orange paper update :)

updated paper! :)

intro

introduction almost done...

background done

background done, sent it to my tutor. been relaxing a bit these past couple of days, needed it...

seminar

went to seminar today. didn't need to say much, nothing at all actually, just had to be present and get a signature, but it's a necessary part of the project. also talked a bit with my classmate, whose report/presentation I'll be opposing on later. maybe I should save all the evil comments for later and really grill him? ;-)

nah... :)

ch-ch-ch-CHANGES!

the meeting with my tutor went really well today, we talked through most of the stuff about the project... and decided that I'm basically done with the practical stuff. I'll probably just do some stuff these two days left of the week, and then from next week I'll start actually writing my report. first method and results, and then we'll meet and talk through those sections. the final thing to write will be a discussion of the whole project and stuff, seeing how I've done compared to literature and if I have achieved my goal, and what the prerequisites were... I might have some sort of evaluation after a month of use somewhere there, to just see how things have been going when they've turned into "expert" users, if the system is still supporting them in their work as it should.

quite interesting things... am a bit surprised, positively, of course :)

of course, the last thing is to present and oppose another person's presentation, will hopefully do it to my classmate, so that should be interesting. seminar tomorrow, have to attend one of those too...

ch-ch-ch-changes!

as I've written somewhere before, my tutor is now also my examiner... wrote to the administrator now to see what should be done about that... have also written a mail to the norwegians, asking them to check out the system a bit more and that I'll probably send some sort of questionnaire to them later on...

report updated

updated my report now... added keynotes for remote evaluation and some other stuff which we talked about with my tutor a while ago... meeting tomorrow, going to write down all the points I have written and see if I have managed to fulfill them.

evaluation results and comments

here's my summary and comments... put it up on the forum:

Statistics:
I have now added a mark for non-Bahá'ís which can be sorted by. What do you think of changing name on this to "Overview", "Summary" or something like that?

The small boxes in the bottom can be used to filter a bit more, for example to find people who have gone either one or another course (the option "Or", middle row), or haven't gone through a course ("Not", bottom row)

I'd like you to think about how it can be improved in the future, when the lists will probably be much larger than they are today. Would it for example be interesting to have more advanced/detailed information where address, e-mail, etc is showing?


Studycircle:
Now you can set the date from when all circles started/finished after should appear.

I have found some old circles which I have added, but I had very few... the statistics in the past was slightly insufficient when it came to keeping track of exactly when circles were happening.


Cluster report:
The pyramid is now up, you can see it if you click your specific cluster and then "Show pyramid".

Remember that the diagrams only show people that have *finished* a course. If you want the addition of people who are currently active or something similar, let me know. The problem is that the diagram might not be as nice and easy to see, but I can take a look at it.

When it comes to the history it works in such a way that every month all data is automatically saved for all clusters. Beyond this you can choose when you want to save current data, for example before a reflection meeting or when a report is to be done to SBI.


Links and documents:
The mega document will probably be split up into five smaller documents, to be easier to handle. Reflections on Growth is a part of that document now.

I also added a few new links, documents and presentations. Feel free to take a look there, there might be a couple of usable stuff. If you discover something new, don't hesitate to send to me.

There is also a small statistical report over all clusters in Sweden that have a coordinator, together with all others put together into one cluster. You can contact the koordinators if you want them something through there.


New function:
Report interest: It is now possible to report interest to go a studycircle. This is done at www.bahai.se/sbi/rapport, choosing "Report interest to go a course". Encourage the friends in your clusters to do this, since it will probably ease your work quite a lot. You won't have to read peoples's thoughts :)

Possible studycircles: This is a continuation on report interest. When three or more people have reported their interest for a course where time, book and cluster matchen, the possible studycircle is shown. There you can see all participants, what options they have chosen and their comments. At the same time you see a list of all tutors in the cluster, whether they're free or not, and you can click on the person and send a mail. You can also add a comment if there is anything.

Mail: There is now a mail fuction! It is not *completely* finished yet, so if there is anything else you want me to add, let me know!
Now you can mail:
- people who have finished book x
- all tutors in your clusters (ie those who have completed book 7)
- the national coordinator (negin)
- sbi
- the administrator (me)
It is very important that you update people's e-mail addresses, otherwise this function will be a bit pointless... it is especially important that you update people who are or are about to become tutors. We are also thinking of letting the system automatically send a "congratulation mail" to all new tutors, but we haven't decided that yet.


The Excel sheets:
It gladdens me that almost everyone has gone from the Excel sheets to using this, it means that it works!


Security:
There is a complete backup taken of the entire database every day, so if anything should totally crash there is the possibility of restoring the information quite easily. I have also spread out the backup data to a couple of independent places, so the risk of totally losing everything gets as minimal as possible.

I will also work a bit later on fixing the things when it comes to the security aspects of the system. Right now it is not so limited, it is possible to do basically whatever you want as long as you know how to. It will be fixed soon.


Other:
It gladdens me that you are so very positive to the entire project, it is really encouraging and inspiring! However, I have a request, and that is that you really point out things that don't work and things that you want to be developed and changed. Partly for your own sake, and partly for my project.


The future:
What's happening next? I'm going to take a proper look at a print function, which I will hopefully get to work. No guarantee though, since it is quite hard to get to work. Already now it goes quite well to just print the pages, but it can always be better.

The goal is that the forum should be the way that we're all staying active. I will successively stop sending mails and only use "Message of the day" and the forums for communication.

