new developments to other teams within eLab;
  4. differentiating areas of responsibility between the teams;
  5. communicating new developments from other teams to the clients;
  6. ensuring that developments are wherever possible 'joined up'.

Robert O'Toole : 16 Dec 2004 09:48 |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem

Work review, part five – IT Services

Follow-up to Work review, part four – strategic, planning, project management from Transversality - Robert O'Toole

  1. forming new IT Services e-learning policies and practices;
  2. contributing to the development and adoption of new generic (not e-learning specific) IT Services policies and practices;
  3. working with the helpdesk and other teams to resolve incidents and identify means of preventing them in the future;
  4. identifying actions and requests that are contrary to IT Services policies and practices;
  5. explaning IT Services practices and policies to clients;
  6. briefing other teams within IT Services on the e-learning implications of their activities;
  7. informing the whole of IT Services about e-learning developments, and the rationale behing those developments.

Robert O'Toole : 16 Dec 2004 09:44 |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem