Personas

1. John: 1st Year, Biology, Age 18

John is a freshman in college and is taking several introductory classes across multiple disciplines to satisfy his core requirements. His assignments are therefore very diverse, ranging from essays to lab reports to math problems. He has experience using computers in a basic context (such as Microsoft Office and web browsing) and is familiar with smartphone interfaces. He has not used any online collaboration tools, but is willing to learn especially if his friends are involved. Since he is new to college, he sometimes has difficulty scheduling his time, but he wants to get his assignments done on time and to contribute to group projects.

2. Sally: History Professor, age 40

Sally teaches an introductory History class in a university. She knows the basics of using a computer (Microsoft Office and web browsing) and a smartphone. She doesn’t like taking too much time to learn how to use software, so she tends to complete tasks in ways that are familiar to her. The university where she teaches provides an online learning management system, so she uses it to assign homework, accept assignment submissions, and provide resources (like lecture slides and relevant chapters from e-books). She is familiar with the basics of the system, but is not as knowledgeable as her students or her teaching assistant. Sally’s TA helps grade simple assignments (like multiple choice exams) but she prefers to grade larger assignments (like group projects) herself. She has a basic set of guidelines that she releases to her students in a rubric, but it does not explicitly state everything she will look for when she is grading. She has been teaching this class for several years, and therefore knows what to expect on assignments. She enjoys being able to personally grade assignments but doesn’t have enough time to correct minor errors. She focuses on how evaluating how well the student does overall, tries to correct major mistakes to help the student learn, and tries to provide more positive feedback than negative.

Scenarios

1. 4-person group history paper

You are a member of a 4-person team working on a history project. The project involves researching the American Revolutionary War and writing a 10-15 page paper. The professor has provided a grading rubric that breaks up the report into 4 sections. Most of the paper will be text, but you may also include pictures (like maps or paintings). You and your group have decided to each take on a part of the paper, and agree to proofread each other's work. You have been assigned to work on the section about the Boston Tea Party, so you decide to start researching. You find two sources that you want to make available to the rest of your team. One of them is general enough that your other group members might want to use it, but the other is really long and you only want to share a couple of important paragraphs with the group.

After having gathered your resources, you want to start writing. You take the important parts from your sources and finish your part of the project. A few days later, you find out that two other members of the group have finished their parts and you look over their work. You don't want to permanently delete their work, but you do want to fix a few grammar mistakes and ask them to clarify a few of their points. You're not sure why the last part of the paper hasn't been completed yet, so you find out who was supposed to finish it and ask them when they plan to have it done.

2. Professor providing feedback on student paper

You are a history professor who is grading an individual 5-page student paper. You gave each student a rubric with specific requirements about the assignment. A student has submitted their paper, and you want to provide comments about the paper in general, and also about particular paragraphs where the student got off track or used an effective argument. However, you also want to make sure that you don't make any changes to the student's work accidentally.

You open the student's paper and read it while making comments along the way. Some things just require a "check mark," which lets you and the student know that a requirement has been met. Others require some explanation. You try to focus on the positive aspects of the paper, but some areas are lacking in information. You indicate where the student should have provided more support. Some paragraphs are written very well, and you add a short comment to bolster the student's confidence. At the end of the paper, you provide some mixed feedback about the paper in general, along with a letter grade.

3. Chemistry Lab Assignment

You are a member of a 2-student chemistry lab group and you need to finish a stoichiometry lab. You have already gathered the appropriate data with your partner. You just need to perform the required calculations (simple arithmetic/algebra), write out the chemical equations in your lab report, use a spreadsheet to extrapolate a chemical constant based on your data, insert several bar and pie charts,write a detailed summary of your results, and write an extensive error analysis.

4. English Presentation on a Video Game

Your English Professor has assigned you into 4 person groups to give a presentation on a certain video game. Your group is assigned Alice in Wonderland (2010 video game) and is tasked to give a 20 minute presentation analyzing certain aspects of this video game: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_in_Wonderland_(2010_video_game)

Your presentation must have extensive pictures and video footage of the game with audio commentary during gameplay. No more than 5 minutes of the presentation can be devoted to plot. The rest of the time must be devoted to analyzing the themes you deem relevant and interesting to the discussion.

