DCMOC
Department of Content Management and Online Collaboration
Managing the consequences
Judi Gronseth 2009 Jan 22
Some watch words that have been presented with Capella’s strategic objective and focus areas for 2009 are “fast, flexible and bold.” These words refer to us being quick to respond to market changes and able to take bold steps in new directions when needed. While I see the competitive advantage, it’s a concept that makes me somewhat uncomfortable. I’ve always felt that if we allow enough time to analyze our options adequately and take into account contingencies that may arise, we can make a solid decision that has the greatest chance of success. Jeffrey Pfeffer presents a differing perspective in his article Understanding Power in Organizations (California Management Review, Winter 1992) that makes a lot of sense to me. He makes the points that no matter how well you analyze a decision there is no way of knowing that it will be a success until it is implemented and that we inevitably spend more time dealing with the consequences of our decisions than we do making them no matter how well they’re analyzed initially. Decisions made in a corporate environment (and in life) are rarely final and unchangeable. We will always be changing and adapting based on the results of previous decisions that were implemented. If you accept this as true, then it makes sense to put somewhat less emphasis on the actual decision and more emphasis on how to adapt once consequences are learned.
How does this apply to what we do in CMOC? We’re constantly working on developing new technologies and tools to improve the user experience with our web sites whether those users are learners, faculty or staff. Technology is a fast-moving, ever-changing arena and to be competitive we must keep up with the market. We need to give ourselves permission to move quickly – and possibly fail – without attaching blame. As Pfeffer notes, there will always be unintended consequences that occur. What is ultimately more important is our ability to respond to these consequences and turn failure into success.
Naturally, there still must be some thought around deciding what new technologies to go with. Maybe it’s a matter of identifying a handful of critical points that must be considered rather than trying to answer every possible question. I’m not sure exactly what those points are – and maybe they will be different for different projects – but I have a few that I’d like to see on that list. First, we should be able to clearly state the value that this tool adds for our target audience(s) clarifying why we should use this technology. We should also be able to identify and sequence the steps needed to implement the technology, bringing in other groups as needed. Third, we should create a communication/marketing plan for end users. Just because we can see the value of the tool doesn’t mean that it will be apparent to end users. Much of the success of the technologies we implement rests with adoption by end users. This is also our primary channel for getting data we can use to adapt, which brings me to my final point that we need to have defined a strategy to adequately support and grow the tool. Without this final step, the new tool is likely to die on the vine and then we will truly have failed.
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2008 is the new 1999
jscherschligt 2008 Jul 18
I had a nice exchange recently with Jim, our web strategies supervisor, about the UI of many web 2.0 sites. He had noted that so many web 2.0 sites have ugly, amateurish-looking user interfaces, which got me to thinking about a cycle that goes like this:
First (early 1990s): techies got their hands on tools, technology (web 1.0 stuff), and create organizational web presence, but (usually) with an amateurish look / feel / content.
Then (late 1990s): The corporate suits realize that the Web is real and that their organization is being publicly presented by the geeks. They take control, get pro designers and writers involved. The experience improves.
Then (early 200s): With Web 1.0 under control of the suits, the geeks discover (invent?) Web 2.0, and create blogs, social networks, etc. within their organizations, with the old-school amateurish look and feel.
Next (now): Suits again realize that their organization is being presented by geeks, this time in Web 2.0, again take control. Here’s where we are now.
The future: It will happen again.
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Web 2.0 in a corporate world
Judi Gronseth 2008 May 16
Frequent concerns that people express about using blogs, wikis and other Web 2.0 technology in a corporate environment revolve around what’s appropriate and what isn’t. Certainly there are things that pretty much everyone would agree don’t reflect professional behavior, but what about that whole swath of gray area that seems almost as big as the web itself? As we implement new tools, we need to also develop some standards that set the expectations for use – while not making them so restrictive as to stifle participation. After all, many of the people using these tools will either be totally new to them, or will have only used them in social, non-work related ways. I’ve come across a few things lately that I think can help our discussions about this.
