Oct/090
Online User Testing
We recently used an online service that lets you select test participants from a pool of pre-qualified people who will then perform tasks on your site and report back.
We think that it worked amazingly well!
The service (usertesting.com) explains it best on their website. Here’s an overview:
- You sign up for user testing, specifying:
- The demographic profile of your target audience
- How many users you want
- What tasks you want them to perform on your site
- We notify users. Within seconds, representative users start recording their screen and voice as they use your website, speaking their thoughts as they browse.
- You watch and listen to them use your site. Each user’s session – mouse movements, clicks, keystrokes, and spoken comments – is saved as a Flash video for you to watch.
- You read their summary.
- What they liked. What they didn’t like. What would have caused them to leave your site.
While we couldn’t choose ‘immigrant’ or ESL as a characteristic we wanted in our test users, we were able to use age, income and location to create our target audience user base.
The whole process, from signing up to getting the videos back, took less than 3 hours. Well worth the money (less than $100 per test).
Having recorded video and audio of the testers going through the tasks we assigned was incredibly useful.
Watch the video below as an example and enjoy a sneak peak of Settlement.Org’s new look – coming soon!
Sep/090
Final Word on the Kiosks for this Year
Well, it is official. We won’t be doing any of the Touch Screen kiosks this year. However, the funder is still interested and may put it out as a full project next year.
Internally, we liked the concept of the Kiosks but from a timing and workload standpoint we are somewhat relieved to see implementation delayed. With the budget freezes earlier in the year not allowing us to get started we were running out of time to undertake such a large project.
You can see the English versions of the Kiosk vidoes on our YouTube channel.
Aug/090
OTIS 2.0 – First Step of Many
Since 2000, the OCASI-managed OTIS website has been the data entry and stats reporting system supporting the Settlement Workers in the Schools (SWIS) program. In the recent years, OTIS has been expanded to support the information needs of the Library Settlement Partnerships (LSP) and Settlement Services in LINC classes (SSIL) programs.
This expansion has come at a cost as the original OTIS design doesn’t work well with multiple groups and their individual reporting and data needs. To get the new groups on to the system has required some compromises from everyone.
However, over the next 7 months OCASI will be working with SWIS/LSP/SSIL staff to collect potential requirements that will shape the revised version of OTIS – OTIS 2.0!
First Meeting
The initial information gathering session with 20 SWIS/SSIL/LSP Coordinators was held on July 15, 2009. The session provided the group with an overview of project and an opportunity to gather the initial business requirements.
Some important highlights from the discussion include:
- The best thing about the OTIS Data Entry site is the support provided by our staff member Elena!
- Workers can’t generate reports on their own data, feel disconnected from their efforts
- There is a desire for very basic online client management but NOT online “case” management
The following slides contain all the questions asked at the meeting and the responses.
Watch this site for more updates. We are moving into discussions with each of the groups to create a list of individual requirements.
Aug/090
Online Learning – OCASI uses Open Source Software
OCASI is pleased to announce the Understanding and Responding to Woman Abuse in Immigrant and Refugee Communities: eLearning for Settlement Workers online course.
Aside from this new course being an important learning opportunity for settlement workers it also showcases a great tool used by OCASI that any agency could use for their online activities.
The web-based course we are offering will be hosted using the open source Moodle online learning software.
From Moodle.org:
- Moodle has features that allow it to scale to very large deployments and hundreds of thousands of students, yet it can also be used for a primary school or an education hobbyist.
- Many institutions use it as their platform to conduct fully online courses, while some use it simply to augment face-to-face courses (known as blended learning).
- Many of our users love to use the many activity modules (such as Forums, Wikis, Databases and so on) to build richly collaborative communities of learning around their subject matter (in the social constructionist tradition), while others prefer to use Moodle as a way to deliver content to students (such as standard SCORM packages) and assess learning using assignments or quizzes.
While Moodle may be free there are expenses. There is the time it takes to learn it and you would most likely have to pay to have it hosted. But compared with the thousands of dollars some e-learning software costs Moodle is an amazing value.
OCASI has used Moodle for several years now. You can find our online courses at http://www.learnatwork.ca.
If you have any questions about OCASI’s use of Moodle and how it may work for you leave a comment.
Jul/090
Sites for Newcomer Youth Launched
You Are Here and Vous êtes ici, the latest online information and referral resources from OCASI, are now live!
