Case Studies: Meetings

Friday, January 17, 2003, Torgersen 3180 (1:30-3:20 pm)

• Next Meeting: Friday, January 24, Torgersen 3180 (1:30 pm)
• Attendees: Mary Beth, Jack, Con, Beth
• Established a regular meeting schedule for this time and place, every other week.
  • We later planned to meet next week, so the bi-weekly plan begins then
  • The CHCI Calendar seems to have different information depending on whether you take a weekly or monthly view. There may be a conflict with this timing.
• Two undergrads will be associated with this project:
  • Richard Bowman (UI designer, designed UI for the current case crawler, is tied up on rebuilding CHCI site)
  • Jonathan Laughnan (content developer)
• Jack reviewed a case use taxonomy (based on last week)
  • Modeling
    • Use case to develop another instance
    • That one is a paradigm case
  • Perturbation
    • Have a case and transform it
    • Redevelop/analyze it
  • Summarization
    • Create an analysis of the case
  • Traceability
    • Go through a case checking against some question such as, "Were the requirements achieved?"
    • Did they do what they said they would (internal consistency)
  • Contrast
    • Contrast two cases
• Mary Beth added another:
  • Caricature/Stereotype
    • Extract the distinguishing characteristics, make them stronger
    • This is like leading claims
    • Define what makes this case most interesting
• Discussion on Pertubation:
  • This involves generating a new case variation, at least to some point, based on changed context
  • Can be done by establishing deltas or pursuing a new design entirely
• Discussion on other dimensions:
  • Some other dimensions are...
    • Generate new
    • Analyze old
    • Test hypotheses of knowledge
    • Internalize case or at least the experience of dealing with the case
  • These, and others, may facilitate a matrix with the taxonomy of use to show things such as...
    • What learning has occurred?
    • What learning was supposed to happen?
• Con raised the question on whether the taxonomy was sufficiently within a single dimension
  • There are things we can task using the case library
  • There are things the students can do with the case library
  • The question is whether these two sets are/need to be the same
  • What about things students can do with the case library that are not tasked?
  • What about things that are tasked that cannot be done with the library?
    • This could be a problem
    • Or a rationale for creative solutions
• Discussion about characteristics of cases
  • Do some tasks map best onto cases with certain characteristics?
  • If so, what characteristics? What tasks? What mapping?
• Potential case for library:
  • Change from Taped-In to Tapestry was managed on the web--can we harvest?
• Con presented his results of an effort to search CS 3724 homeworks/activites for case library use
  • Case library is used for the following homework:
    1. Use case as a sample, create your own segment in parallel
    2. Explain what happened in a case
    3. N/A
    4. N/A
    5. Analyze what happened in a case and assess it
    6. Analyze a case with respect to a certain model
    7. Compare/contrast two cases
    8. N/A
    9. N/A
    10. Analyze a single case with respect to two models; assess success of model
  • Case library is used for the following in-class assignments:
    • In class #1: Change an input requirement and trace changes to the case
    • In class #10: Develop a new scenario and extend its implications (this uses familiarity with the case study in the text)
  • These result in the following variation on case use taxonomy:
    • Mimic (#1) (similar to analogy/modeling, but at a basic level)
    • Summarize/Explain (#2)
    • Analyze (#5, #6, #10)
      • ...with respect to models (given one, given two, open choice)
      • ...Check for internal consistency
    • Assess (#5, #10)
    • Compare/Contrast (#7)
    • Perturb (In-class assignment #1)
    • Extend (In-class assignment #10)
• Worked on questions for survey of CS 3724 students
  • Will be an extra credit opportunity
  • Under umbrella to survey/improve pedagogy (no IRB)
  • We discussed several options and settled on the following questions
    1. How did you use the UCL/text case to do this homework?
    2. What benefits?
    3. What did you look for but could not find?
    4. What three things did you learn from this homework?
    5. Even if a requirements analysis was thought to be complete, I could extend it with an original scenario.
    6. Even in an unfamiliar problem domain, I can identify usability claims form scenarios.
  • The first four questions are candidates for every homework survey.
  • The last two questions are self-efficacy questions
    • To be answered on a scale of strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, strongly disagree
    • They will change for every homework
  • We did not attempt to come up with a perfect survey construct
    • Actually we did attempt this for a while but gave up
    • We plan to learn from how well the questions work out and make adjustments as time goes along
  • We need to meet next week to assess HW#1 (due next Thursday) and to set questions for HW#2 (due the following Thursday)
  • Generate an online survey using the VT tool at survey.vt.edu [Action: Con, completed]
    • See the results
    • Log in to the survey tool