| Work Task Title | User Profiles and Scenarios | ||||
| Work Task Overall Remit and Aims | The overall remit of WT K is to develop a series of user scenarios intended to demonstrate the potential impact of the implemented ICT Strategy on the daily working lives of members of the collegiate University. The WT uses a methodology based on 'storytelling' and will create stories applicable to a wide range of roles within the University. The WT operates in two distinct phases. An initial phase will develop basic scenarios which may assist in WTs B (Ongoing Consultation) and D (ICT Requirements for Collegiate University). The second phase, based on the outcomes of WT D in particular, will further develop the scenarios for inclusion as an appendix within the final ICT Strategy report | ||||
| Date Remit Approved | [2005-10-20] | Start Date | 2005-10-04 | (Anticipated) End Date | 2006-04-28 |
| Leader | Michael Fraser (MF) (mike.fraser@oucs.ox.ac.uk) | ||||
| Members (Initials) | Paul Jeffreys (PWJ, Observer), David Popplewell (DP), Peter Robinson (PR), Nigel Rudgewick-Brown (NRB), Jeremy Worth (JW) | ||||
| Work Task URL | http://www.ict.ox.ac.uk/strategy/worktasks/k/ | ||||
The following brief scenarios are intended as illustrative examples of the benefits which might result from the identification and prioritisation of shared ICT services for the collegiate University on the one hand, and their implementation within a coherent information environment on the other.
The first edition of these scenarios were used as part of the consultations undertaken by Work Task B. This, the second edition, takes account of feedback received and the inclusion of additional scenarios submitted as a result of the consultation process.
As of 17 March 2006 the following roles are represented by scenarios:
Each scenario comprises the following elements:
The scenarios were originally developed by the ICT Strategy Programme's Work Task K, chaired by Michael Fraser with David Popplewell, Peter Robinson, and Jeremy Worth as members (and Paul Jeffreys as observer). The proceedings of Work Task K may be found online at http://www.ict.ox.ac.uk/strategy/worktasks/k/
From Blackwells coffee shop Alex take advantage of the pervasive wireless network and her uses her pre-configured, loaned laptop to securely sign-on to the student portal. She now has seamless access to a variety of University services (including those provided by her faculty and college). She retrieves a completed assignment from her personal file store and submits it to her tutor via Weblearn. She begins collecting a reading list for her next essay through a cross-search and saving of references from a combination of local and remote bibliographic databases. Whilst doing so she receives an email alerting her to the latest student funding opportunities collected from across the University and which match her saved profile. She also receives a notification that Dr Edward's lecture has been moved to Thursday morning. Selecting relevant links in these emails allows her to put the application deadlines and the revised lecture time into her personal calendar. The calendar includes an option to text the coming week’s academic and social appointments to her mobile phone. This reminds her to update her student record with her new phone number.
Mr Martin, a science graduate student, is part of a European-wide research initiative. He has secure wireless access to the University network resources on his laptop computer and Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) from his department, college, student accommodation and from outside the University. He accesses a range of facilities via his University’s portal login, including links that have been preconfigured to reflect his academic area and which he can tailor for his own needs. Having submitted an in silico experiment to the campus grid compute facility he opens his integrated email, voice-mail, electronic diary and task list. He is alerted that his online diary has been updated automatically with key dates relating to research report deadlines and collaborator meetings. He submits his research report and views his supervisor’s reports online. He then completes his on-line end-of-term feedback form.
Opening his email he is alerted to relevant seminars and professional development courses running, which have been sent automatically from a University-wide listing of key events that match his own predefined keywords. He books a place on a course online, receives an email confirmation, and his diary is updated accordingly. Whilst online he also receives an email alert of a new publication and a possible funding opportunity.
He downloads and installs a latest version of site-licensed software and, once installed, opens research documents and images held in his user area on the University-wide file system.
Before turning back to his in vitro research he quickly pays his Battels account (deadline today) via a link to the college payment system.
