DScribe-dScribe2-UM

Scenarios - DScribe-dScribe2-UM

Andrea's Perspective
After the dScribe training session, Andrea was left wondering if she would ever finish publishing all of these course materials for POLSCI 353. Swirling in her head was copyright, copyleft, faculty permissions, internet searches, “Greyhound” or whatever they called that tool-thingy... blah! It was too much, but at least the dScribe 2s gave her a simple first assignment: talk with Professor Putnam, and get him to sign the permission form. Easy, kind of. What was she to say about the project? How could she describe it in her own words? She’ll get help from John, for sure.

Andrea worked with John to draft up the first discussion between her and Putnam. John seemed helpful, but geeky. Hopefully he knew more about computer stuff that her. Searching for a video on YouTube seemed like a far cry from finding Creative Commons licensed images somewhere on the internet. As Andrea started getting into the course, she would find her self thinking about the images in the presentations Professor Putnam gave in class. “Where did he get that one?” she wondered. “Oh, I can replace that, no problem.” She slowly began to catch on to the idea of downloading the lectures for class, organizing the images on Greyhound, and adding the citations while she was attending lecture. It passed the time, and it forced her to pay more attention to Putnam--not that she wasn’t already engaged. When students would ask silly questions, Andrea had time to start figuring out which images to replace and which ones to keep. Sometimes she would have a question for John, but he was constantly on chat or on Facebook, so she would just throw images his way and see what he’d say. As she gained confidence, she was able to guess what John might say about this object or that one.

Workshop
On Tuesday evenings the dScribe 2s had a workshop where all the student dScribes could come in to the office and get help with their courses. These were fun because Andrea’s friend Tom was dScribing a class as well. It was some history class and he was having a terrible time finding replacement images. I mean, “How do you find a replacement for the Nixon-Kennedy debate?” Anyway, the dScribe 2s were helpful, and it was fun and productive to hang out at the office, get some food, and get your work done.

John's Perspective
Each week John would review Andrea’s work and answer her questions. Sometimes he would get 20 IMs a day from her alone, on top of the other two dScribes he was helping. Andrea’s course had a lot of content to clear, so he tried to keep up with her. It often amazed John that the undergraduate students seemed so clueless about software applications. Was “Command+C” really a difficult concept for people? Even so, it was interesting to get a younger perspective on what the dScribes project would do to help people.

Andrea’s class was also a difficult one because she had 20 students who signed permission forms for their work to be published at the end of the semester. The paperwork was a bit daunting to keep track of, but John managed. At least Andrea got the forms signed, unlike another dScribe. John has one problem student who constantly needs to be pushed along. He doesn’t seem to care about doing the work at all. The only thing that has interested him is creating better diagrams for his physics class. That’s great, but what about the other work?

John’s biggest gripe this semester has been his schedule. So, he has 3 dScribes to keep track of (including their permissions, faculty, content updates, questions, journals, hours), he has to do the final publishing for the dScribe work, he has 2 classes at the Ford School, and 2 others at SI. On top of this he is setting up CIC meetings and trying to make time for a relationship--failing relationship. It’s a tough semester, but he gets SI internship credit and money for the dScribe work, so it’s like killing two birds with one stone (who came up with that expression anyway?). It’s also nice that he has been able to teach the students how to use their computers for something other than chatting, emailing, writing papers, or Facebooking.

Finishing Up
As the semester is coming to a close, the dScribes are starting to flake out. Most are worried about the papers and finals they have, and not about finishing the publishing of those last lectures. This has been a problem in the past, John was told, but they’ve dealt with it by offering the students more workshops with food. The students have to eat, so they come to get the free hand-outs and usually stick around long enough to finish the work.

Andrea is looking forward to sitting down with Professor Putnam at the end of the semester to review the course materials. She has been bugging him after class most weeks asking about missing citations and cool replacements she’s found. It’s been interesting to see that as the semester has gone on, Putnam has actually added citations and even started using the Flickr Creative Commons search that Andrea showed him. He told her that he doesn’t mind getting content from there to help her out as long as it’s good quality and doesn’t take 30 extra steps.

Goal 4:

 * 1) Goal:
 * 2) Intention:
 * 3) Action:
 * 4) Execution:
 * Gulf of execution:
 * 5. Perceiving the state of the world
 * 5. Perceiving the state of the world


 * 6. Interpreting the state of the world


 * 7. Evaluating the outcome