April 25th: Portfolio/Presentation Workshop

Announcements

• Charlotte STC Meeting
  Tuesday, 4/26/2010 @ 6:30 pm
  Fretwell 107
• Fast and Furious 5
  Friday, 4/29
  
• UFC 129: Saturday, 4/30/2011 @ 10 PM
  St-Pierre vs. Sheilds
• ACC Championship Game in Charlotte--12/03

Portfolio Presentations

Each one of you will do a presentation describing your conception of audience and purpose for your User Documents. I want all students to practice public speaking, so I try to have each class I teach do a presentation. The guidelines for this presentation are on the Assignments Page.

If you're doing a Powerpoint presentation (or other presentation), you should save your presentation to your 'H' drive, and create a link to it on your webpage. It's time consuming to have you plug in your flash drives or check your e-mail to access your files. If you don't know how to do that, ask now. My goal is to give you a gauge--an approximate grade--for the class by next week. Of course, many of your grades are on Moodle, so you probably have an idea.

HAL Presentations

Let's move on to the HAL presentations from our 5181 friends. Please be respectful and pay attention to the speakers. These presentations are 4-5 minutes. After the presentation, you may ask relevant, thoughtful questions, but please wait until after the presentation is finished.

The presenters should end before asking for questions.

Final Exam Preview (5/09--Monday, 6:30-9:15)

Your final exam will be based on the reading assigned and activities/discussions we've had since the original midterm exam date (2/28). The exam will be on Moodle (unless something peculiar happens) and will consist of multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank, short-answer, and True/False questions.

Topics to pay attention to for the final exam:

Assignment Features

• Personas
• Likert scales and appropriate questions
• Measurable (operationalized goals)
• Screen captures

Degani's Taming HAL Ch. 1-10. While the entire reading is fair game, there are places you ought to pay particularly close attention to.

• Non-determinism and technologies
• Abstractions
• Events, states, and transitions
• User models and machine models
• Concurrency, hierarchy, and synchronization
• Population Stereotypes vs. universal stereotypes
• Initialization (initial mode)
• Mode
• Reference Values
• History Settings
• Default Settings
• Sophisticated interfaces
• A few details from our 5181 students' presentations

Of course, the above is not exhaustive. If you've read carefully (don't skip over the word "carefully"), this should be a breeze.

Portfolios Due in One Week (5/02)

Your portfolios are due in two weeks. Take a fresh look at the Assignments Page for details about what to include. The most important thing is the reflective cover letter. That is where you demonstrate that the revision choices you made reflect your understanding of the audience(s) and purpose(s) for the document.

Below is a list of other things to think about when finishing this assignment:

• Planning documents for each User Doc (did you do them the first time?)
  • Descriptions of the instruments
  • Ideal approach/location of the document
  • Personas
  • Measurable (operationalized goals)
  • Post-test questions (likert scales)
  • Citations for borrowed images
  • Citations for borrowed images
  • Citations for borrowed images
  • Citations for borrowed images
  • Citations for borrowed images
• Personas reflect the revision choices you make
• Personas help you conceive of audience
• Personas help you reflect on the purpose of your document
• Document location helps you consider the needs of your audience and should fit with the document's purpose
• Audience and purpose seem important in this reflective cover letter...

Returning User Doc #3

I'm going to pass back your third (and final) User Document during the workshop. These should be revised for your final portfolios.

If you didn't turn in a part of User Doc #3, for instance, the planning part, turn it in with your final portfolio. Not including the planning part of your assignments will affect your grade.

Please remember that your assignments have two parts--a proposal or planning document and the actual user document. You must have both.

Some overall issues:

• Anything you don't create yourself must be cited
• "Figure X" and captions
• Anything you don't create yourself must be cited
• Circles, arrows, and callouts
  • Try using circles or boxes; they seem to look nicer than arrows
  • Legends work well
• Anything you don't create yourself must be cited
• Personas are not Scenarios (Cooper pp. 131-132 & 142-147)
  • Do not "stack the deck" in favor of your document
  • Highlight computer/technological literacies
  • Consider reading level for educational guides
  • Don't have more than one sentence about motivation to use the guide
  • Have pictures of your personas
• Anything you don't create yourself must be cited
• Don't repeat steps above
  • For instance, the following is goofy:
    Step 1: Cut a hole in the box...
    Step 2: After you cut a hole in the box, place the cardboard tube in the box at a 45-degree angle...
    Step 3: After you place the cardboard tube in the box at a 45-degree angle, place hamster pellets in the tube...
• Anything you don't create yourself must be cited
• Show how to refine searches to expand your user documents (assuming this is relevant to your topic)
• Anything you don't create yourself must be cited
• Be more efficient in your prose
  • Get right to the search/results/character types then discuss alternatives
  • Give commands
    • Don't tell the user "If you want to..."; tell them to do it!
    • Avoid redundancy, so you aren't being redundant (get it?):
      "This document called Transferring Pictures to Your Desktop from a Digital Camera describes how to transfer images taken with a digital camera to a desktop"
• Anything you don't create yourself must be cited
• Use screen shots
  • Clear, good-sized screen shots
  • Entire screen captures aren't effective
  • Too small of a screen capture is too little
  • Zoom in or Zoom out accordingly
• Anything you don't create yourself must be cited
• NEXT TIME: No software installation!
  Software tutorials, however, are good.

Before We Go...

Only one more class left (and the final exam). Your portfolios are due next week on 5/02 (User Doc #1, #2, & #3 with the reflective cover letter),and you'll do your portfolio presentations.

The final exam is also left, which will be at 6:30 pm Monday 5/09. I'll turn back your portfolios then. Be looking on Moodle for grade updates.

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