This is IBM’s guidelines for using their blogs: IBM Social Computing Guidelines. It’s very thorough and has a lot of great points, although it’s not presented in the most interesting manner. Frankly I only made it about halfway through the page before I began skimming.
Here’s a great slide presentation on using Web 2.0 at work: The Gen-Y Guide to Web 2.0 at Work. It’s fun and engaging and is a great introduction to using blogs at work.
Finally, here’s an article from Business Week on Wiki Etiquette (remember all those articles about “netiquette” years ago?). Again, a nice short piece that points out some behaviors to avoid while encouraging participation.
What are your thoughts? How much do we need to guide users’ behavior and how much can we rely on common sense?
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Pre-conference expectations
2008 Apr 22
A couple of us from NextGen — including me — are attending the O’Reilly Web 2.0 expo in San Francisco this week. Before I head out, I thought I’d jot down a couple things I’m hoping to get from the conference.
First, I want to better establish a shared definition of Web 2.0 that we’ll use at Capella. Since CMOC was started one year ago, I’ve had many conversations where the term “Web 2.0″ is invoked, but it’s often clear that various people at Capella define it in different ways. This can obviously lead to misguided expectations or confusion. I want to finally resolve that this week.
Of course, I’m also excited to see coolness. There will undoubetdly be lots of “brain candy” on display: new vendors, new tools, new ways to use old tools, and stacks of interesting, intelligent people.
Mostly, though, I want to learn things about architecture and strategy that I can put into action for CMOC and Capella. Again: CMOC has been around for a year now. We are at the center of a few pretty critical initiatives for Capella — including developing our e-learning infrastructure to ensure learning outcomes transparency, and the effort to create Capella’s virtual campus, a transformed iGuide that will be the location where our learners, faculty, and staff interact with each other and with a wide variety of formal and informal content. We’re making progress on both of these efforts, but I’d like to accelerate the pace in 2008. So I’ll spend most of my time at the conference looking for things that we can put into place quickly.
I’ll try to post several times over the next few days. CMOCers who are reading this: let me know if there’s something in particular you want me to check out.
Brownbags and not blog posts
Andrew Gruhn 2008 Apr 4
As we’re currently in the midst of a free thinking Friday – I pose the following question. Why brownbags and not blog posts?
Often, either free-standing or as part of departmental meetings, we have brownbag sessions as a way to communicate projects, report results, or other internal news and updates of note. Similarly, there are many individuals and groups within the Capella community that routinely use blogging as a way of adding updates and new content to extend the conversation (see Michael Offerman, the Capella library, or Doctoral Support for PhD learners).
For a moment, let’s ignore the debate over private vs public (as we could add any amount of security around any amount of posts). Think about content: what types of content would lend themselves better to brownbags, and which to blogs? What’s the difference in institutional cost, and how would you access the content of a brownbag two months after it was given?
I’m curious to know your thoughts.
SPLASH and the University of Sussex
Andrew Gruhn 2008 Apr 1
Based upon some conversations I’ve been listening to on Twitter, I just came across the SPLASH project (Student Personal Learning And Social Homepages) at the University of Sussex.
As we are currently evaluating some of the same back-end software, this write up is not just a recommended read, but of particular interest to see the language they’ve used to frame their project. (you can also follow the SPLASH demo for their students at the Sussex Web Teams Flicker feed)
Web Principles as credo
Andrew Gruhn 2008 Mar 26
Currently we’ve been discussing the inherent value of adopting web principles as guiding direction for our internal teams. As one of the first posts on this blog, Jason worked toward a definition of the Content Management and Online Colaboration team.
Building on this, we’ve been on the lookout for other groups’ Web Principles to help us define our way forward on a larger scale. Tom Loosemore posted a while back on the BBC’s 15 Web Principles they developed and sent to their board for signoff.
The power of defined principles as credo is obvious: they would provide and communicate clear direction and would ensure that the web-company half of Capella is providing what the leadership is asking for (and conversely, so that the senior management is also in lockstep with the slightly-more-progressive elements of the internet today and what we could provide).
