The UCWISE Instructor Portal metadata tool

Our team interviewed two people who are currently using and developing the UCWISE project. The two interviewees ( Michael Clancy and Nathaniel Titterton ) are both involved in the UCWISE project were identified by our team as representative of the primary users for HIPO.

Based on our interview we created three personas representing the target user for our HIPO interface. Our team identified three personas for the project: A computer science professor taking on the role of UCWISE course author / instructor; researcher / instructor;and course adopter / instructor.

These personas evolved from a combination of the interview results keeping in perspective the various interests of the users, goals of the UCWISE project and the users originally targeted by the initial UCWISE project. Our team created the personas to closely reflect the type of users of UCWISE after analyzing the interview results, requirements put forward by the interviewees, background of the expected users and the final goals of the project.

We found that target users included computer science instructors, educational researchers and technology specialists who wanted to interact with new ways with their students. The instructor portal allows the instructors to track their schedules and manage their classes in UCWISE more efficiently and also to monitor student understanding in the classroom.

Some of the major factors that influenced the evolution of the three personas:

All target users have a fair amount of computer science knowledge.
All users are hard pressed for time.
Need to track instructor schedules and students progress.

Personas & Goals

Dr. Alex Rosenblum: UCWISE course author / instructor
Dr. Alex Rosenblum is a 35 year old Lecturer at Computer Science division of the EECS department at the University of California, Berkeley. He co-directs a MOT program and also teaches at the self paced center at Berkeley. He received the CS division IT faculty award for excellence in Undergraduate teaching in the year 2004. He graduated with a Ph.D from Stanford University with a research concentration in computer security, including control access mechanisms, cryptographic protocols and mobile code security. He is married to his high school sweetheart Jane and is the proud dad of 2 yr old son Kyle. Alex is a talented but a very busy professor who is hard pressed for time. He usually tries to stay on top of things and so prefers doing things in a scheduled way. Alex enjoys outdoor life and goes for golf and rock climbing whenever time permits him for some leisure activities. He also enjoys traveling to places with his family. Alex was one of the founding members of UCWISE - a web based instruction system for Science and Engineering which aims to create an innovative approach to computer science instruction approach to computer science instruction that leverages the strengths of information technology and curremt research in education. Some of the classes that Alex taught in UCWISE in Fall2005 include CS3: Introduction to Symbolic Programming at UC Berkeley, CSE21: Introduction to Programming II at UC Merced and CS39l: Engineering programming at UC Berkeley. Alex wants to extend the UCWISE computer science course teaching format to other universities too. One of his research interest areas is promoting computer science education and is a member of the ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education which provides a forum for problems common among educators working to develop, implement and/or evaluate computing programs, curricula, and courses, as well as syllabi, laboratories, and other elements of teaching. Goals of Alex for using UCWISE: Using the UCWISE tools to teach and better manage the lower division computer science course that have more than 100 students; possibly using the UCWISE tools to improve communication between instructor/TA, instructor/students; using UCWISE tools to author many computer science curriculum easily Making sure the curriculum content he authored in UCWISE can be re-used by other instructors easily Justification: Alex represents one of the primary users of the Instructor Portal for UCWISE. His goals related to the project are closely related to the principle investigators and proponents for the project.

Dr. Alex Rosenblum: UCWISE course author / instructor

Dr. Alex Rosenblum is a 35 year old Lecturer at Computer Science division of the EECS department at the University of California, Berkeley. He co-directs a MOT program and also teaches at the self paced center at Berkeley. He received the CS division IT faculty award for excellence in Undergraduate teaching in the year 2004. He graduated with a Ph.D from Stanford University with a research concentration in computer security, including control access mechanisms, cryptographic protocols and mobile code security. He is married to his high school sweetheart Jane and is the proud dad of 2 yr old son Kyle. Alex is a talented but a very busy professor who is hard pressed for time. He usually tries to stay on top of things and so prefers doing things in a scheduled way. Alex enjoys outdoor life and goes for golf and rock climbing whenever time permits him for some leisure activities. He also enjoys traveling to places with his family.

