Faculty-tool

Scenario - Faculty

The Paper
Dr. Ljung just finished editing an article on high-frequency micromechanical resonators and plans on publishing his article in the Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems. As normal before publishing, he checked with the U-M Office of Technology Transfer to be sure his research did not have a market for a patent.

Copyright Office
Dr. Ljung was about to start seeking permissions from the publisher to put his work up on his website, when he came across something interesting. Upon doing some research, he found that U-M has a Copyright Office through the library system. The office gave him a handy contract addendum that retains his copyrights for the work he publishes. Dr. Ljung called up the Journal and added this addendum to his contract. Now he has all of his rights to re-publish his work in other journals as well as on his own website.

OER?
Before finalizing the publishing process, the Journal requires that Dr. Ljung state where he has used 3rd party content in his research article. Dr. Ljung must obtain permission, according to the Journal, for using 3rd party works because of copyright liability the Journal does not want to assume. He wonders if it's necessary to also obtain permission for those components if he wants to publish this work on his website as well. Again, he calls up the Copyright Office for assistance and they inform him about the Open Educational Resources (OER) group.

OER has a special process for determining not only 3rd party copyrights, but whether or not content merits copyright in the first place. Dr. Ljung takes a note of this group, but proceeds with his plan of obtaining permissions from the 3rd party. However, now that he has the phone number for OER, he plans to give them a call the next time he intends on publishing an article to his website.

Goal 1: Contact OER group and receive access to OERca

 * 1) Goal: His goal is to get in touch with the OER group, obtain access to OERca, and resolve technical issues related to using OERca
 * 2) Intention: He intends to call the OER group and arrange a meeting.
 * 3) Action: He needs to locate the phone number, look at his calendar, call and agree upon a meeting time, location and duration.
 * 4) Execute: He calls the OER group and arranges a meeting. At the meeting, the OER group demonstrates the tool, shows him how to access it and the technical specifications of using the tool.
 * 5) Percieve:
 * 6) Interpret:
 * 7) Evaluate:

Goal 3: Compile and organize materials intended for publishing to his website

 * 1) Goal: Prepare an organized set of materials for OERca's clearing process
 * 2) Intention: He intends to find all the materials he plans to use on his computer, aggregate them into a single location, and upload them into OERca.
 * 3) Action: He has to search his computer, both visually and using his computer's search tools, and drag content into a folder labeled 'OER.' He also must look over the article he plans to publish and consider where he keeps the content he has used, and decide if any material is spread out between multiple computers.
 * 4) Execute: After deciding that all content was stored in various folders on his office desktop, he went through the Microsoft Word document of his article and looked at each figure one by one. He would look at an object, try and remember where he had it saved, and go to that location and browse for it visually. Occasionally, he would be unable to find an object by browsing, and he would do a desktop search. As he could not remember the file names of all objects, this caused a problem in finding one object. He was unable to guess the file name, and decided to move on. He later came across this file when browsing for a different one. Each time he located a file, he copied it to a folder on his desktop labeled OER. After copying all objects, he zipped the file and uploaded it to OERca following the instructions he had been given by the OER group on their wiki.


 * Gulf of Execution: One problem that comes up is that clearing the content in the tool depends on it being organized and retrievable before it is uploaded to the tool. If the user can't find content because he or she hasn't organized it or doesn't remember file names or for other reasons, getting the content into the tool is challenging. However, it is highly possible that the process of re-finding content stimulates memory about the content which is ultimately valuable to the clearing process, such as provenance or possible replacements.
 * 5. Perceive: Dr. Ljung scanned through all the materials in OERca and made sure that everything had uploaded as he expected.
 * 6. Interpret:
 * 7. Evaluate: Dr. Ljung realized that OERca did not immediately provide any new levels of organization, and that his materials looked and were organized the same way in OERca as he had organized them before uploading them. He was mildly disappointed that some level of automatic filtering or organizing did not occur when he uploaded the materials.

