Here goes, another project for scrutiny--the Playbuilding CD-Rom
This CD aims to provide tertiary drama education students and secondary English and drama teachers with an attractive compendium of techniques, activities, and commentary describing and illustrating the process of devising non-naturalistic plays. It juxtaposes text with video, much of which is narrated, and allows the user to print up activities for lesson planning. Users can edit and print up activity sheets. The CD also aims to provide a context for computer use to a population who are frequently resistant.
This project is supported by an Apple University Developers' Grant of a computer and software, and supplemented with a modest budget by the university. The theater lecturer/content expert is a full-time lecturer. I am the project manager and lecture sessionally and am also trying to complete my Masters. The programmer/interface designer was also studying half-time and works long hours freelance.
Since inception we have stressed working collaboratively, both with students and the design team, at all stages aiming to optimize the software for accessibility and utility.
My background includes study in computer-based training and experience with designing three smaller projects. I am reasonably new to project management, although conversant with the literature. I am very aware that working within the university gives us a rare opportunity for innovation and experimentation and that our budget and style of working isn't sustainable in a commercial environment. Due to the exploratory and part-time nature of the project, the efficiencies developed from specialization are lacking.
Were your plans too ambitious? Did you bite off too much to chew? Yes and no. Within the context of this year's ever increasing academic workloads, yes. In terms of our vision, we settled for much less--due primarily to budget and skill restrictions. I knew all along that video is hugely resource consuming in terms of the budget, data rate/file size issues, logging, and editing. What was totally unforeseen by all, is that the content expert would encounter major demands on his time and energy which severely restricted his availability to focus on writing and narrating the content.
If you did it again, what would you change? In an ideal world, we'd all have contiguous blocks of time available to work on the project, or at least regular working days each week. We'd have access to a dedicated workspace with networked Power PCs, VCR , sound recorder, leads, and removable cartridge drive connected and working. I'd also want effective technical support as needed and access to consultant experts if and when required--programmer, designer, project manager.
I would also be much more structured in my project management, but I believe that continuity would have taken care of a significant number of our project management problems. As it is, we pick it up and go: "Where were we again?"
I might also look to collaborate with interested and like-minded businesses for access to methodology in exchange for design ideas and/or theoretical information.
Would you ever do it again? I would like nothing better than to do it well. To have dedicated hardware, software, time, funding, and to become increasingly skillful is the vision all the participants in the project have been taunted by. Often heard was: "If only we had a few months of working together full time." Our experience of developing the software collaboratively with students has given us a vision of workshopping the content intensively with a small group of students, video crew, and developers dedicated to the task to build something that is indeed innovative. As Shauna [McKenna, 30 Sep 96] says though, effective communication and compatibility is essential.
To do it again as we are trying to do now? No, but I appreciate having had the opportunity nevertheless.
Did you have enough funding? Did it take longer than you thought? Yes and no, again. In the role of project manager and general dogs body, I totally underestimated the amount of time I would need to devote to making everything run. With the general interface shell mostly in place, I aim to scrape in on budget, remembering that the content expert doesn't get paid (salary) and I barely get paid. However, we're taking our learning curve into account.
Did the project finish? Is it in use? The project is only partly finished and is currently progressing very slowly. Formative evaluation, which I believe to be central to effective design, is beginning to look like a luxury.
Are you satisfied with the result overall? Generally, yes.
Are you satisfied with the instructional design? No. I would much rather have had significantly more scaffolding and student interactivity built in to the design, but without an experienced programmer with libraries of Lingo code to plug in and use, we settled for a compendium point and click format.
Was there sufficient student interaction with the software? Designing it, yes! In use, we don't know yet.Are you happy with the way it looks? Its interesting and attractive and evolving.
Did parts of it turn out differently than you envisaged? Not greatly, but programming, budget and time limitations have caused a number of worthwhile features to be dropped.
Were there arguments about who said what, when? Some tensions but not major. Having a collaborative approach made negotiation central but at times my leadership has not been clear and directive enough.
Did design flaws surface late in the project? We discovered that we had to reduce the text and narrate much of it, which is requiring a time consuming rewrite of the content.
Are there bugs in program? How many? How much effort did it take to get rid of them? Ongoing, yes. Debugging seems to take a significant amount of the programmers time.