Alex was one of the founding members of UCWISE - a web based instruction system for Science and Engineering which aims to create an innovative approach to computer science instruction approach to computer science instruction that leverages the strengths of information technology and curremt research in education. Some of the classes that Alex taught in UCWISE in Fall2005 include CS3: Introduction to Symbolic Programming at UC Berkeley, CSE21: Introduction to Programming II at UC Merced and CS39l: Engineering programming at UC Berkeley. Alex wants to extend the UCWISE computer science course teaching format to other universities too. One of his research interest areas is promoting computer science education and is a member of the ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education which provides a forum for problems common among educators working to develop, implement and/or evaluate computing programs, curricula, and courses, as well as syllabi, laboratories, and other elements of teaching.

Goals of Alex for using UCWISE:

Using the UCWISE tools to teach and better manage the lower division computer science course that have more than 100 students;
possibly using the UCWISE tools to improve communication between instructor/TA, instructor/students;
using UCWISE tools to author many computer science curriculum easily
Making sure the curriculum content he authored in UCWISE can be re-used by other instructors easily

Justification: Alex represents one of the primary users of the Instructor Portal for UCWISE. His goals related to the project are closely related to the principle investigators and proponents for the project.

Jane Kozovski: UCWISE course adopter / editor / researcher
Jane Kozovski is a 39 year old computer science instructor at Merrit College in Oakland for the past 5 years. She graduated from University of California, Berkeley in 1992 with a computer science degree. She has a PHD in education from University of California, Los Angeles. Jane lives in Berkeley, CA with her husband who is a professor in Asian studies with emphasis in Chinese history at UC Berkeley. She has 2 adopted kids, Jenny (9) and Johnny (8). Jane is a Sunday school teacher at her church. In her spare time, Jane Chan mentors and tutors inner city kids in Oakland who came from broken families. She wants to help them improve their academics so they can get into good universities, leave their life of poverty and danger, and eventually able come back to improve their community. Jane considers herself as a competent computer user. She loves to teach computer science. Her research is on how to better teach computer science to female students in universities. Two and half years ago (2003), Jane heard that some of the computer science instructors at University of California, Berkeley, especially one of her former UC Berkeley instructor Mike Clancy is now experimenting with a new way of teaching. She became personally interested in this project. She wants to adopt this new teaching style for her computer science courses at Merrit College. In summer of 2003, Jane came to UC Berkeley to observe how the experimental lab-based computer science course is taught by Mike Clancy. She became the co-instructor for the CS3 course. During that time, she became familiar with how the course is taught using the UCWISE online tools. She also observed how Mike Clancy authors the computer science curriculum using the UCWISE authoring tools. In fall of 2003, she taught an \?Intro to Programming\? course at Merrit college using the curriculum material that was authored by Mike Clancy for his cs3 course. This was the first time she used UCWISE for teaching on her own. The UCWISE tool had some technical problems here and here, but overall, she is excited with the new lab-based teaching style that the UCWISE tools enabled her to have. She is able to provide a lot more individual help to her students. She became interested in improving the UCWISE tools to enable more effective teaching and learning in computer science. So since winter of 2003, she has joined the UCWISE research team. She has converted all her courses (\?Intro to Lisp Programming\?, \?Intro to Java Programming\?, \?Intro to Programming for the non-techies\?) to the UCWISE format. Goals of Jane for using UCWISE: To easily search for existing UCWISE curriculum material authored by other instructors which she can re-use for her course To easily share her curriculum material with other instructors who uses UCWISE To recruit other computer science instructors at Merrit college to use the UCWISE tool Find out how to improve the UCWISE curriculum materials and the UCWISE tools to make the lab-based teaching even more effective Conduct research and statistical analysis on the UCWISE courses for the purpose of writing grant proposals Justification: Jane represents the role of the researchers on the UCWISE project. Almost all the researchers on the UCWISE project participate in teaching the UCWISE courses. One of the main researcher on the UCWISE project does a lot of work on collecting relevant data on the UCWISE project for the purpose of writing grant proposal. He teaches UCWISE courses though he is not heavily involved with UCWISE curriculum authoring. We decided to create a persona that fits well with his role in UCWISE since he will be a primary user of the metadata tagging tool.

