More on collaboration

Our team met recently via Elluminate to discuss the Project presentation for Converge 10.
Our content for this had come together seriously quickly due in no small part to use of a web based collaborative word processing tool (in our case Google Docs).

Looking back on what we had written, we agreed there was a need to shift the focus of the presentation to some extent, away from emphasis on the platform for our resource Libguides, to look more closely at the avatar element of our guide as well as the software used to make it, CodeBaby. This meant considerable reorganisation of times and people's roles in the presentation itself, a re-write of our original plan.

At GippsTAFE, the library team uses Google Docs regularly for collaboratively developing reports, research, meeting agendas and (soon) policy. So I am pretty familiar with seeing how a document builds and changes.
But this is the first time I have collaborated on a document during a meeting. In one intense 45 minutes, changes flitted all over the document, sentences gone and new ones unfolding, times and names changing and then changing again. I could see who was entering what data, so knew who to direct questions to.
By meeting end, the rewrite was done and agreed on. Fantastic!

We liked this so much we are going to try developing slides for the presentation in the same way.

CodeBaby

CodeBaby is a program that allows you to create an animated online character that can be combined with a recorded message. The program automatically synchronises the character's lips with the audio and adds hand and body movements to create an engaging, life like presentation. Check out the CodeBaby web site for more details.

CodeBaby is the tool that we are using to create the avatar for this project. Yesterday I spent some time with Dale, our multimedia creator, to talk about his experiences with this program. Here are some of his comments:

• Ensure you do your initial recording in a quiet place, If there is any background noise in your recording the avatar's lips will be synchronised to that as well as your voice.
• The automatically synchronised gestures are a good start but you may need to tinker with these especially in longer sequences as sometimes the gestures that are used may not be appropriate to what is being said. For example in one gesture the avatar points emphatically which looks silly at an inappropriate place.
• You may need to add more head movements to give the avatar a more natural look.
• The gestures the avatar makes are limited, for instance it cannot point upwards.
• The resulting file can be exported from CodeBaby as a flash movie file which allows it to be incorporated into another flash object or as a stand alone .swf file.
• If you are incorporating it into another flash animation take care not to make the project run for too long or the various parts may get out of time. 60 seconds is considered to be a long animation so consider breaking your project up into smaller parts.

There are various options to choose from when you create an avatar in CodeBaby. You can choose male or female, there are several faces to choose for each gender and different clothes to provide options for a range of situations.

On collaborative blogging

At a recent gathering of the project team there was a recognition that our project blog had not “taken off” quite as well as we had expected.

Why hadn’t it become a steady stream of chatter and reflection about our progress? Certainly there has been lots of activity and plenty to talk about.

Perhaps we assumed that once a blog was created and we had our accounts that the rest would just follow, especially since we are all active in online forums in one way or another, including other blogs and Twitter.

We agreed that early on we probably should have set some guidelines for blogging to help create a habit and get contributors comfortable in this particular space. At least initially, we might have been wise to have structured in:
• a minimum of when we would post, and how often
• a regular, agreed topic and a rough outline of the content
• allocated the task to a specific team member and then rotated the role
• one person as blog “driver”, reminding us to post, suggesting ideas for content and generally encouraging. I know that our library work team blog, in its early stages needed a driving blogger (even now it wanes and needs a return to that strategy)
• commenting on each others posts

These strategies might help overcome any personal apprehension that your post is not striking the right kind of “voice” for the group. How do I know that is a problem? Well even know I am considering checking with the team that this post is OK.

I won’t. But I will ask them to comment :)

Rollover Buttons

I have been experimenting with adding rollover buttons to our APA guide as a way of highlighting the icons we are using to start up the avatar. We wanted a second image with a message added to appear when the user pointed to the icon.

After setting this up in DreamWeaver I cut and pasted the HTML code which used some Java script into the libguide. Initially this worked well and looked great. However as soon as I started adding more rollovers there were problems. It was not until Jo put two rollovers in boxes side by side she discovered that they seemed to be connected in someway. When she put her mouse over the second icon the rollover image appeared only on the first icon. Crazy but true!!!

My understanding of HTML code and Java script is limited so we are getting around this by only using one rollover image per page at this stage. This highlights the difficulty of using the libguides where we do not have so much control as in a regular webpage.

Successful Trial

Earlier this term we trialled the resource with a group of nursing students at the Warragul campus. The feedback from this pilot was very positive.

The students found the resource easy to navigate and the information useful. They were engaged by the avatar.

The students reported that the YouTube videos included in the resource were very slow to load. We did observe this during the trial, however subsequent tests have shown that in most cases these videos commence within 30 seconds of clicking on the link so we expect that the long wait times were the result of so many students clicking on these resources at the same time.

We are now working on refining the resource ready for publication in the first week of November.

Trial Postponed

Unfortunately the trial of our resource did not go ahead yesterday as planned. The nursing students have had a busy time recently with various assignments and exams so their teachers rescheduled the session.

This was disappointing for the team however we have set a new date for a trial, Monday October 4. Given that we now have a couple more weeks to work on the resource it should be even more complete when do trial it.

Preparing to Trial the Resource

Jo and Sandy have been working very hard preparing the resource for a trial with a group of GippsTAFE Diploma of Nursing students on Monday.

Although the resource is not complete there will be enough there to trial and the feedback we get from this will provide us with valuable information as we work on completing the resource in the coming weeks. We will be using an automated survey to gather information during our trial and a link to this has been posted on the resource.

We have also added some short avatar sequences to the resource to assist the users to use and navigate the resource. Thank you to Dale for creating these. We plan to add more in the future.

Because we are using a LibGuide as a basis of for this resource we have encountered limitations in the way we can use the avatar. This quite frustrating but we are coming to terms with these limitations and working on the best way to combine the two types of technology.

Fingers crossed all will go well on Monday!!!!!