Professor Reader has the staff portal as her browser home page. She logs in from home with her single sign-on credentials. She is currently seeking supplementary funding for a major collaborative research project and obtains an instant expenditure to-date report from the financial system. These figures she can use as the basis for her current funding request, the preliminary costings for which she generates and submits online for checking by her Department's administrator before submission to Research Services. She adds the draft proposal to the Division's view of the University's research management system, used as the primary source of data for reporting research activities and outputs. An email alert informs her that a colleague from a partner institution has uploaded a preprint for comment to the project's working space in Oxford's digital repository. She glances through the paper and makes use of the system's version control to add a reference and link to one of her own published papers before suggesting to colleagues an online conference to discuss outputs and the next phase of the project.
Dr Heaney's research is taking her into an increasingly unfamiliar area and she is seeking someone to assist in validating her results. She uses the University's Research Discovery Service to locate a potential collaborator in another Department. She also discovers the existence of an international research project led by Oxford which is making use of much the same primary data as her but for quite different purposes. Her own data would complement what the project already has and she would benefit from participating in a broader network of expertise. She emails the PI and includes a link to her research profile page on the RDS, from which her research publications and, in some cases the supporting data, can be retrieved from the Digital Repository. Like Professor Reader she is keen on making use of technologies which enable collaborative working. She is an active member of one or two email discussion lists in her area and has shared ideas with a fellow researcher in a US institution using both desktop Access Grid and also simple messaging tools. She turns her attention to completing a proposal for internal funding in order to properly annotate her personal image database prior to uploading them to the Digital Repository for both wider but secure online access and to help ensure their preservation.
It’s Sunday afternoon and Dr Wilson is working from his study at home using his personal laptop. Over his broadband link he is able to securely access all his documents, library databases, and the University systems for which he is authorised as if he was sitting in his college office on a Monday morning. He completes the last of his draft examination papers and, securely, makes them available for comment by the external examiner. He is alerted to the submission of an essay by his undergraduate student Alex within his Faculty’s view of Weblearn. He has a quick read online and sees an unfamiliar journal article cited. From within Weblearn he is able to make a single search across a variety of bibliographic databases. He quickly locate a digital copy, adding the link to his own personal reading list. If the article’s any use he will update his public reading list on Weblearn accordingly. He also notices that the newly published book of his colleague is now in the Faculty library and duly reserves it for his next visit. He consults his personal view of the University-wide calendar and suggests a date with which to meet with Alex. At this meeting he will also discuss and finalise Alex's third year options, after which Alex will submit the decision to the online student records system. Finally, he uploads to Weblearn a a set of gobbets for discussion next week by his tutorial group (the members of which are duly and automatically alerted by email).
Next day, Dr Wilson meets with Susan, a D.Phil student he jointly supervises with Professor Gosford. He discusses some final changes to her thesis after which Susan uploads a revised version of the thesis (with changes clearly and automatically highlighted) to the institutional repository, for a final review by Professor Gosford. Before leaving he lodges a booking request for a medium-sized centrally located lecture theatre for next term's lectures. He expects the system to notify him with a list of available options, released into the general pool by faculties and departments, which may be booked.
Today Mr Rhodes is working in one of the Department's annex buildings up the hill. He logs into the machine on his temporary working space with his single sign-on credentials and receives a message that OpenOffice.org has been updated to the latest version. As one would expect within an enhanced computing environment all his settings and documents are available to him from any one of at least 1200 machines around the University. He receives an alert notifying him that Professor Reader has submitted a preliminary project costing. Using the online research costing system he notes that 20% of Professor Reader's time is already allocated as principal investigator to other projects. He enters a note suggesting the PI time is reduced or delegated and also amends the budget to show how the project might make cost savings by allocating some tasks to the Division's central project management team. Mr Rhodes, in one of his other roles, uploads the minutes of an earlier meeting to the intranet view of the central digital repository which in turn promptly notifies committee members. He leaves the office that evening without switching off his machine. Within thirty minutes his machine is once again contributing to the secure processing of Mr Martin's data over the OxGrid.
Professor Archer is drafting a set of key points relating to the revision of the Division's ICT Strategy for consideration by the Divisional ICT Committee. The framework for the ICT Strategy will be driven by the University's corporate plan and in the knowledge that ICT is integral to all the Division's business processes. However, she is keen to ensure that the support and provision for ICT is located within the appropriate part of the organisation. She believes, for example, that the Division should encourage early adoption of the recently evaluated Enhanced Computing Environment since this would potentially enable the Division to focus less on generic IT support issues and concentrate on meeting the specialist academic computing needs of its members. She believes that having ownership of ICT expertise which directly relates to the research and teaching agenda of the Division is strategically important. In addition, she believes the Division will make direct cost savings through the University's effective co-ordination of procurement, deployment and support of ICT infrastructure. In addition, the development of an integrated information environment has resulted in indirect savings through streamlining administrative processes, itself a key objective of all academic divisions.