The websites are a place where youth new to Ontario can get information about the issues that affect them. They will have the opportunity to interact with and learn from the experiences of other newcomer youth, Canadian youth and youth workers. Visitors to the website will have a variety of ways to get the information they need. Along with dozens of articles written specifically for newcomer youth, the site will include a directory of youth-serving organizations, a local event and workshop calendar and a place to comment and ask questions in a moderated and safe online space.
Over the summer we will be doing some more user testing and adding new features. We will do an official launch in the fall.
It has been a great cross-team exercise. From planning to technical to editorial to translation the entire OCASI New Media group has been involved.
Make sure you visit the sites and spread the word! And send feedback too!
- http://www.newyouth.ca (You Are Here)
- http://www.nouveauxjeunes.ca (Vous êtes ici)
Jul/091
Latest on the Multilingual Kiosks
We have received several inquiries about whether we will be producing any more of the multilingual touch screen kiosks for school Reception Centres.
The short answer is “we don’t know yet”.
The funder (CIC) had to put a lot of the big projects on hold as they worked through internal budget issues. So we put the (very big) kiosk project at the bottom of our pile.
Sample video from the Kiosk:
Recently, CIC approved the budgets as they were agreed upon so the money should be there to do more kiosks. However, we can’t assume the kiosks are a lock to move forward.
The kiosks are expensive to make, between $5000 and $8000 per unit (including hardware, video, software, remote access, etc) and we (CIC, OCASI, the schools) need to be really sure that this type of format is useful to the newcomers for whom it was designed.
We did an evaluation of the two kiosks we produced last year, as part of a pilot program. The evaluation was pretty neutral. The kiosks had only been in place a couple of months and the feedback was positive but not overwhelming. CIC, understandably, has asked how we can make the project better.
I believe there are many things we would do better in a full roll out. Including:
- more training/support for the schools that get the kiosks
- related multilingual brochures/documentation
- improved signage
- remote access for technical support
There is demand for us to create more, and I am personally a fan of the kiosk, but, even with improvements, we still have to talk to all the stakeholders about whether this is the right way to go.
Check back or subscribe for email updates to get the latest on the kiosks. We will have to make a decision one way or the other within the next month or two.
Jul/090
Update on Changes to Settlement.Org Logo
We are currently working on a full redesign of the Settlement.Org site and this has included making some small changes to our main logo. We previewed our logo ideas and received some helpful comments/suggestions.
After one more trip to the drawing board we have decided on this version:
It isn’t wildly different from the current version but we think it is much more legible.
Let us know what you think.
Jul/090
Website for French-Speaking Settlement Workers: Consultation Results
We are currently in the planning stages for a new website for French-speaking settlement workers. This site will be similar to the At Work site that many of you will know.
The goal:
Ensure centralized and comprehensive access to online and offline professional development opportunities, academic research, resources and news. It will provide information that is uniquely relevant to francophone settlement workers in the context of helping newcomers settle in Ontario.
To make sure this new site meets the needs of the audience OCASI staff have been talking with francophone managers and front line workers across Ontario about what they want to see in this new site. Consultations took place in one-to-one interviews, at the OCASI conference, group discussions and through email and phone conversations.
Jul/090
Update on SSCAN
For the last 2+ years OCASI has been working on the SSCAN (Settlement Sector Client Administration Network) project. The main goal of the project was to build an integrated database to reduce the abundant duplicate entry which currently affects the sector and provide for more opportunities for agencies to improve internal evaluation and planning.
To date we have accomplished the following:
- devleoped the business plan, data concept, etc,
- put together the overall cost of the project which at a minimum will cost $2 million dollars during 2 years of development
- report on business and governance model options fo the SSCAN Database System
- pilot test that will help us understand how agencies are reporting to the many funders
Despite everything we have accomplished it is with a fair bit of disappointment that I say the SSCAN project is on indefinite hold.
Jul/092
[Video] Really Simple Strategies – Keeping Track of Your Organization and Issues Online
Marco Campana, who manages the Settlement At Work website, recently presented at the MyCharityConnects conference. The conference focused on connecting charities to the technology they need to succeed. Settlement At Work has similar goals around non-profits and technology use.
Below is the video of Marco’s presentation: Really Simple Strategies – Keeping Track of Your Organization and Issues Online