Goal 4: Clear or Re-create all materials

 * 1) Goal: Build a collection of cleared materials which can be reinserted into the article and be published.
 * 2) Intention: He intends to take each content object, evaluate it using the workflow and the training he has received, and recommend an action, and show those recommendations to the OER group for confirmation. After receiving confirmation, he intends to take each recommended action.
 * 3) Action: Dr. Ljung must look at each object and follow the directions on the workflow document until he arrives at a recommended action. He must ask his colleagues questions, ask the OER office questions, and when necessary he must spend time searching and re-creating content.
 * 4) Execute: Dr. Ljung finds that as he works to clear objects, he isn't always sure how best to answer the questions from the workflow, and at times worries he is making the wrong decision. He spends a lot of time sending questions to the OER office, colleagues from whom he has borrowed content, and looking through books and journals as he thinks he may have taken some of his content from them. He does quickly begin to learn the workflow and starts making many decisions without looking at it. He created most of his own content, but he found that he had the most difficulty clearing content which he had borrowed from colleagues at other institutions. One of the reasons Dr. Ljung wants to publish his work to his own website is because he wants complete control of how the final product looks. Finding replacement objects when a third-party object could not be cleared was the biggest challenge, as Dr. Ljung holds very high standards for the quality and precision of information he puts his name on. Dr. Ljung kept a folder on his desktop and in his email client for information documenting the process. He would keep notes documenting his decisions in a word file.


 * Gulf of Execution Dr. Ljung spent too much time asking people at the OER office merely for assurance that he was doing things right. The tool itself did not provide enough evidence that the workflow was being followed and that content was being cleared in the proper way with the correct decisions. He also did not trust the tool to keep documentation of the rationale and process behind each decision. Rather than using the tool to communicate with some sort of dScribe2 at the OER office, he communicated with them by phone or email and lost out on the potential for recording that communication in the tool.
 * 5. Percieve:
 * 6. Interpret:
 * 7. Evaluate:

Goal 5: Publish article using cleared content to personal website

 * 1) Goal: Maintain a useful and informative website with his published articles without violating any copyright restrictions.
 * 2) Intention: To create the documents which will be published to his website.
 * 3) Action: Dr. Ljung must reassemble all the material and try and insert it back into the article he had originally written and format it for the web.
 * 4) Execution: With all content cleared, including some objects to replace previous content, Dr. Ljung must rebuild his article using content which the tool says has been cleared. He opens OERca and looks at the list of all his content objects. He also opens the Microsoft Word document he had originally created, and goes through each object one by one and visually compares the object on the doc to the one in the tool and looks at the final action. If the object looks the same and the final object is cleared, he leaves it alone. If there is a replacement object, he deletes the image from the file, and inserts the new image from the OER folder he has been keeping on his desktop. Because he has used some new objects, he must spend significant time rearranging and reformating his paper. He asks a grad student to give it a final look and comment on the new images and new formatting. When he has finalized the paper, he uploads a pdf copy to his website which can be downloaded by anyone.


 * Gulf of Execution: Although Dr. Ljung undoubtedly knows his content very well, he leaves open the possibility for still publishing uncleared content by making the final judgment of what gets published by a mere visual comparison between the image in the document and the thumbnail in OERca. He is not taking the files he published down from OERca, but just looking at them and using his vosual judgment to decide whether or not they are exactly the same image. A potential error from this mode of operating would be if there were more than one image that look very close to each other but with a minor distinction. There would then be no documentation that the final published image actually went through the clearing process. Also, by not taking images directly from OERca, he loses the ability to automatically record the metadata and clearing process log which could be important in other applications. He could benefit from actually publishing the log and clearing info to his website for people to see should they have a question and want to investigate.
 * 5. Perceive
 * 6. Interpret
 * 7. Evaluate:

Goal 6: Update website with new, cleared content as he encounters or creates it

 * 1) Goal: Keep his website up to date with new images and content.
 * 2) Intention: He wants to add or replace images in his article as he comes up with better representations of his concepts, or finds third party images which he considers superior to what he has already published, or which supplement his article well.
 * 3) Action: He must clear all new content objects just as before, and continues to use OERca for this purpose.
 * 4) Execution: He uploads any new content objects to the tool, and follows the same process as before. He refers to the workflow and wiki each time, as he begins to forget all the specifics of copyright policy and how to use the tool over time. OERca also undergoes changes which he must learn. As before, once he decides that an object is cleared, he adds it to the document in some form and reposts the document.
 * 5) Perceive
 * 6) Interpret
 * 7) Evaluate