Francis, a member of the University's ICT team (by virtue of being an accredited divisional ICT support officer) begins the week with a brief meeting of the ICT Frontline Services unit in order to confirm any changes to the week's priorities. On consulting the ICT team's online helpdesk application he sees a request from Dr Miles, a part managed desktop user, who wants to try Firefox.. This application is part of the managed desktop provided by thin client, however the latest but untested version is available as an installer for use on the “private” desktop. Francis had set up the installer just the day before. An email to Dr Miles indicating the two options is sent. Dr Miles replies saying that the double click on the installer icon had loaded the application successfully with out further intervention. This is the 23rd user to install the latest version, if no problems are reported over the next few weeks Francis, using the integrated desktop management system will deploy the latest version to the thin client desktop and confirm its successful installation via the helpdesk system. He also takes the opportunity to schedule an overnight update to Firefox across all three operating system choices offered within the enhanced computing environment. Francis is attending a three-day IT project management course with two other colleagues within the ICT team, funded from a central IT support staff development budget. He enters the dates into the team's view of the central calendar, confident that in his absence his responsibilities will be covered by other members of the team. In the remaining time before lunch he continues working on a paper relating to 'next generation' desktop security management tools to be co-presented at the next meeting of the divisional ICT Planning Group before presentation to the central planning group. Thinking about his forthcoming annual review he decides he would like the opportunity to deepen his expertise through a 'development exchange' with the medical sciences ICT team.
Ms Baker settles down first thing at her desk and logs into the computer. Her log-in allows her seamless access to library systems both reader-facing and for library staff use, Weblearn, email, online diary (personal, departmental and university-wide) and all administrative functions including purchasing. She looks at the list of things to do she left herself the night before – most urgently she needs to purchase the texts for a reading list for a new course starting in a few weeks. Within a few minutes she is able to run a list of the ISBNs of the books against the library catalogue and then against a supplier database which notes those available as e-books. She is pleased that only two of the list are identified as not in stock and out of print. She checks those against a specialist supplier and can locate and find a price for both of them. Placing orders will be equally straightforward when the time comes as library, finance and supplier systems are all linked and orders need only be created once – on the library system. She then forwards a neat summary of availability and prices to the course leader by email with an invitation to meet to discuss his priorities in light of the course structure week by week. It will also be possible to create reading lists which give live links into a full-text course reader and / or the Library catalogue or remote web resources just as easily.
Opening the email set-up for library enquiries for her subject Ms Baker replies to a range of requests for assistance including some she can deal with herself quite easily (a request for an introduction to the library for a visiting academic, help with a dissertation search, a book order request) and others she can forward to others (an online journal is unavailable – she forwards to the publisher after checking the subscription is current, a student cannot get Endnote to work – she forwards to the one-stop shop ICT helpdesk). Another makes her stop and think – a mature student who is complaining about the cost of printing text versus the uncomfortable nature of reading online from the course reader and is wishing that he could just borrow all his books from the library. This prompts her to suggest that if he contacts the ICT helpdesk they should be able to lend him some equipment to try which would make online reading more comfortable. Ms Baker then works on a short presentation on a new database being made available through the Library portal she is due to deliver to her department (and anyone else interested) next week. She can book a room for the presentation, manage attendance, monitor audience feedback (even some forms of exercises and assessment!) and advertise the session using a University-wide bookings system.
Professor Bandinel is Professor of Mediaeval History at the University of North Glasgow. His specialist field is the contribution Middle English Literature makes to our understanding of the history of the period. He has come to Oxford to consult some of the mediaeval manuscripts in the Bodleian Library.
He registers as a reader at the OULS Admissions Office, acquires a smart Library Card, and is given advice on how to connect to University resources while he is in the precincts of the Library. His card indicates he has access to early materials and the access control system allows him to swipes the card to get into Duke Humfrey’s Library.
