Requirement 1 (study phase): collaborative work on the same document –> see scenario 1
| Need | Asynchronous and synchronous collaboratio. |
| Existing practices and problem statement | Documents are sent in an email. Problem: it is easy to lose oversight over which document is the latest version.Documents are uploaded to Moodle. Problem: one must be online to access the document, no versioning.Storage on third cloud services. |
| Proposed solutions | See requirement title. |
| Expected benefits | Location independent collaborative work process.Less fluctuation in-between media solutions: file system to e-mail, e-mail to software, e-mail to file system et cetera.Avoidance of version conflicts, since document is stored and edited in an centralised manner. |
| Risks – what needs to be considered | None |
Requirement 2 (study phase): Login with same data as the other school sites –> see scenario 1
| Need | Fast access to data.Less distraction in the process of accessing data.Existing practices and problem statement.Storage on solutions like Dropbox .No information to security, privacy, legal issues.Multiple login names and passwords. |
| Existing practices andproblem statement | – |
| Proposed solutions | See requirement title. |
| Expected benefits | Better support of the work process.Risks – what needs to be considered:One password (security) |
| Risks – what needs to be considered | – |
Requirement 3 (study phase): The developed solution can be submitted directly into the Moodle course, and even at a later stage will still be available (on the platform “idea”) –> see scenario 1
| Need | Easer submission of assignments into a LMS.Less distraction in the process of submitting an assignment.Centralised management of course materials. |
| Existing practices and problem statement | Local development of an assignment, upload to LMS from pc/notebook. Problem: After submission, assignment is only available on the specific device or in the course in Moodle.The solution/assignment is sent via email to the teacher. Problem: it cannot be graded in the LMS: |
| Proposed solutions | See requirement title. |
| Expected benefits | Centralised management of assignments and grades.Better possibility for feedback, even during the development phase. |
| Risks – what needs to be considered | None |
Requirement 4 (post-study phase): Enabling location independent team work –> see scenario 2
| Need | In a more and more decentralized work environment effective and efficient location independent team work gets more and more important. |
| Existing practices and problem statement | Nowadays, location independent team work often is realized by using traditional technological solutions, in particular e-mail. Thereby, people work asynchronously at different materials, which have to be exchanged each time and are not stored at a central place. |
| Proposed solutions | Therefore, an online platform is proposed to enable location independent team work. This should allow for asynchronous as well as synchronous team work. |
| Expected benefits | Work materials are stored at a central place and can be accessed from different locations.Work materials do not have to be exchanged laboriously each time.This stands for more effective and efficient team work. |
| Risks – what needs to be considered | Information security (access protection, rights) and storage security have to be regarded. |
Requirement 5 (post-study phase): Collaborative graphic work on an online platform –> see scenario 2
| Need | In today’s modern project work, the possibility to collaboratively establish different kinds of graphic materials, for example mind-maps, concept-maps or flowcharts, is very important. |
| Existing practices and problem statement | Often, graphic materials are established independently by one person or an on-site group and then shared with each other by using e-mail. So, location independent production of graphic materials is quite complicate and avoided. |
| Proposed solutions | Therefore, an online platform enabling the production of different kinds of graphic materials (mind-maps, concept-maps, flowcharts, organizational charts) is proposed. Thereby, asynchronous as well as synchronous work processes should be supported. With synchronous work, people need to communicate by spoken language. |
| Expected benefits | Different graphic work materials can be produced collaboratively, asynchronously and synchronously.Graphic work materials are stored at a central place and can be accessed from different locations.Graphic work materials do not have to be exchanged laboriously each time, for example by using e-mail.Finally, this stands for more effective and efficient team work. |
| Risks – what needs to be considered | Information security (access protection, rights) and storage security have to be regarded. |
Requirement 6 (post-study phase): Version management (document history) –> see scenario 2
| Need | If more than one person has to produce certain work materials, a method clearly documenting the previous work steps as well as declaring the newest work output is needed. |
| Existing practices and problem statement | Often, work materials, for example documents, are established and revised over a longer period by different people. So, it really is important to have a good version management enabling people to follow past work steps and to recognize which the newest work material is. A missing or bad version management entails the risk that people work at the same time at different versions of a document. Thereby, existing work content can get lost if people do not use the latest version. |