Jane Kozovski: UCWISE course adopter / editor / researcher

Jane Kozovski is a 39 year old computer science instructor at Merrit College in Oakland for the past 5 years. She graduated from University of California, Berkeley in 1992 with a computer science degree. She has a PHD in education from University of California, Los Angeles. Jane lives in Berkeley, CA with her husband who is a professor in Asian studies with emphasis in Chinese history at UC Berkeley. She has 2 adopted kids, Jenny (9) and Johnny (8). Jane is a Sunday school teacher at her church. In her spare time, Jane Chan mentors and tutors inner city kids in Oakland who came from broken families. She wants to help them improve their academics so they can get into good universities, leave their life of poverty and danger, and eventually able come back to improve their community.

Jane considers herself as a competent computer user. She loves to teach computer science. Her research is on how to better teach computer science to female students in universities. Two and half years ago (2003), Jane heard that some of the computer science instructors at University of California, Berkeley, especially one of her former UC Berkeley instructor Mike Clancy is now experimenting with a new way of teaching. She became personally interested in this project. She wants to adopt this new teaching style for her computer science courses at Merrit College.

In summer of 2003, Jane came to UC Berkeley to observe how the experimental lab-based computer science course is taught by Mike Clancy. She became the co-instructor for the CS3 course. During that time, she became familiar with how the course is taught using the UCWISE online tools. She also observed how Mike Clancy authors the computer science curriculum using the UCWISE authoring tools.

In fall of 2003, she taught an \?Intro to Programming\? course at Merrit college using the curriculum material that was authored by Mike Clancy for his cs3 course. This was the first time she used UCWISE for teaching on her own. The UCWISE tool had some technical problems here and here, but overall, she is excited with the new lab-based teaching style that the UCWISE tools enabled her to have. She is able to provide a lot more individual help to her students. She became interested in improving the UCWISE tools to enable more effective teaching and learning in computer science. So since winter of 2003, she has joined the UCWISE research team. She has converted all her courses (\?Intro to Lisp Programming\?, \?Intro to Java Programming\?, \?Intro to Programming for the non-techies\?) to the UCWISE format.

Goals of Jane for using UCWISE:

To easily search for existing UCWISE curriculum material authored by other instructors which she can re-use for her course
To easily share her curriculum material with other instructors who uses UCWISE
To recruit other computer science instructors at Merrit college to use the UCWISE tool
Find out how to improve the UCWISE curriculum materials and the UCWISE tools to make the lab-based teaching even more effective
Conduct research and statistical analysis on the UCWISE courses for the purpose of writing grant proposals

Justification: Jane represents the role of the researchers on the UCWISE project. Almost all the researchers on the UCWISE project participate in teaching the UCWISE courses. One of the main researcher on the UCWISE project does a lot of work on collecting relevant data on the UCWISE project for the purpose of writing grant proposal. He teaches UCWISE courses though he is not heavily involved with UCWISE curriculum authoring. We decided to create a persona that fits well with his role in UCWISE since he will be a primary user of the metadata tagging tool.

