The Introduction
Ronald Donald, professor of business and technical writing which was a senior course required for business and engineering students, had extensive experience with service learning from a previous institution. Service learning was a teaching practice that connected campus learners in relationships with local small businesses and non-profit organizations (NPO’s) to give real-world experience to the learners, a pedagogical plus in writing assignments, and provided a community service to the organizations that had a real need for extra assistance.

Valerie Hertz, professor of MIS, in a similar fashion, required her graduate students to solicit real clients with real problems to interview and establish user needs, design proposals, limited timelines, and produce working products that would benefit the client rather than be an imaginary school project. Ronald and Valerie saw an opportunity for combining their courses into a new pilot program that would create products for local businesses (both databases and either the technical manuals or the advertising), but with the increase in the number of participants decided that a more formal structure should be set in place to accomplish it. Accordingly, they approached the centralized instructional technology center director, Joshua Allman, for assistance in organizing the pilot program.

A planning meeting resulted in the following players one Monday:
Joshua Allman, IT center director, showed up to introduce the members of his staff who he tasked to be on the pilot team. He would then no longer attend the pilot meetings, but would receive correspondence regarding the program at quarterly points.

Melvin Bledsoe, the instructional designer who had a long history of working with a broad range of faculty in both disciplinary background and in technological expertise was the first introduced to the team. He had no experience with service learning, but had a number of courses whose instructors’ had guest facilitators from outside of the institution. Melvin reminded everyone that the team would need to address “access issues” for the local businesses and NPOs.

Nick Clause, the technical administrator, had the longest history with the institution, having worked at the consulting desk in many iterations of support. Lately he had been administrator of a number of technology tools to support teaching and learning, including numerous versions of the CMS, the collaboration conferencing tool, and the synchronous tool. He knew the typical problems that new users had, those that experienced users avoided and how they moved beyond the limitations of the technology.

Cathy Kalua, the graphic artist, introduced herself, and stated that she drew images. When prompted by the media specialist and programmer, Stan Stockman, she nodded that she was also able to make the images move using Flash. Stan then added that he too could use Flash, like Cathy, but that he primarily works with databases. Stan continued that he and Cathy usually just listen to Melvin and a faculty member talk back and forth. As they listen, they get a feel for what images or actions need to be conveyed and begin to draw out in a series of rough “cartoon sketches” what might be one option for visualizing or manipulating an object by a student to help learn what Melvin and the faculty are discussing. He continued, “From that cartoon sketch, Cathy and I mock up online images and run it by the faculty or Melvin and then revise it. So we need an area that we can deposit our files for the groups to view and comment on.”

Valerie made a quiet comment to Ronald, who then asked the IT director if Stan would be available to do more of the Flash work than the database work, since the MIS students were going to be specifically assigned to do the database projects as their graded work. Stan shrugged and nodded at Joshua’s silent inquiry.

The Pilot
Joshua left and the remaining team began to draft out what needed to be done prior to the individual project team formations. Melvin collected the ideas on the computer screen projected on the wall for all to see; Cathy began doodling on her drawing pad computer to capture ideas as they floated by; Valerie and Ronald jotted down notes.

Melvin and Nick, nearly in unison, asked about the number of off campus users who would need access to on campus technology?
“There will be at least one organization off campus for each group, and each group will have about 4 grad students and 4 seniors. With 24 students per class, that’s six organizations. So figure about 12 accounts. If there are more than 2 contacts at an organization, there tends to be too much confusion about the product, so we ask the students to limit their contact to only two people in the group,” Ronald answered and Nick marked it down. Valerie then said that the groups will need individual group access for 1) downloading and uploading files, not just documents, but images for pamphlets, concept maps, and other types of files; 2) private discussion space and archives for both synchronous and asynchronous reference for each project group; 3) a reference section where they can deposit information that they can refer each other to rather than forwarding email all over and losing. Again, this needs to be limited to the project group only; 4) a concept mapping board of some sort so that they can examine images and graphics and annotate comments that can be retrieved later and revised.
She added, “This needs to be owned only by the group so that it doesn’t bleed into the work of the other groups and remains in the work-product of the 10 people who are working with it.”
Ronald said, “Finally, we also need a place for presenting partial work to other groups for feedback. “So in this section, it needs rights for both reading and limited writing. We don’t want the other groups to be able to alter the work, but we do want to solicit feedback, primarily from the other students, not from the off-campus clients. It’s a way to let each group share what they are doing in a “safe” environment and also see each others’ work before final product.”

Melvin asked Ronald and Valerie if they wanted full access to all of the work-products and revisions at all times. They both did. Nick began drafting the tiered system of rights that would accompany each of the people in the system. He looked up and asked if there was a need for a quiz tool in this course. Valerie and Ronald shook their head. Ronald said, “Howece, the assessment is thoroughly embedded in the process. The students will be reporting out in the files that they are depositing to their groups, to each other, to the clients. That is the assessment. We will be reviewing those along the way. So, we do need a way to report back to the students on their work with a rubric-generator and a peer-evaluator that we can drop into the group reporting structure at different times. That will then have a two tiered cataloging of those results, both numeric and commentary. One tier will go to the group, and one to the individual.

Finally, the technology needs to have a way for the 2 community contacts for each group to get in and see as well as participate in the project because the likelihood that the 8 students will be able to physically meet with the community contacts more than the one initial meeting that we set up for them is highly unlikely. Additionally, we need a way for all of the final projects to be turned over to the community groups for their use upon completion of the projects. That means, part of the task of the MIS students will be to ask the group if they have access to servers that can sustain the project upon the completion of the assignment. If they do not, we need to begin now to see what resources we can provide to put towards this. If not, then this is not a true service learning project. It does not enhance what we do in the community.

Nick jotted down more notes to bring to the technology meeting to see what servers were in the ancient unused closet and if any of them would be able to be donated in the event of the above problem. Cathy then spoke up and asked what Valerie and Ronald wanted from her, since nothing had really been said about graphics. Ronald asked her if she could or would be willing to sit in on the first online meeting of each of the groups to see if there was a need for a graphic artist. The usual experience he had had is that business/tech writers were graphically-challenged. If projects needed a logo, she would be needed across the 6 groups for one logo for each of the groups. If her supervisor would give her that time, they would be enormously grateful for it. And if, there was more than a need for a logo, but a need for movement to get across a concept, then both Cathy and Stan would be needed. The drawing tools within the CMS would need to be used for Cathy to capture the ideas during the synchronous discussions and concept mapping with the students and community workers.

Melvin asked Valerie and Ronald if they wanted him to “teach” the off campus people how to use the technology or at least get them access to it, and they both thanked him for that, saying that would make their work easier if he could take upon himself that work.

With all of the parts divided, as soon as the work area on the CMS was set up by Nick and the accounts and rights set in place, Valerie and Ronald were set to role the Pilot.