ProjectProjectCourse ThreadsCourse Threads

Johnson NguyenAdvisor: John Chuang

Problem Statement/Objective Schools have remained attached to a grid-like

departmental structure Students find little coherence in their major course track

beyond what is simply recommended Both Berkeley faculty and students are unaware of

intersections among courses offered in different departments

Integrate course information into a single, easy to use, web based system that allows students to navigate the relationships among courses.

Solution

Social Network Courses are the nodes Professors build the edges Professors generate threads Each page contains information about a course,

professor, or thread Allow for browsing

Background Information

Current project started with grant money of $240,000 from Andrew Mellon foundation Spread over 4 years Humanities department Two course threads per year, 4-5 professors per thread

Project Sponsors: Anthony Cascardi (Director, TCH) Teresa Stojkov (Assoc. Director, TCH) Celeste Langan (Faculty Director of Programs)

Current course navigation systemCurrent course navigation system

Current Class Selection Process for the Arts & Humanities Department, College of Letters & Science – UC Berkeley

Reg

istr

atio

nD

epar

tmen

t 4

Dep

artm

ent 2

Dep

artm

ent 3

Stud

ent’s

Dep

artm

ent Cal Student

Choose dept on College of

Letters/ Sciences website

Read course description on

Berkeley’s class catalog website

Select classes within major

Finished selecting classes?

Yes

No

YesSelect classes within major 2

Choose dept 2 on College of

Letters/ Sciences website

Finished selecting classes?

Read course description on

Berkeley’s class catalog website

No

YesFinished selecting classes?

Select classes within major 3

Choose dept 3 on College of

Letters/ Sciences website

Read course description on

Berkeley’s class catalog website

No

Yes

Finished selecting classes?

Register for classes on the

Telebears website

Choose dept 4 on College of

Letters/ Sciences website

Read course description on

Berkeley’s class catalog website

Select classes within major 4

Proposed course navigation systemProposed course navigation system

Proposed Class Selection Process for the Arts & Humanities Department, College of Letters & Science – UC Berkeley

Reg

istr

atio

nT

owns

end

Cen

ter

for

the

Hum

aniti

es w

ebsi

te

Cal Student

Log onto the coursethreads

website (Townsend Center for the Humanities)

Choose major and read course descriptions

Select link to related courses in other majors and

read course descriiptions

Register for classes on the

Telebears website

Select courses

StakeholdersStakeholder Motivation/Needs

Project sponsors Deliver a system to the Consortium for Disciplinary Innovation

Faculty Add new perspective to courses Help students design optimal curriculum

Undergraduate students

Understand course connections across departments Select optimal courses to meet goals

Project manager Balance time, scope, and resources to meet stakeholder needs; Recognition

Developers Develop according to current specs of the system efficiently and modularly Recognition; pay

Benefits

Increase in student satisfaction with academic program Greater probability that students’ curriculum is ideally

tailored to their professional goals and interests. Provides platform for faculty to learn about related

courses Provides preliminary platform for faculty to discover

common research interests possibly leading to collaborative research between various sub-groups within A&H.

Accomplishments

Project Management

Risk Analysis and Mitigation Plan

Description Probability Impact Strategy

Poor faculty participation L to M H Plan to use content from b-space and interview professors to discern connections;Contingency of $25,000 for award money

Change in project manager H H Document progress and lessons learned after each milestone

Weak engagement from student developers

M M Work with academic affairs to apply project towards academic credits

50% of tasks are on critical path

n/a L Add resources and time

L=Low; M=Medium; H=High

Relevance

User Interface Design & Development Computer Mediated Communication Computer Visualization Web Architecture Economics of Security & Privacy Project Management Managing Business Transformation Projects

Develop - II

Test - II

Deploy – II

Training – II

Future Road Map

Task Done Phase I Phase II

Q1 07 Q3 07 Q3 08 Q3 09 Q3 10Q1 08 Q1 09 Q1 10

Go-live IIGo-live IINov 18, 2009Nov 18, 2009

Project Management

Requirement

Phase I System LiveDesign & Prototyping

Develop - I

Test - I

Deploy – I

Training – I

Go-live IGo-live IDec 17, 2009Dec 17, 2009

Planning – Prototyping

Planning – Upscale

Project Management No work

Testing:-Integration Test-Performance Test-User Acceptance Test

System Live: -No development work- To capture real user feedback

Project Management

Future Road Map Continued

Demo

http://coursethreads.berkeley.edu