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Meeting Scheduling inHigher Education
An Experimental Design & Evaluation
CS 294 Fall 2001Sabrina Hsueh
Saifon ObromsookJuha JohanssonStephen 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 + e-mail)• 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 TeamMembers
Approx.Schedules
Milestones/Assignments
Beginning of the semester
AssignmentReminders
MeetingRequest
Invitationsw/ 3 options
Replies
AggregateReply
Chosentimes(/place)
NewRequest…
MeetingConfirmation
Experiment• 20 groups of USF business students
scheduling a meeting• Compare two models:
– Pure Email– Web-based + Email
• Hypothesis: For meeting scheduling process in school project groups, our hybrid system is preferred over a pure e-mail-based system.
• Online survey to capture data
How useful was the online meeting scheduler overall?
OVRALLU2
OVRALLU2
5Not Useful
4Slightly Useful
3Somewhat Useful
2Very Useful
1Extremely Useful
Perc
ent
40
30
20
10
0
What is your level of interest in using this again?
UAGAIN2
UAGAIN2
5Not Interested
4Slightly Interested
3Somewhat Interested
2Very Interested
1Extremely Intereste
Perc
ent
40
30
20
10
0
Which system provided you with more useful information?
Which one provide more useful info?
MOREINFO
No Answer1Email0Scheduler
Perc
ent
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Which system better helped you schedule a meeting?
Which one better helped schedule a meeting?
BETTERSY
No Answer1Email0Scheduler
Perc
ent
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
- 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?
What did you use and would like to use to schedule a meeting?
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
In Person Phone HandWritten
Web App Email IM PDA
Communication Tools
Per
cen
tag
e
in use now
w ould like to use
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