He goes to a public terminal and orders a mediaeval manuscript to be fetched, using his card to verify his identity. While he is waiting for the manuscript to arrive he connects his laptop using a wireless connection, switches on his VPN connection and downloads a list of references from his files in North Glasgow. North Glasgow does not subscribe to the LION database, so switching the VPN connection off, he logs on to the LION database relying on the IP authentication to identify him as working in the Bodleian Library. He finds a version of a 12th-century poem which he hopes to compare with the text in the manuscript he has just ordered. Because it’s easier to compare the texts on paper, he sends the poem to a library network printer, using his Library card to identify himself, goes to the printer, uses the card to pay and enable the printout to proceed. Using his North Glasgow Athens authentication he accesses the WoK database to find recent works citing the text he’s working on, the OULS Open URL resolver will link directly through to the full text of the article (if Oxford holds an electronic subscription) and also check the library catalogue and order the material from the Osney Depository.
When the manuscript arrives an email alert is sent to him. He collects the manuscript collates it with the text he acquired from LION, makes notes on his laptop, and reopens the VPN connection to North Glasgow to deposit his notes in his home files.
(as supplied by Continuing Education)
Catherine Deneuve is travelling up country visiting field sites, away from her office in Manila. She is working on an assignment due later that week. After finding an Internet café, she logs on to the University via SSL to research her assignment, goes to the online law library, looks up online issues of journals, and downloads relevant papers. Later she joins an online asynchronous discussion forum hosted by the course VLE to work with fellow students on a case-study. Her fellow students are in many different countries, in different time zones. The discussion board allows them to contribute to the group task when the local time is convenient. While she is adding to the case-study she finds she needs to check some references, and so alt-tabs to the online journals and back to the VLE. Later she submits her own assignment online to her tutor in Oxford, and pays another instalment of her University fees by secure online payment. The next week she logs on for a web-cam tutorial with her Oxford tutor to discuss her assignment.
(as supplied by Medical Sciences)
It is 8.00 am and Harry is due to accompany his consultant on a ward round at 10.00, he logs into the University network to synchronize his PDA. His personal calendar gives him an urgent reminder that he is due to make a clinical case presentation to his firm in three days time and he sees that there will be a lecture on his special research topic in the Medical Sciences Teaching Centre back in Oxford next week; he makes a note in his personal calendar. He also realizes with horror that he has forgotten his Mother’s birthday and arranges on-line for a bouquet to be delivered urgently.
As there are only a couple of hours before the ward round, Harry revises using the Anatomy and Pharmacopia installed on his PDA as he travels by bus to the hospital. He still needs to wake up, so chooses to spend 15 minutes taking one of the multimedia multiple choice tests on his PDA over coffee in the canteen. Harry now feels more confident he can face his consultant. Harry puts a note in his calendar to remind him to ask the consultant to sign-off the theatre session he attended earlier in the week on his e-portfolio and hopes there will be a readily available barcode reader. Checking his e-portfolio Harry is reminded that he still needs to arrange to visit the radiology department to have his skill interpreting x-rays validated. He plans to download the digital images to the laptop in his digs tonight and makes another calendar entry.
During the ward round they meet Mrs R, admitted overnight, suffering from a rare and intractable disease. The specialist librarian uses the wireless connection to search a bibliographic database, finds and downloads the three relevant journal articles which she then transmits the references to the group wiki on the VLE, automatically creating an RSS entry and updating the integrated reading list on the VLE. Harry searches the Cochrane database of evidence based medicine but fails to find anything as this disease is very rare. The team decide on an interim programme of stabilizing treatment and further tests. The nurse tutor in attendance uses her PDA to access the British National Formulary check drugs and dosage. After the team meeting Harry uses the reflective e-journal to record his immediate thoughts.
Harry returns to the canteen, passing through the wireless network which automatically resynchs his PDA and notifies changes to his e-mail, blogs and on-line accounts, reminding him to pay his college battals bill. Harry checks his bank balance and arranges the payment on-line before posting his reflection to the class blog. As he does not have time to read the new blogs in the VLE he downloads them to his PDA to read during his journey home and notes he must call his mum to wish her happy birthday tonight.
