Developing a groupwork oriented online unit on interactive multimedia project management

Students undertaking the interactive multimedia project management unit in the School of Communications and Multimedia are in the final year of their studies at either undergraduate or graduate level (Interactive Multimedia Technologies) at Edith Cowan University. The unit seeks to teach project management skills through classroom sessions and the concurrent development of a group based web project. This paper discusses the issues involved in developing this unit for online delivery in semester 1, 1999. The process attempts to reproduce most aspects of face to face delivery using the WebCT course management system. The implementation of this course design using WebCT is the focus of this paper.

Background

The objectives of the unit are as follows:

• to apply a range of project management skills appropriate to multimedia projects, including project management models, needs analysis, design issues, storyboards, concept maps, formative and summative evaluation, legal issues and copyright/intellectual property issues, to develop a Web based product with full documentation;

• to use team and client collaboration skills to develop the product in a efficient manner;

• to make a significant contribution to a team based multimedia development project;

• to use planning and design tools such as storyboarding, concept maps and prototyping;

• to apply formative evaluation methodologies to multimedia products;

• to demonstrate an understanding of the nature of the specialist roles of instructional designers, content experts, computer programmers, graphics designers, project managers, "evaluators", and others.

Week No.	Content	Assessment
1	Project Models, Review the Literature
2	Project Management Methodology
3	Needs Definition, Category Names and QA Issues
4	Planning, Tracking, GANTT charts, Costing and Project diary
5	Legal issues
6	Design, specification and prototype	Assignment 1 due
3 WEEK BREAK
7	Development Cycle and QA	Assignment 2 due
8	QA and Standards
9	Handover
10	Team Based Development
11	Team Based Development
12	Team Based Development
13	Project Presentations	Assignment 3 due

There are 3 assignments: the "Analysis and Plan" worth 30 marks, the "Design" worth 35 marks and the "Final Product" worth 35 marks. Each of the assignments contains four marking components:

• a team based mark on the quality of the assignment, addressing fixed criteria;
• a client mark out of 3, which gives the students an understanding that they "must keep the client happy";
• a team consensus mark, negotiated with the team and supervisor. Marks can be subtracted from team members who are not performing and added to the score of other team members (the total marks awarded must remain zero!). This encourages students to carefully consider their role and contribution in relation to the others while working in a team;
• an individual report which encourages the students to reflect on team and client issues they have identified as important in each stage and discuss how they would do it differently next time.

Adapting to the online environment

There were obvious difficulties in trying to replicate the project based and groupwork aspects of this course by traditional, print based distance education means. However, our review of the literature indicated that it was possible to duplicate, to a large extent, the on campus experience for external students, using collaboration and communication tools available on the Internet ie. bulletin boards and chat facilities.

The course we designed was driven by collaborative activities which encourage students to present, discuss, summarise and reflect on project management issues on a week by week basis. The activities were supported by a print based "Plan", "Guide" and "Reader". A decision was made to limit the amount of online text as much as possible, and while there is a textual component to each online module, the text is generally quite brief, and simply summarises the topic and points students to other resources.

We analysed the needs of the unit and developed a set of functionality requirements, shown in Table 2. We then looked at a range of online course management systems to see which could meet our requirements. We found that WebCT had all of the required features available, and thus we adopted WebCT as the course delivery system.

Content based	Asynchronous communication
Online course materials Ability for students to record their own notes Links to external sites Ability for students to add to the resource site	General discussion fora, which can be created for sub-groups and for specific time periods Tracking of student contributions to discussions Group management and the establishment of shared group area
Student oriented	Synchronous communication
Student presentation areas Group presentation area Student homepage area Online submission of assignments	Synchronous communication facility (eg chat) Shared electronic whiteboard for specific project work

Implementation of the online course

• online content which sets the scene for each week;
• a course calendar;
• discussion fora arranged by week and/or activity (Chat and Bulletin boards);
• shared areas for team based work;
• the creation of student homepages;
• information collection through surveys;
• support materials such as a Guide (online and print based), Reader (print based), Plan (online and print based) and textbook.

This week your lecturer(s) will demonstrate the type of discussion required of each of you in subsequent weeks, by posting a discussion paper on Project Management models and Life Cycles to the week 2 forum. Please read the lecturer's contribution and ask questions and make comments about it. Bear the following question in mind when you are constructing your responses: Why do you need Project Management Models? At the end of the week the lecturer will post a synopsis of the week's discussion.

Week	Topic	Activities	Act.	Day	Who
1	Introduction to project management course and WebCT. All students online with accounts.	WebCT tutorial IMM 4201 web site access and post message to week 1 forum Publish personal Web page Fill out online questionnaire on student skills Task group allocations	1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4	M M M M M	All All All All Tutor
2	What is project management?	Assign project teams and project topics Post message to week 2 forum about "What is project management?" Submit URL on project management Online discussions on posted topic Post synopsis	2.1 2.2 2.1 2.1	M M M-F Tu-Th F	Tutor Tutor All All Tutor
3	Team issues, timesheet categories, project diary and basic quality assurance	Summary paper post to week 3 forum Post messages to week 3 forum about "What is a script?" Fill in team style questionnaire Produce team communication standards Email team procedures to lecturer Online discussions on posted topic Post synopsis	3.4 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.3 3.4 3.4	M M M M-F F Tu-Th F	Grp 1 All All All Teams All Grp 5

Notice that students are required to contribute to the discussion and that a synopsis will be given at the end of the week. In following weeks, a student task team will prepare and present the online seminar in a similar fashion, and answer questions posted by other individual students and lecturers. Another student task team will be responsible for compiling a synopsis of the week's comments as shown for activity 3.4 below:

Task Group 1 is to write a short summary paper on group decision making techniques, to be posted on Monday to the week 2 forum. All other students are expected to contribute their experiences and observations on this topic. Task Group 5 moderates the discussion and posts a final synopsis on Friday morning.

There is a rich component of assessment in the online unit. The following components, which exist in each of the three assignments, are used to assess the students:

• Project team assessment, which is concerned with assessing the team's effort in producing a web based product. The project management methodology skills are assessed as well as the quality of the final product;
• Task group assessment, which is concerned with assessing the quality of summary posting and the synopsis made by the task team;
• A client mark out of 3, which gives the students an understanding that they "must keep the client happy";
• A project team consensus mark, negotiated with the project team and supervisor. Marks can be subtracted from team members who are not performing and added to the score of other team members (the total marks awarded must remain zero!). This encourages students to carefully consider their role and contribution in relation to the others while working in a team;
• An individual report which encourages the students to reflect on team and client issues they have identified as important in each stage and discuss how they would do it differently next time; and
• Individual contributions to the forum which include responding to summary postings and assisting other students with technical knowledge or other helpful advice.

Summary