Meeting Scheduling in Higher Education An Experimental Design & Evaluation CS 294 Fall 2001 Sabrina Hsueh Saifon Obromsook Juha Johansson Stephen Morris

Motivation There are currently no distributed meeting scheduling tools broadly adopted in school. Available commercial tools are not designed to be used in school settings We want to explore –Nature of the meeting scheduling process as part of overall project management –Applicability of an electronic means to facilitate the scheduling process

Study Interviews & observations –Static + dynamic schedules –Dependence on due dates –Conflict resolution: choose inconvenient time or only ask ‘key’ people to come Literature Review –Disparity between effort & benefit [Grudin] –Structured pattern of communication [Coordinator] –Trend of mixed communication medium [Palen] –Transparent overlay of schedules helps visualization [Beard et.al.]

Design Implications Mixed communication mediums  Hybrid model (web-based + ) Semi-structured communication Asynchronous communication Each member’s availability is visible as well as the aggregate one Visual display of availability Compatible with heterogeneous computing environment  Web-based Lightweight enough that it’s not seen as a task in itself

Design Time Meeting Scheduler (our system) Coordinator (Anyone in the group) All Team Members Approx. Schedules Milestones/ Assignments Beginning of the semester Assignment Reminders Meeting Request Invitations w/ 3 options Replies Aggregate Reply Chosen times (/place) New Request … Meeting Confirmation

Experiment 20 groups of USF business students scheduling a meeting Compare two models: –Pure –Web-based + Hypothesis: For meeting scheduling process in school project groups, our hybrid system is preferred over a pure -based system. Online survey to capture data

How useful was the online meeting scheduler overall?

What is your level of interest in using this again?

Which system provided you with more useful information?

Which system better helped you schedule a meeting?

- What communication tools do you use to schedule a meeting? - What communication tools would you like to use to schedule/receive information for a meeting?

Contributions Gives a better understanding of how a project group’s meeting scheduling works in educational settings Design implications to a scheduling tool for students working in project teams

Sign In Screen

Enter/Update Availability Screen

Request A Meeting Screen (Top)

Request A Meeting Screen (Bottom)

Invitation Message

View Results Screen

Aggregate Result

Meeting Confirmation