Landing on our feet again...

Next week will see the annual CAA (Computer Aided Assessment) Conference at Loughborough. Back in February when they where asking for abstracts, I did think of writing a paper and submitting. But then there where more pressing things staring me in the face, including all the work for the project and the IMS Learning Impact Awards. As a result the time to sit and write an abstract escaped.

Since the dark days of February, I never really thought much more about the CAA Conference until towards the end of May when some one mentioned that they might see me there. A general assumption that I would be attending as it is at Loughborough. But again this was soon forgotten.

However, everything changed on Tuesday this week. After a meeting related to another forth coming conference (Engineering Education 2008, again at Loughborough) it was mentioned to see if we could get our posh banners up during the CAA. Following this I duely emailed those organising the CAA, to receive the response of;

... as it happens we have a free slot in the programme on Wednesday at 11.30 a.m. if you'd like to present a demo, also we'd be happy to distribute your publicity material to the delegates.

Well I'm not one for turning offers like this down. So we have jumped in both feet first. This has resulted in an increase in work for a couple of days and I have to pull together a presentation for 45 minutes, but hey we have more than enough expertess and information on this project not to be able to do this. Also those at the CAA conference are also part of our community, well not directly the WebPA community, but the wider assessment community so it will be good for us to be there.

Visiting another university

Today we are off to another UK university to introduce WebPA to a number of teaching staff there, in hope that they will be able to get the system installed at their institution.

However, we are going to change the format after doing three or four of these workshops. Rather than 'death by over texted PowerPoint' we are going to try having less information on the presentation. I have been against the use of tight text on power point presentations for a long time. The presentation should be a que for the presenters next point or points, rather that the time honored read the text out. This however, will be new for the project researcher, but I think that they will be fine and make a great success of this method.

As for my bit, the demonstration, we are going to try and encourage the participants to interupt and discuss the software more. Hopefully, this will encourage the prospective users to think about how they would use WebPA in their teaching, thus providing us with more potential models of use and new elements that maybe added to the system in future releases.

The reason for the change is due to a meeting that we attended last week. Rather than provide the standard presentation, an over view sheet was provided, just to give some basic information about the project. The rest of the time, we had more informal conversation, including through the demonstration.

But today, we are also going to provide the participants with time and logon information, so that they to can have a go in a safe and secure environment, without feeling that the information will be seen by real students.

Getting ready for Alt-C

I have run over my presentation with a colleague this morning and I feel only a little more positive about it. In the past I have always written presentations on the fly, ie on my way to the meeting, so this is a real novelty to be really ready. But the test will be on Tuesday at 5 when my slot is.

I have spent some time as well looking at ALT-C 2007 website as well having never been to this conference before. I am struggling to work out what sessions to attend. I think that the first session that I will attend will be the speed workshop. Following that I may pick up on some of the sessions related to one of my biggest interests which is accessibility online. Further on I have no idea what sessions I will attend, but I do know that I will be at the ceilidh and the gala dinner. Any ideas of what to do while at ALT-C would be greatly received.

Writting presentations

Today I am having a real memory block. I am trying to write my presentation for the short paper that I submitted to ALT-C back in February, right at the start of the project. It seems an age ago and the usability research I did back then seems to have filtered out of my ears and been replaced with all the other information that I am collecting as the project progresses.

However, in having to revisit the project documents it has highlighted that this is a reusable model that I have created. As we get closer to having WebPA piloted at other institutions, it has highlighted that we need repeat the usability testing with our partner institution. Even though the model is geared up to using approximately 5 users I think it is worth doing with each institution, no matter the number of users available.

So here I am, writing my Blog and avoiding getting this presentation right. May be I will leave it till tomorrow and look at it with fresh eyes. But getting back to this presentation. I have only 15 mins to try and convey not only the research and reasons that back up this method, but also the method itself. I am also a great believer that the slide in a presentation should not be just solid text. Following HCI rules that are relevant to usability of either software or even presentations in this case 7 +/- 2 items seems to be a good guide. Another good guide is to take the number of minutes that you have to present in and divide by two. All of this means that I only have maybe 7 or 8 slides, of which there should be no more that 9 points. As you can see I have set myself the most unrealistic target to start with. But I still don't think I can get everything included in. So why I am writingwriting it this early! Especially as in two weeks or so I will have completely forgotten everything I have written today. Right back to the presentation before home.