5. Linear Algebra Notes.

Based on the horrible grades for the first midterm, your Linear Algebra professors has offered his class a chance to get extra credit. You must upload a pdf scan of your test and must hand annotate all the problems you missed, showing both the correct answer, and demonstrating that you know how to solve the problems you missed. If you do this for all the problems you missed, you will get five points extra credit on this exam.

If you missed less than 5 points and still would like to get extra credit, solve problem #88 of chapter 2 (a very difficult problem) on a blank sheet of paper.

After you do this, you must share this document with him (on the synchronous communication tool) Only the first 30 out of 100 people will be given the chance for extra credit.

6. Socratic Seminar

Your philosophy professor bases your entire grade on 20 Socratic Seminars (round table discussions), where your entire class will discuss a controversial topic (gay rights, abortion, marijuana, immigration, gun control, chicken or egg?, does God exist?, which harry potter movie is the best etc.). You know the topics at least 1 week before hand, and you are allowed to bring your laptop or notes (handwritten or printed). You will be graded on your communication skills, but also your ability to present/persuade your side based on personal anecdotes or evidence. You must be able to reference your sources, or explain your reasoning if based on anecdotal evidence.

7. Senior Design Project:

You are a senior working EE working your senior design project. You are designing a robot that moves around on wheels and has motion sensors to track if there obstacles in front of it. Your objective is to enhance the robot so that it will automatically turn if it senses an obstacle ahead. You will need a place to write your vhdl code, a place draw design documents, and a place to write up your final report and presentation to your academic advisers.

8. SAT Critical Reading Teacher:

You run an SAT Tutoring business where you teach reading strategies on the Critical Reading parts of the SAT. Many of these strategies involve underlining certain text in paragraphs, so you need a way to freely draw on an uploaded document. You would also like to broadcast your work, so your students can go back at any time and replay the video/live-type so they can understand the thinking process behind some of the methods you teach.

9. Apple Market Research:

You are a lead designer responsible for market testing new but unreleased apple products to select few beta testers. You record audio and video feedback of your beta testers with the new products. You need a way to gather and organize data with your team, and need a way to present your research to the Apple senior VIP in a clear and effective way.

10. Manager at Ernst & Young

You are a manager at Ernst and Young and have a huge project that is supposed to be delivered to a client in about 4 weeks. Because of the short deadline, you want as many consultants as possible and decide to get 5 consultants on the project. The project will be in the form of a text based documents that consists of images, links and any other helpful files that the client may need. The consultants are on other projects as well and travelling to different cities so you want them to stay connected and be able to view the document on the go. You want them to be able to comment on each others changes and revert back those changes if and when necessary. They should also be able to download the file for their own viewing so that if they choose to work on it during a flight, they can do so even if there is no wi-fi.

At the end of the project, you would like to appoint one of the consultants as an associate manager. This will strictly be based on their performance on this project so you want to be able to see who made the most contributions to the project and who spent the most time doing it.

##11. Career Connect You are a fourth year undergraduate student at Georgia Tech, currently majoring in Computer Science. You are looking for a full-time position and realize that Career Fair isn't exactly working out for you and you find it more effective to attend info sessions. Unfortunately, you have a full load of classes and cannot attend all the information sessions you want to get in contact with people at the company. You want to start a document that you can share with any Georgia Tech student where they can list contacts that they may have under each company, their email, phone number, etc. Since this will be out to all students, you want to be able to control what posts go through and what don't before their changes show up on the document.

You are a student that wants to post your list of contacts on this document. You want to make sure that whoever started this document has a valid GT email and that if you post anything, your email address is anonymous to everyone but the administrator. This is so that you don't get one hundred emails from students asking you to recommend them to a certain contact for a position. You also want a way for other students to be able to comment on each contact so that they can list their experiences with a certain person. This way, everyone can get in touch with a person that has been known to be helpful and nice in the past.