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Polished off the just-in-time-training modules for the G20 wiki site this morning. Thought I would take a moment to reflect on the process, the technology and my own satisfaction at completion.
The Process

This started last year with the idea of building a publicly accessible site for all-things G-20. To kick it off, we built both the wiki area and a set of phpBB driven discussion board fora. The primary aspect of putting both sites together was to create a public space to share links and such, which other universities could access, and a private space where faculty could carry on conversations.

The secondary benefit of both is for the Writing Center director to have the ability to bring other writers into the Barista web. This would include access to both the wiki and the discussion board. This will increase the number of professional writers sharing information and also give the director a platform through which he can show the capabilities of the teaching area and inform them of some elements of teaching.

It did take some time. Knowing we needed to both upgrade the lab (software upgrades were certain, but hardware was possible) and the Twiki engine, things were delayed. And delayed. But, the process went rather smoothly once everything was in place.

The hard part was accessing and figuring out the processes by which the various operations were completed. Once I had a rough outline of each, it was another difficulty to access the room with enough time to knock out one or two lessons at a time. Normally, I focused on just getting the text elements down while doing some quick screen captures during the process. With the text up, I had a base from which to work.
The screen captures were thrown into Word and emailed onto myself for later copying into Photoshop and some doctoring before putting on the wiki. This didn’t result in the best quality images, but did save considerable time and allowed me to focus on what I could do in G-20. Though, I do wish a few of the images had come out better. But, for what is needed, I think none of the images detract from helping people through the process. It is something I will think of as I go into the first revision towards the end of this semester.
The Technology

Specifically, the technology I used for the tutorials, not the technology available in the room.

Twiki: I wasn’t happy with the last version of the Twiki software. I found it to contain many of the poor interface elements I’ve disliked about “out of the box” solutions for some time. However, the newest version is very nice. Better layout and with the wysiwyg editor, it is extremely easy to add content. Also, the ability to add images to the lessons went very well. It is a bit bewildering to figure out some of the markup to get the format just right, but considering this is an online, edit through your browser application, I am quite impressed.

Screen capture: I need to find an easy to install method for grabbing Windows elements on the fly. Using the default screen capture built into Windows (print screen) isn’t the great. And, if followed by dropping it into Word docs for later access, you do lose quite a bit of quality. Not enough to divert me towards finding a more complex solution to save such a slim amount of image quality, but something to have in place before the next round.

My own satisfaction

I have a lot of satisfaction with the project. In the end, it doesn’t look nearly as nice as something I could have created in Dreamweaver, but it isn’t supposed to. I kind of look at Wikis formatting along the 80/100 rule. 80 percent on time, 100 percent late. But, I would change it to: Wiki’s give you 80 percent quality with everyone able to compose and contribute. Websites give you 100 percent quality but you’re on your own. Does that make sense? And, right now, 80 percent is pretty damn good.
Looking back at the timeline, I wish I had started on what I knew was going to remain stable through the upgrades. Looking back, I knew the Digital Presenter, overhead projector, audio cabinet and Smartboard would either stay completely the same or have very few changes to workflow. I should have focused on those in the spring. Now, in my defence, it isn’t like life was peachy and I was sitting around with nothing to do. In fact, the spring, both personally and professionally, were extremely busy. But, a few hours spent back then would have saved many hours in the fall and allowed an earlier completion date.

Note: For those not familiar with the University of Richmond campus, G-20 is one of our high-end labs used by the writing faculty for enhanced instruction. It is the creme de la creme of our public labs.