Next week it's another week of evaluation, and then it's the final implementation phase. Then, dear friends, it's over... :)

plans

booked a meeting with my tutor 15.30 on wednesday...

for that one, I'm gonna prepare, both try to wrap up what's left of my report, and also actually check through the points I've written to see if I've actually done a good job.

I'm going to look through the evaluations now, summarize them and post some comments as the message of the day, so they know that I've actually made something about them...

the mail function needs a bit of tweaking, but I'll probably "launch" it today.

gonna sit with the national coordinator in around two weeks or so and go through all the security and access details and such, and probably fix it during the final implementation phase... that should be good. right now people can see and do basically whatever they want as long as they know how to, and that's not really the point! :)

nothing more to do? pfft!

just as I thought I was done I found a major bug and a design flaw. took me an hour and a half to find the bug, and 30 seconds to fix it...

other than that, there's not that much left to do... I've sent a mail to my tutor, and we're hopefully going to meet sometime next week to discuss how I should go on next... I'm gonna have to prepare a bit for that meeting, just to make sure I've done what I'm supposed to when it comes to user involvement.

I'll also be sending a mail to the coordinators and tell them that there's not much time left for them to influence the project, and that they should tell me anything they want/need...

I've actually gotten a few CIs, though just not reported through the page, but rather through e-mail/the forum, so I guess that's good enough in a sense... apparently it's easier... ah well. weekend!

new, rather exciting stuff!

don't really remember what I did yesterday, but I'm sure it was good... [edit:] oh, I updated the database with information about old study circles and so, and also updated the links in the statistics to point to them. I added the pyramid in the cluster report and also added a bit of information about the clusters, so the coordinators can see and feel part of a whole. this is something that was asked for in the evaluations.

today I started working on a "report interest" function, which had been asked for in the design workshop but I wasn't really sure how to do it. this far, it seems to be working well, though of course no one has reported any interest, as it just came up and no one is aware of it, yet. the system automatically tries to match possible new study circles depending on reported interest on book, cluster, and available times. when a possible circle is found (3 or more interests), it lists all free tutors in the cluster, and the coordinator can mail him/her. quite neat function! :)

added a couple of new presentations to the links and documents section today, and also finished all the include statements for the menus, so now I won't have to manually edit each and every file whenever I make a change to the menus and links... that's gonna be good for the future.

the mail function works now, but is not 100% available, still a bit hidden. but it's possible to send mails from the system to all tutors, coordinators, and a few others... useful!

oh, I also found out a way to speed up the system a bit with my redirects... that's gonna be tomorrow's work.

evaluations...

have gotten some of the evaluations, one or two missing... gotten quite many interesting comments and suggestions, have implemented two already... one was a missing cluster, the other was the possibility to limit the dates for study circles...

worked quite extensively on an e-mail function too... it's getting there, not all done yet. also did some site maintenance... :)

updated evaluation

my tutor suggested that I start with more specific questions about some specific functions and their use, related to some tasks. after that, I'd go to more general questions, such as positive/negative, and finally to let them give their general opinion, as it would then be in background to their previous answers about what they actually think about the different functions. she also suggested I try to get a feel of how their situation around them is, if they use any external objects, which would show a lack of usability in the system.

here are the final questions:

• What do you think of the statistics function? Does it work as you want it to?
• What do you think of the studycircles function? Does it work as you want it to?
• What do you think of the cluster report function? Does it work as you want it to?
• What do you think of the links and documents? Anything you miss there?
• Which function do you use the most?
• Is there any function that is difficult to use or unclear? How?
• Which new functions would you like to see implemented? (3, in order)
• What do you think of the help function? Does it need development? Is there a need for a course?
• What is positive with The Coordinator?
• What is negative with The Coordinator?
• How can the positive be strengthened?
• How can the negative be improved?
• What is your general opinion of The Coordinator? (on a scale of 1-7)
• Do you still use the Excel sheets? (yes/no)
• Why/why not?
• Do you use any other tools to assist you, such as Post-its, notepad, etc?
• Other comments:

appreciation!

this is what makes me happy, got it in a mail from one of the coordinators: "what I also appreciate a lot is that you listen to what we think and fix it - it seems like a piece of cake for you! if anything malfunctions we'll just tell you!"

*smile*

also has started to be some activity on the forum, they're talking a little bit with each other, so that's good... gotten two evaluations this far, a couple more to get...

eval update

got suggestions and comments from my tutor. change of order, and a couple of more questions added. will post more tomorrow.

the help

here are some screen shots from the help. they probably don't make much sense though...

evaluation!

now it's time for evaluation... these are the questions I asked:

• What is your general opinion of The Coordinator? (on a scale of 1-7)
• What is positive?
• What is negative?
• How can the positive be strengthened?
• How can the negative be improved?
• Which function do you use the most?
• Is there any function that is difficult to use or unclear? Why?
• Which new functions would you like to see implemented? (3, in order)
• What do you think of the help function? Does it need development? Is there a need for a course?
• Do you still use the Excel sheets? (yes/no)
• Why/why not?
• Other comments

awfully quiet

I've been awfully quiet here... I've worked on my report, added a section about remote evaluation, fixed a few of the comments I've gotten from my tutor, and am currently working on the keynotes for remote evaluation. other than that, I've implemented a few small functions that they've asked for, fixed a few things here and there, and sent a mail to my tutor with my questionnaire. will put it up tomorrow or on thursday and hope to have them answered by the end of the weekend, so I can start on my second development phase on monday.