| Proposed solutions | A version management declaring past work steps is needed. Here, people should have different possibilities to follow these work steps, for example, either by watching a fast video track containing past actions and changes or by calling a log file-based presentation table. Moreover, updating of file names should happen automatically. |
| Expected benefits | Handling of work materials by different people gets easier.There is less risk that people are working at an older document version and, finally, content gets lost. |
| Risks – what needs to be considered | None |
Requirement 7 (post-study phase): Possibility of a supervisory participation in a project with other people –> see scenario 2
| Need | Supervisors as well as responsible partners from outside should easily get access to on-going online project work they actually are not involved constantly. |
| Existing practices and problem statement | Often, projects are handled by a certain core team. But from time to time, other people than the core team have to join the project team for a certain time period too, for example supervisors or external partners. These people need access to the project and its content. Thereby, their role and rights in the project have to be defined. On existing platforms, often, there are only a few roles predefined which are hardly to adapt. |
| Proposed solutions | For online-platforms, there is a flexible, easy to handle tool (plugin) necessary that enables the definition and adaptation of user roles and rights. |
| Expected benefits | A lot of different roles could be predefined. Based on these roles, current roles could be adapted for special purposes. |
| Risks – what needs to be considered | No risks! |
Requirement 8 (study phase): Dropbox for Moodle –> see scenario 3
| Need | Asynchronous and synchronous collaboration |
| Existing practices and problem statement | Documents are sent in an e-mail. Problem: it is easy to lose oversight over which document is the latest version.Documents are uploaded to Moodle. Problem: one must be online to access the document, no versioning.Storage on cloud services. |
| Proposed solutions | See requirement title |
| Expected benefits | Location independent collaborative work processLess fluctuation in-between media solutions: file system to email, e-mail to software, e-mail to file system et cetera.Avoidance of version conflicts, since document is stored and edited centralised. |
| Risks – what needs to be considered | None! |
Requirement 9 (study phase): Messaging function: * about File Sharing Folder * the sticky note can be made in various forms: as a text, an audio, a video et cetera –> see scenario 3
| Need | Information exchange during work processInformation about the work progressMultimedia form of responses/questionsSupport for video/audio blogging |
| Existing practices and problem statement | Forums in LMS; LMS do not really support collaborative work processes. You can send a file with the forum post, but you have to edit it on your pc.E-mail is decentralised and lack context |
| Proposed solutions | See requirement title |
| Expected benefits | Improved overview of the working processless cognitive loadLess media disruption |
| Risks – what needs to be considered | None! |
Requirement 10 (study phase): Personalised web portal which allows further access to additional services –> see scenario 4
| Need | Students have a lot of different tools and platforms which help them handling their studies. Usually, they have to go through a login process though, which on one hand guarantees the safety of their account, but on the other hand makes the working process tedious.Students have to enter several logins (mail, skype, facebook…) in order to start their work.The effort put in administering the different accounts and getting bothered by all the logins shouldn’t be the main work of studying. Students are looking for practical and fast ways to get access to their accounts so the actions which do not directly relate to their studies (like losing time because of doing logins) can be diminished. Therefore, there’s a need for a helpful tool, which allows easy access to all the digital services needed. |
| Existing practices and problem statement | To get access to learning material and communication platforms, students have to enter several login. E.g.: Student A has to download reading material form his university platform. So A has to enter the web-address of the platform and then enters his login. Then A wants to check his e-mail and once again has to enter his login data to see his account. To check on the conversation about the next due paper he’s working on with his friend, he checks in on facebook. |
| Proposed solutions | See also requirement title |
| Expected benefits | Practical and fast access to important tools and platformsClearly arranged tools, user friendlyFacilitate administrative work for studentsReducing daily hassles |
| Risks – what needs to be considered | There are some concerns about security. Some students mentioned that they wouldn’t easily give all their login-data to one source and felt more secure by having separate logins.An occurring problem could be the lack of personalized individual arrangements which would reduce the usefulness of such a website.One student argued that there’s no need for a website, but that this should be solved on operation system level. |
