[oae-urg] Feedback from CSU users

[Hardham, Gregory]

Apologies for the lack of feedback on recent designs, but at CSU we have been engaged with a series of structured discussions with about 80 pilot participants around group management and public/private visibility. Over the next couple of weeks we are focusing on the role of the discussions widget and our current Forum tool, and email/announcements/communication. I want to put before the URG the main issues have been highlighted to date - are these also issues for other institutions? To what extent will they be addressed by modifications that are currently planned?

Issues associated with equating current practice in Sakai CLE with similar ones in OAE.

·         Subject Sites

o   Current CSU practice allows the Student role to only upload files by default to My Workspace. In a Subject (Course) site the Student role can only upload files if the Subject Coordinator (site owner) has changed default permissions to allow this

o   If CSU wants to replicate these permissions in OAE, how can it be done?  For example, there will be groups for which it is not appropriate for students (members) to share content with the group's Library (more on this below).

o   Apart from rules and regulations, in what ways can OAE support file sharing without opening up avenues for students to clog servers with irrelevant and possibly illegally shared content?

·         Resources vs My Library

o   Current practice: a site owner has full control over Resources content

§  In OAE this is  not the case: any member can share with a Group's Library, and the Group owner does not have the ability to remove content from the Library that has been shared by others

§  The owner of a piece of content isn't able to unshare with particular groups - the only way appears to be to remove the content by deleting it, but is doing so it is deleted from all places.


·         Activity

o   Some users have concerns over their user activity being visible on the public landing page and would like the ability to disable this

o   Users would prefer to choose to follow activity (similar to workflows shown recent designs)

o   We need to have control over what goes on the public landing page - not enough is known about this.  Undesirable activity swamping the activity streams would not be the right impression for any institution.

·         Carousel

o   Some users want the ability to disable the carousel from My Dashboard

·         Messages

o   The user needs to be able to select which streams they want to receive email notifications from

o   There needs to be options to opt-out or receive a summary of communication, as in Sakai CLE.

o   A named author needs to be attached with message when it appears in email software. For example, students need to see that it has come from their lecturer and not just Sakai OAE

o   Users need to be able to filter email messages for management

o   The messages tool is too basic

§  No cancellation/recall of a message

§  No formatting of text

§  No images/attachments

§  Multiple replies to messages quickly become unreadable

o   Clicking on a link in a message viewed as email leads to a 404 page not found page if the user isn't already logged in to OAE. Maybe this needs to be explained by a default message?

·          My Library

o   Library - there is confusion over the number of libraries that appear in My Library - is it possible to attach the group name to its Library?

o   There will be a need for some of our groups not to have students able to share content with the group's library, eg groups that will be used for administrative purposes.  At present there appears to be no way of adjusting the permissions on the Library to do so.

o   Library permissions for Members are listed as Edit, See, Don't Show.  What are the practical differences there?  If it is set to Don't Show, then any member can still share content with the Library even if they can't see it listed on the group page because they can still see it in their list of Libraries when sharing content.

·         Public-Private

o   Sharing private content with a Public Group:   When sharing content with a group, there is no information about how visible that group is.  It is too easy to share private content with a group that is publicly visible & not realise the implications. Perhaps some warnings about the imminent increase in exposure?

o   Our users believe that it is appropriate for the actual content of publicly visible content to be displayed but would like some control over the metadata that is also publicly displayed.

o   Users would like the optional ability to disable downloading of visible content - for example in  Flickr it is possible to disable the ability to download an image, but people can still view (and appreciate) content.

o   Permissions. We expect that CSU's default setting for visibility when adding new content will be "Only me". Is it possible to re-order the settings to put "Public" last so that it is an explicit choice for users, and to prevent accidental sharing? (Perhaps this is locally customisable).

o   Users have indicated that they wouldn't expect that content management ability would be any less than Facebook or Flickr in functionality.

Cheers

Greg

Greg Hardham
Educational Designer
Interact2 project team
Division of Learning & Teaching Services
Charles Sturt University
Australia
Tel +61 2 6051 9287
email: ghardham at csu.edu.au<mailto:ghardham at csu.edu.au>


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