Community Engagement Activities
in the CREW VRE project
Meik Poschen
ESRC National Centre for e-Social Science
Workshop on Fostering e-Infrastructure: from
user-designer relations to community
engagement
Edinburgh, 8/9 May 2008
Outline
 What is CREW?
 Project, context & technical system
 Community/User Engagement Activities
 User Groups, Activities, Further Steps
 Uptake and Sustainability
The CREW Project
 CREW: one of four funded
projects under the JISC Virtual
Research Environment (VRE)
phase 2 Programme
 2 year project: ends March 2009
 Overall aim: “Support the
research process”
 Focus strongly on user
engagement
VRE
JISC defines a Virtual Research
Environment (VRE) as to
“help researchers in all disciplines manage the
increasingly complex range of tasks involved in
carrying out research. A VRE will provide a
framework of resources to support the
underlying processes of research on both small
and large scales, particularly for those
disciplines which are not well catered for by the
current infrastructure.”
Project Aim
“The aim of CREW is to develop and deploy
user-centred software to support research
resources (including audio-visual
recordings) that arise from collaborative
research events such as conferences,
workshops and seminars to be
discoverable in context.”
Project Roots
Successor of two JISC VRE phase 1
projects, integrating their functionalities:
 Memetic (Meeting Memory Technology
Informing Collaboration), University of
Manchester, Open University, University of
Southampton, University of Edinburgh
 Iugo, Institute for Learning and Research
Technology (ILRT), University of Bristol
Functionalities of the System
CREW will provide a portal environment and
support material, with four main features:
1.
Recording: Users can record events audio-visually, incorporating
presentation slides and similar material, building on Memetic and
AG technology.
2.
Replaying of the recorded events and choosing the interface
layout.
Annotating and editing: CREW supports the addition of tags during
recordings, e.g. to annotate slides or link to related blog
discussions.
Searching: The search and browse application will connect and
cross-link all the relevant content and metadata in the VRE portal,
presenting detailed information.
3.
4.
User Engagement
 The VRE programme phase 2 focuses strongly
on user engagement
 Lesson’s learned from Iugo and Memetic:
 Despite engaging users wherever possible, this
engagement was limited to occasional and informal
participation in requirement gathering activities and
the use of the tools
 User needs should be the driver and focus for
requirements gathering, development and evaluation,
and underpin the whole methodological approach
User Groups
Three user groups have been integrated from the
proposal phase on and each is also a use case:
 Intute: national JISC service providing access to web
resources for research to UK higher education
institutions (Bristol & Manchester)
 Institute of Health Sciences (IHS): promotes health
sciences research in Manchester
 Manchester scientific visualization research groups (UK
Professional SIGGRAPH Chapter & Eurographics UK
Chapter): using the AG for seminars and workshops.
User Groups: Integration
 A very important asset of CREW is to take into
account the different research settings and
requirements of the users themselves.
 The members of the three user groups are
actively and formally participating in the project
during its complete lifecycle to help achieve
these goals.
 Project funds are used to remunerate users for
their time and effort in project activities
Engagement activities
Users are integrated into the core activities of the project:
 Users can participate in the monthly project meeting
 A Project User Management Group (PUMG) has been
set up, meeting bi-monthly
 Users can contribute to the project website and Wiki (and
BSCW)
 Two mailing lists are used:
 Project mailing list including all users
 Technical development mailing list including users who want to
User Requirements Gathering
What do users need and how do we find out?
 So called User Days in the first phase of the project
 One day with each user group
 Introduction what we plan to do (in development)
 Discussion in focus groups
 Document findings and feed those back to the users (User
Requirements Report)
 Challenge: find a path for development recognising the different needs
of different user groups and domains
 All User Day
 Bring together all users on one day and repeat the above process
Supported User Events
 Workshop: making good applications to the research for
patient benefit programme - September 2007 (Institute of
Health Sciences)
 Monthly ACM SIGGRAPH Manchester Professional
Chapter seminars - end 2007 onwards (Scientific
Visualization Groups)
 Major Intute training event - mid 2008 (Intute)
 UK Chapter of the Eurographics Association - TP.CG
(Theory and Practice of Computer Graphics) Annual
Conference - June 2008 (Scientific Visualization Groups)
 ESRC Research Methods Festival, Oxford - 30 June to 3
July 2008: Recording of “What is?” sessions (special)
Evaluation and Further Steps
 The user requirements gathering is
complemented by the supported user
events, giving a picture of user needs &
users’ work practice in different domains
Further steps:
 Usability sessions will be conducted
starting in summer
Issues for wider Uptake: Tech
The use is technically non-trivial, but at the
same time manageable:
 A stand alone box or a powerful data line
is required to make recordings
 Suitable hardware (cam & mics) has to be
used
 Data has to be stored on a server,
archived and kept accessible
Issues for wider Uptake: Other
Non-technical factors:
 Security & Confidentiality of data, if
needed (diverse access rights models will
be developed)
 Consent of speakers/audience when
recording an event (“legal, social and
ethical issues” are explored; consent form)
 Web 42.0 taking over the world..
Sustainability - After the
project’s lifetime
Good question..!
Sustainability - After the
project’s lifetime
How about..
 Talking to OSS Watch..
(of course and yes, I just put this in!)
Sustainability - After the
project’s lifetime
Good question..! How about..
 Talking to OSS Watch..
 Open Source
 Going commercial..?
 Will CREW be continuously used & taken up by
other users and domains (and we all get
famous..)?
Thank You
The CREW project:
http://www.crew-vre.net
Meik Poschen
meik.poschen@manchester.ac.uk
http://www.ncess.ac.uk