VUSSC/Agenda Jul06/Day2 notes

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Planning the Content Development Process


Hi everyone. Today we were introduced to "realistic" project planning by the very experienced Richard Nielson, PMP of Denrich Consulting Ltd. At the end of the day we collaboratively developed a draft plan of action for courseware customisation. Wayne skillfully inserted the plan directly into Wikieducator so please feel free to take a look at the links below. The current draft of the project plan is divided into three sections:


 * 1) The high level project plan for both subject areas. This also highlights actions and tasks that must be completed before the boot camp in August.
 * 2) Individual plans relating to the development of the two subject areas.
 * 3) * Tourism
 * 4) * Entrepreneurship

Anyway, here's a summary of what transpired today.
 * Richard introduced us to project management essentials focusing on:
 * project initiation (the project proposal - blue print for the project). Already done by VUSSC.
 * project planning (essentially the schedule, tasks, deliverables, timeline, responsibilities, etc.)
 * executing and controlling the project (procedures to ensure that e.g. virtual teams are well managed e.g. using status reports. Note this will not be used in Mauritius but will be useful for long term courseware development.  Examples of these reports were shown and templates provided for customization.
 * closing the project (evaluating the project by looking at lessons learnt, what went well, what didn't go well and why as well as  what can be improved.
 * success factors 
 * We developed the plan of action
 * We began reviewing the submitted content so as to derive a draft course outline

Questions / Issues

 * How can we maintain a high level of motivation among team members during and after this laudable venture?
 * How will the success of this project be determined/measured?
 * Who will manage the creation of VUSSC open content in the long term after COL has cut the umbilical cord?
 * The scalability of this project must be considered.

Decisions

 * The selected subject matter experts will be assigned to each of the four groups before Mauritius
 * Online communication will take place between team leaders and SMEs re the tasks that must be accomplished before boot camp in Mauritius
 * There will be four teams of 3 or 4 members each - Two focusing on Tourism and Two on Entrepreneurship
 * The aim is to develop a total of 10 notional learning hours at the end of the 3 weeks. (Please see plan of action for clarification).
 * Once we have agreed on course outline etc. we will attempt to gather all the mulitmedia resources we may need before we get to Mauritius.