(as supplied by Medical Sciences)
Mrs T begins her day with an alert from the University news service of a research breakthrough that would be of interest to the alumni. She uses logs into her portal page to access the service to flag this as future material for the quarterly printed/online/email newsletter and checks that the news item has appeared on the alumni website via the established news feeds. She is confident that her assistant will be able to reuse the news article in creating the print-ready copy. She is finalizing the organization of a reunion in 6 months time; turning to the online event booking system she notes that a further 10 people have booked using secure payment by credit card, and can see at a glance their year and affiliation. It is clear that an additional location for the evening dinner will have to be found and she undertakes a search for appropriate facilities within the University and places a provisional booking on a college dining hall. She also takes a look at current sales of alumni merchandise, available on the University Shop website to members of her alumni association.
Later that day she hosts a guest lecture and reception. She arrives at the location to find that the appropriate equipment for the lecture has been set up as requested at the time of the booking and a welcome message to the alumni appears on the plasma screen in the entrance lobby. The lecturer is busy testing out the live video conferencing link with the on-duty support officer; this will allow colleagues in New York to participate in his presentation. A last minute phone call is required to the caterers - their contact details have been downloaded to her phone from her contact management system. As agreed at the time of booking the lecture theatre, during the lecture she is able to offer her guests wireless internet access, indeed as alumni of the University they have access to additional resources on the network as they log in, including the alumni wiki where members of her association can reminisce and share experiences and photographs. From her laptop, her assistant is able to make a secure wireless connection to the alumni database to check on booking details and to make corrections to a couple of changes of address reported by the guests as they arrive. Potential donors have been flagged in the database by the development office and these have been discretely marked on the automatically generated attendance list. During the reception, her assistant uploads the presentation (which is automatically converted to an accessible format) and a few digital images of the event (after receiving permission to publish from the people portrayed) to the alumni website.
(As supplied by Beatrix Stewart, St John’s College)
Miss Moneypenny has a gaudy dinner on a Friday with the three yearly garden party on the next day (Saturday). Invitations for both were sent out three months ago, and replies to both logged into a database as they came in. The Bursary does not accept credit card payments so cheques have been kept and sent in a batch to the Bursary together with a printout of a spreadsheet which was pulled off the database so the Bursary can check names against cheques and agree the total amount. Today is the Friday of the gaudy. Miss Moneypenny checks that her assistant has sent the final numbers and dietary requirements (taken from a report in the database) to the catering department, and an attendance list (taken from another report in the database) to the porters. The database has automatically alerted her (from information gleaned at previous events) that Mr X is in a wheelchair, Miss Y suffers from coeliac disease and Mr Z is diabetic. Potential donors have been flagged by the Development Office, and an attendance list (including career details) with these people marked has already been taken as a report from the database and sent to the President, Fellow for Alumni and the Bursar, who will all attend both events. The list of ‘missing’ alumni for the years of the gaudy is taken from the database to circulate to alumni coming to the dinner. She checks with the IT support staff that the equipment for the talk to be given at the garden party is set up and she uploads the presentation that has been sent her that day by the speaker from her web-based email. There is a breakfast reception in New York timed to coincide with the garden party and she checks that the video conferencing facility is working. This will allow alumni to greet each other from both events. When alumni arrive at the events Miss Moneypenny and her assistant update the database on a laptop via a wireless link. They also update the web page with images and video clips from the garden party (having been given permission at the time of recording).
(As supplied by Medical Sciences Division)
The WWW/CMS Team holds its regular meeting:
Present: Project Manager, Information Architect (IA), Developer, Designer.
1. Research Unit X is revising and enhancing its web-presence. It has already been given a site in the CMS and the IA has had a preliminary meeting to determine a structure for the site, procedures for maintenance and workflow. As the Unit had already contributed to the Research Discovery Service, data from this has been incorporated into the structure. The new fully integrated University Single Sign On has considerably simplified the log-in process. The IA provided initial training to use the CMS, but is keen that the content editors should attend a University web training session on writing effective web-pages, creating accessible content and optimizing material for search engines. There are several outstanding items:
A. The Unit is happy to incorporate stock images from the University image repository, however it will need some graphics, a banner incorporating its logo and it would like to make some changes to the colour scheme.
Action: The team designer will arrange a meeting and schedule a day's work to meet their requirements.
B. The Unit requires an elaborate workflow ensuring that content is checked before publication and notifications that content is ready for checking should be appear in the users portal page.