Prof. Mark Hopkins: UCWISE Course Adopter (Soon To Be Retired CS Instructor)
Profession / Qualifications: B. A. Computer Science from University of San Diego, PhD Computer Science from UC Berkeley. Computer Graphics Programming instructor teaching OpenGL at San Diego State University (Seventeen of his 28 years of teaching experience have been at SDSU). Quote: I am here for the students. Not the other way around. Profile: Prof. Hopkins is 63 years old, happily married, with two daughters. His oldest daughter, Carolyn (32 yrs.), is finishing up her Masters at Oregon State University, while his youngest, Brittany (20 yrs.), is a junior at UCLA. He absolutely loves his job and his students love him in return, however, he is getting close to retirement in about 5 years. He and his wife own a motor-home and want to travel the country together during retirement. Given Prof. Hopkins\? curriculum is already used by other OpenGL teachers at SDSU, the university would like him to instill it into the UCWISE system so that both the lecture-based and lab-based (UCWISE) courses can use his curriculum when he retires. Prof. Hopkins would like for the UCWISE system to adopt Computer Graphics Programming in order to expand the types of courses offered. As of now, UCWISE is predominantly used in beginning programming courses for Java and C/C++ to introduce data structures, and object oriented design. He figures to use four of his last 5 years at SDSU to get his UCWISE curriculum well established. In his last year, he plans to co-teach his UCWISE course in order to allow for the successive instructors to learn the system before they take over. To learn about the system, Prof. Hopkins will be attending a week-long, summer workshop at UCB to work with the UCWISE professors on how to design curriculum for the system. In the short time that Prof. Hopkins has been able to research UCWISE, he\?s come to find that there are not any other courses using the system that teach OpenGL. As a result, he will be not only responsible for designing the curriculum, but also heavily involved in determining the metadata to be used. Goals: To have his curriculum and metadata be a benchmark for future UCWISE-taught computer graphics courses. To have a flexible system for metadata storage, to allow for changes as the curriculum evolves. To have an easy-to-learn metadata system, such that the focus can be on establishing curriculum rather that learning how to use UCWISE. Making his metadata well thought out and designed, such that it can be reused for future courses. Justifications: Mark represents someone who is new to the UCWISE system. As UCWISE is expanding to different universities new instructors are becoming part of the team. Mark represents one such new instructor with loads of experience in teaching but not particularly in the new web-based teaching method of UC-WISE. He is a respected professor who has been given the opportunity to teach in UCWISE and is responsible for its expansion of the curriculum. Mark represents the instructors with limited resources and would find the use of the metadata tools in the Instructor Portal very helpful. He has an experience in teaching a curriculum that is different from the normal beginner level computer science courses that are presently taught in UCWISE.

Prof. Mark Hopkins: UCWISE Course Adopter (Soon To Be Retired CS Instructor)

Profession / Qualifications:

B. A. Computer Science from University of San Diego, PhD Computer Science from UC Berkeley.
Computer Graphics Programming instructor teaching OpenGL at San Diego State University (Seventeen of his 28 years of teaching experience have been at SDSU).

Quote:

I am here for the students. Not the other way around.

Profile: Prof. Hopkins is 63 years old, happily married, with two daughters. His oldest daughter, Carolyn (32 yrs.), is finishing up her Masters at Oregon State University, while his youngest, Brittany (20 yrs.), is a junior at UCLA. He absolutely loves his job and his students love him in return, however, he is getting close to retirement in about 5 years. He and his wife own a motor-home and want to travel the country together during retirement. Given Prof. Hopkins\? curriculum is already used by other OpenGL teachers at SDSU, the university would like him to instill it into the UCWISE system so that both the lecture-based and lab-based (UCWISE) courses can use his curriculum when he retires.

Prof. Hopkins would like for the UCWISE system to adopt Computer Graphics Programming in order to expand the types of courses offered. As of now, UCWISE is predominantly used in beginning programming courses for Java and C/C++ to introduce data structures, and object oriented design. He figures to use four of his last 5 years at SDSU to get his UCWISE curriculum well established. In his last year, he plans to co-teach his UCWISE course in order to allow for the successive instructors to learn the system before they take over. To learn about the system, Prof. Hopkins will be attending a week-long, summer workshop at UCB to work with the UCWISE professors on how to design curriculum for the system.

In the short time that Prof. Hopkins has been able to research UCWISE, he\?s come to find that there are not any other courses using the system that teach OpenGL. As a result, he will be not only responsible for designing the curriculum, but also heavily involved in determining the metadata to be used.

Goals:

To have his curriculum and metadata be a benchmark for future UCWISE-taught computer graphics courses.
To have a flexible system for metadata storage, to allow for changes as the curriculum evolves.
To have an easy-to-learn metadata system, such that the focus can be on establishing curriculum rather that learning how to use UCWISE.
Making his metadata well thought out and designed, such that it can be reused for future courses.

Justifications: Mark represents someone who is new to the UCWISE system. As UCWISE is expanding to different universities new instructors are becoming part of the team. Mark represents one such new instructor with loads of experience in teaching but not particularly in the new web-based teaching method of UC-WISE. He is a respected professor who has been given the opportunity to teach in UCWISE and is responsible for its expansion of the curriculum. Mark represents the instructors with limited resources and would find the use of the metadata tools in the Instructor Portal very helpful. He has an experience in teaching a curriculum that is different from the normal beginner level computer science courses that are presently taught in UCWISE.

Explanation and Justification of Personas and Goals

Personas & Goals