Requirement 11 (study phase): Categories private, work, study with the platforms and tolls to each need –> see scenario 4
| Need | Imaging the real life categories in an online formWhen working to have the possibility to close or minimize tools and platforms that are of a private matter |
| Existing practices and problem statement | Usually, users have multiple windows open with all these services and change in-between them.Switching through the various services is very distracting and inefficient. |
| Proposed solutions | See Requirement title |
| Expected benefits | Improved overview of the working processless cognitive loadA better division between work/study and private online life |
| Risks – what needs to be considered | Security of the access and data.Technical mesh-up of the various services. |
Requirement 12 (study phase): Easy generating of mailing lists –> see scenario 4
| Need | To collaborate and communicate students have to exchange contact data e.g. e-mail-address or Skype-username.It’s a challenge to organize the big amount of contact data reasonably.one click which would lead to full contact data of a person |
| Existing practices and problem statement | Exchange e-mail-address (because everybody has one)Look for each other on Facebook and add as friendAdd each other on Skype or DropboxUsually the contact data is not ordered reasonably. |
| Proposed solutions | See requirement title |
| Expected benefits | All contact information about one person is stored in one placeSimple contact function, which is easy to administer |
| Risks – what needs to be considered | None |
Requirement 13 (study/post-study phase): Course versus student centred design of online platforms –> see scenario 5
| Need | Teachers’ and students’ needs regarding the structural design of learning management systems have to be regarded or even harmonized with each other. |
| Existing practices and problem statement | Most learning management systems are arranged by courses. While teachers normally prefer a course centred design of an online learning platform, with regard to lifelong learning, students could benefit from an organisation independent, more student centred design. Unfortunately, after completion of their studies, nowadays, students no longer have access to the learning management system provided by their university. |
| Proposed solutions | A harmonization of teachers’ and students’ needs is desired. During the study phase a course centred approach to a learning management systems is acceptable; But this tool should be linked to a more student centred e-portfolio system. All materials contained in the learning management system should be available in the e-portfolio tool, too. |
| Expected benefits | Teachers could organize their lectures by courses.Students have the possibility to arrange all the materials of their studies by their own and keep them for the rest of their life. |
| Risks – what needs to be considered | Questions of document copyright have to be solved and communicated to all people involved. |
Requirement 14 (study/post-study phase): Easy searching and arranging of online materials –> see scenario 5
| Need | Content intelligent searchThe increasing amount of data that we produce needs to be handled organised and managed. |
| Existing practices and problem statement | Materials are stored in cluttered file systems that do not allow an efficient semantic search.Time consuming, frustrating and distractingLoss of content through no discovery |
| Proposed solutions | See requirement title |
| Expected benefits | Efficient workingAvoidance of loss of content through no discovery |
| Risks – what needs to be considered | None |
Requirement 15 (study phase): Storage of data on local servers due to national and institutional laws –> see scenario 6
| Need | Due to national laws and institutional regulations data has to be stored on national hosted servers. |
| Existing practices and problem statement | Storage on solutions like Dropbox (somewhere in the US)No information to security, privacy, legal issues |
| Proposed solutions | See requirement title |
| Expected benefits | Better implementation of these laws and regulations |
| Risks – what needs to be considered | None |
Requirement 16 (extends the issues addressed in requirement 15): Storage solution should implement these concerns privacy, compliance, legal issues, security and sustainability –> see scenario 6
Requirement 17 (study phase) (extends the issues addressed in requirement 2): Login only on the initialisation of the account online and then once after installing the standalones –> see scenario 6
| Need | Fast access to dataLess distraction in the process of accessing data |
| Existing practices and problem statement | Storage on solutions like DropboxNo information to security, privacy, legal issues |
| Proposed solutions | See requirement title |
| Expected benefits | Better support of the work process |
| Risks – what needs to be considered | None |
Requirement 18: customised read/edit right for the stored documents –> see scenario 6
| Need | Overview of the rights to access and editing of stored documentsCustomization of these rightTask definition and delegation (lecturer, reader, admin, co-worker et cetera)History of the editing process |
| Existing practices and problem statement | Storage on solutions like DropboxNo versioning, no overview of the editing rights |
| Proposed solutions | See requirement title |
| Expected benefits | Better support of the work process |
| Risks – what needs to be considered | – |