Action: The developer will schedule half a day's work to implement the workflow based on the IA's design and will liaise with the portal/admin development team on integrating workflow notifications with the portal.
C. The Unit would like an on-line newsletter facility which could also be emailed to subscribers.
Action: It was noted that this was already on the development list and it was decided to make this a priority as a number of units had requested it. The IA agreed to undertake a user needs analysis and to explore the options with the team developer, reporting back with an assessment of resources required. Options under consideration would be: using or adapting a CMS module; .adapting an external/non CMS system already in the University (should such a system exist); commissioning a new module.
The developer will take the issue to the next University Systems Development Forum and report back on comments and findings.
The team discussed the possibility of making the newsletter part of the standard CMS package, but the IA pointed out that too many newsletters flying around without some kind of overview of what's being published might not be a good idea.
D. The Unit has an existing database of interim research results which they would like to publish on their site.
Action: The developer will liaise with the Unit IT staff on the best way to achieve this.
2. Work continues, in liaison with the University Web Team, on further enhancements to the CMS templates and CSS. These enhancements are intended to meet the new WAI guidelines, but are also incorporating suggestions from user-testing sessions which were held jointly with the University Team. Some issues have also emerged with the latest MS Explorer browser release which is delaying the process and more time will be required to complete this.
In addition, some decisions have been made at University level on the deployment of Access keys and all templates will have to be revised as a result.
Action: An interim release of templates with Access keys would be feasible and does not have to wait for the user-tested enhancements.
3. Unit Y has a large dynamic website, the designer is working on the ASP templates to bring them up to accessibility standards and also incorporate the University branding requirements.
4. Department D's new building is about to be opened. It would be good to have pictures of this stunning building to incorporate into new designs and to accompany publicity features on the medsci website.
Action: Project manager to check with central publicity, commission photographer if necessary and check images into the University image database.
5. The latest version of the CMS has been checked out of the project code repository and is undergoing testing on the development server. The developer expects to contribute to the next project bug day prior to the official release of the software.
Action: the developer to schedule a full week of time to fully test the system, plus an additional week for contingencies. Liaison with the designer required on any significant changes to templates required by the new release.
6. A preliminary meeting has taken place with the central University team about integrating training-course information from their graduate database into the Medical Sciences Graduate Skills Training website. The developer is pleased to report that the database was developed with interchange of information in mind and that it will be possible to create a dynamic list of available courses, by date and by subject, on the public facing medsci website.
Action: the developer to move forward with this as soon as possible.
7. The Portal/Admin team have released the first prototype of the self-service alumni booking system for events. The rapid application development process means that the team require testing and feedback in the next two weeks, if refinements are to make the next development phase. The developer needs to test integration with the CMS.
Action: this takes priority over the new system testing.
8. The final bugs in the xxx module for the CMS have now been sorted by the developers (External CMS Solutions Ltd) and the module has been rolled out for use. The editors have welcomed this refinement which works extremely well. The module has been published for use within the CMS community and it is possible that sponsorship from elsewhere will enhance it further. Given the fast turnaround it was felt that the module was value for money and that external development could be an option for the newsletter module.
Action: The Project Manager reported that there might not be sufficient funding in this year's budget for external development of a further module. A newsletter module wasn't part of the original project plan for that financial year, but looks like a useful addition to the CMS. If necessary a case could be made to the next xxxx committee.
9. A discussion of this month's support emails followed. IA reported significant problems with the concept of "staging" and suggested a short tutorial on the documentation website.
10. It would be helpful if the University web training course could be held on site as a number of editors were too busy to attend the course in town.
Action: The project manager agreed to arrange this.
11. The possibility of a content editors' forum was discussed, the team were concerned that most editors were too busy to attend such a forum. An alternative would be to lever the CMS-editor's mailing list to create an online discussion forum.
Action: The IA to look into the possibility of bringing a number of co-located editors together on an informal basis to discuss issues and "bond".
Training and Professional Development
12. It was decided that it would be valuable for the Designer and Developer to attend the next CMS conference to be held in Vienna. The team were asked to keep the date of the next Web Manager Conference clear in their diaries. The IA would be giving a paper on "managing and maintaining structure in a multi-user CMS".
Nearer to home OUCS training on "AJAX enabled GUIs" would be available next month.
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