Module 1 Assignment Paper SLP Systems: iTeamwork Research

Module 1 - SLP
IT SYSTEMS PLANNING AND ACQUISITION
The purpose of the Session Long Project in Trident University classes is to give you the opportunity to explore the applicability of the module to your own life, work, and place in space and time, and to experiment with the module to see how the otherwise academically rigorous presentation of a topic may, with more or less work and/or trauma, become "up close and personal." This is done in a number of different ways -- sometimes cumulative papers, sometimes practical hands-on experimentation with a tool of some sort, sometimes reflections on a place of work or life. The common thread is personal application, aimed at demonstrating a cumulative knowledge and understanding of the course's material. The main purpose of the written parts of the assignments is to show that you've had some experiences doing the project, that you've thought carefully about what they mean for your own education, and that you can make some personal applications of this meaning to your own professional and/or personal understanding. Demonstrating this understanding is actually considerably more important than carrying out any specific step in the project instructions.
For this course, the Project will take the form of putting together a hypothetical plan for implementing a new Learning Management System within our University. We have recently contracted with Desire2Learn (D2L), a learning management services company, for their basic Higher Education Learning Suites. This is a collection of tools and systems for course design, course management, record keeping, assessment, and a variety of related services, which have replaced the previous CDAD and CourseNet systems. You might want to skim through the basic description on the website; we will be considering the actual system in more detail later on.
The main thing that you as students will bring to the table in these assignments is your knowledge of (a) the University itself (by now you all should have had quite a lot of experience with all parts of it); (b) the students, including their needs, constraints, and interests; and (c) the dynamics of information systems, about which you’ve been studying for some terms now.
PLEASE NOTE: Although this is a real situation and a real deployment, you are NOT actually going to be responsible for this system, as such. The university has an implementation team and project in place that will be carrying out the actual work. However, this doesn’t mean either that (a) you shouldn’t treat the project as real for your purposes, or (b) that your ideas and recommendations won’t have any effect on the actual implementation. What you come up with individually and collectively may well be shared with the actual team and carefully considered. From a teaching perspective, however, the most important part of setting up the SLP in this fashion is to give you a chance to walk in a modular way through the stages in the planning process in a realistic context.
Relax, roll with the punches, and when the course is done, you'll probably remember things from this participatory part of our course better than almost anything else -- assuming, that is, that you really invest in it the degree of commitment to the effort and to your learning about yourself from the effort that it requires.
Before we start, it is a good idea to be sure that your computer is appropriately protected from the Bad Guys Out There. There are some security precautions that are particularly important to observe before setting out on any Internet excursion, including this project. In particular, it is essential that if you are going to download anything from the Internet, that you have adequate virus protection and anti-adware/spyware/malware screening on your systems. Please review our suggestions for preparing your computer for active Internet use before diving headlong into that world: Note for Those Participating in any Downloading Exercise for TUI ITM Classes.
Please click on the following link to read our policy note/advisory on website relationships: Note on Contacts from Visited Websites.
If you work in an area subject to security clearances and regulations, or if the computer to which you have access is restricted in critical ways in terms of what you are at liberty to download and use (because of capacity, policy and/or security rules, or other factors) then your ability to carry out the assignments as presented may somewhat compromised. Never Fear! TUI is known for its flexibility and ability to reconfigure assignments imaginatively, and we stand ready to help you here as well! Please review our policy on assignments and national security: Note on Security Precautions. Alternatives are available, and while you might miss some of the learning benefits of the assignment, you can still get a substantial measure. Please let your instructor know as soon as you can if you will be operating under any sort of limitations on your computing capacity, so that you can work out suitable arrangements.
So - that's the general SLP approach for this course. If you have questions at any point about what to do or how to strategize your exercises, please contact your instructor for illumination and assistance.
Although it generally is not optimal to start a project by selecting your tools (beware the Law of the Hammer!), in this case we will begin by evaluating some possible information-processing tools that are used to assist in project planning. Such software assistance is not required, but due to its widespread availability and utility in even relatively small and simple projects, its use has become almost universal (I have used these tools for household projects such as repainting and rebuilding my deck.) Thus, it will pay you, when you leave the program, to have at least a nodding familiarity with how these tools work.
We want to begin by evaluating four of the more accessible such tools. All of these operate on the Internet (“in the cloud”), and all have free options that will be quite adequate for evaluation purposes. However, their use can get fairly complicated, so we’re going to divide up the evaluation task among the class members as follows:
If your last name begins with AAA to EZZ, you are to evaluate:
Basecamp (http://basecamphq(dot)com/) You can obtain a free basic account here.
If your last name begins with FAA to JZZ, you are to evaluate:
iteamwork (http://www(dot)iteamwork(dot)com/) Free, online access
If your last name begins with KAA to MZZ, you are to evaluate:
Projectdesk (http://www(dot)projectdesk(dot)net/) Free account option
If your last name begins with NAA to ZZZ, you are to evaluate:
PlanProjects (http://www(dot)planprojects(dot)com/index.php). free, online access
If any of you would prefer to evaluate a somewhat different kind of tool and can freely download and install free software, you might consider volunteering instead to evaluate Open Workbench. It’s a very powerful piece of open-source software that is used by many organizations as an alternative to the fairly costly and proprietary Microsoft Project™. If this interests you, please let your instructor know.
Open Workbench (http://sourceforge(dot)net/projects/openworkbench/) Free, downloadable
Your task is to try out your assigned software. This may entail signing up and/or opening an account (see the note above regarding privacy protections), or it may just entail playing around with the system a bit. If you need help with any aspect of this, try one of your colleagues or your instructor; the threaded discussion is a good place to ask for help or offer help to others.
When you believe you have a reasonably good basis for evaluation of the program, you should write up in 2-3 pages your general assessment, attending to the following issues:
summary description of the program, its structure, and purpose
its overall "look and feel" and apparent target audience
what the program does and does not give you
your assessment of such things as:
its usability
its relative advantage
potential applicability to planning an implementation project
utility and relevance to this course
any other things about the program that you find salient and worth noting to others
your bottom-line evaluation of its value to you
The last point is very important. Be honest and direct; your assessment is helpful to you and to others. If you don't find it helpful, say so and why, and try to explain what you would find more useful in its place. But also do try to remember also that your education isn't yet finished, that things you don't understand now and don't yet see the value of may turn out later on to be relevant and useful, and that the site's creators may know more about the topic, the practice of program management, and the profession than you do yet.
When this module is completed, we’ll pool the resulting evaluations and make them available to everyone, so that you can see and compare all the programs. By the way, if you want to examine any of the programs other than that assigned to you, please feel free; however, we only want one system evaluation from you.
SLP Assignment Expectations
Your paper will be evaluated on the following criteria:
Complete the SLP assignment. Length of 2-3 pages (since a page is about 300 words, this is approximately 600-900 words)
Conducted evaluation and analysis as required
Precision: the questions asked are answered.
Clarity: Your answers are clear and show your good understanding of the topic.
Breadth and Depth: The scope covered in your paper is directly related to the questions of the assignment and the learning objectives of the module.
Critical thinking: Incorporate YOUR reactions, examples, and applications of the material to business that illustrate your reflective judgment and good understanding of the concepts.
Your paper is well written and the references are properly cited and listed.