Thoughts? If we looked at the BBC’s principles as a rough draft, which fit particularly well and what’s missing?
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Rollin’ with the top down
2008 Feb 14
I read a great piece the other day by Kevin Kelly at “The Technium.” Read it here:
http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/02/the_bottom_is_n.php
Kelly’s one of the originators of Wired magazine, and he’s written a lot about the hive mind, the wisdom of crowds, the whole idea that one route to excellence is to empower the people and to watch what emerges. But in this post he counters that sort of “bottom up” model with a case for the value of expert control from the top. He talks about the value of editors, of a centralized controller of the hive. Here’s an excerpt from the posting:
“In fact, this Web 2.0 business is chiefly the first step in exploring all the ways in which we can combine design and the hive in innumerable permutations. We are tweaking the dial in hundreds of combos:
1) dumb writers, smart filters, no editors.
2) smart writers, dumb filters, no editors
3) smart editors, smart filters, no writers
…ad infinitum.
The exhilarating frontier today is the myriad ways in which we can mix out-of-control creation with various levels of top-down control.”
I think Kelly’s dead-on here: we must empower the hive and be eager to publicize what it produces, while at the same time we need to determine how to apply (and how much to apply) people, processes, and technologies to showcase the excellent and limit the dreck. Figuring out how to do that is one of our challenges here at Capella, in NextGen, and specifically in CM&OC.
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Found on O’Reilly Radar
2008 Feb 8
There’s a good post at O’Reilly radar (http://radar.oreilly.com/) today:
The piece is a thoughtful examination of how one content producer — Reuters — envisions how the future of the web (specifically, the semantic web) will affect its own directions. It’s not hard to see parallels to Capella here: like Reuters, we are producing “professional data,” we provide content that is “raw material for analysis,” and we need to understand that consumers will increasingly be dissatisfied with text-only experiences.
In fact, here’s a fun exercise: read the post, but whereever Tim O’Reilly refers to “news” substitute “education”; wherever he refers to “Reuters” substitute “Capella”; whenever he refers to “investors” substitute “learners” See what I mean? The principles of the semantic web related to “professional data” are relevant to Capella, clearly.
The most interesting portion is where O’Reilly talks about the value of making content programmable, so it can be consumed in ways the producer didn’t envision. Somewhere in here is where we can start to see the place where our learning outcomes transparency / course development initiatives and our learner experience / iGuide transformation initiatives will eventually converge. Call it the grand unification of structured, outcomes-based educational content and rich learner experience.
Of course, here’s the challenge: how do we get there?
Transformers: more than meets the eye
2008 Jan 11
Some good discussions this week among the CMOC team (the fightin’ Sea Moccasins of CMOC, I like to call us) about what a transformed learner iGuide might look like. This is a fun part of any project like this: we get to open our minds, talk about possbilities, brainstorm new ways of doing things. Of course, as we put together real plans and start the noble work of actually making this happen, we’ll be constrained by those darn realities (pesky things like “technology,” “budget,” “integration with other systems,” and the “fundamental laws of physics”), but at this point, I’m encouraging everyone to shake off their mental shackles and dream. What are the characteristics of a transformed iGuide? What sites already do what we want to do? Who should we imitate? Who should we do the exact opposite of? I welcome thoughts from anyone on these topics.
Also: this week I presented an iGuide Transformation overview to the larger Next Generation Learning department. It was quite well received. (At least I think it was; I never am quite sure how a conference room full of people is perceiving what I’m saying.) I’ll be doing more of this for other departments in the next few weeks. If anyone reading this has suggestions for how I can improve this presentation or for other things I should do to tell the tale of a transformed iGuide, you know where to reach me: here.
The DCMOC Blog is a team effort among members of the Content Management and Online Collaboration department within Next Generation Learning. It's our aim to take you behind the scenes, give you a sense of who we are and even introduce you to some of the new technologies we're working with. more
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