Subject: Inchstones for Trace subgrant under CDAKN (KDI/KN) proposal Resent-Date: Sat, 15 May 1999 14:13:00 -0400 Resent-From: Geoffrey Fox Resent-To: p_gcf@boss.npac.syr.edu Date: Tue, 11 May 1999 17:12:35 -0400 From: Al Gilman To: Edward Lipson , Gregg Vanderheiden , Corinna Lathan , Sheryl Burgstahler , Marek Podgorny , David Warner , David Rose , Geoffrey Fox CC: Heather Tetro , Kate Vanderheiden Here is a concept for deliverables from Trace. I am sorry, I cannot guarantee that these are final as of midnight tonight until Gregg has blessed the corresponding budget. These do reflect conversations we have been having about the approach to this research. NOTE: I believe we are going to have to defer any involvement of Barrett Caldwell or any of his associates in the Wisconsin Center for Educational Research to a future grant. We haven't had enough dialog to characterize their piece of the effort adequately. 1. Interface Strategies (1). Long title: Cross-Disability information access strategies adapted for distributed collaboration - Release 1: baseline. When: in Quarter 1, not later than three months after grant. What: The proven successful cross-disability access strategies from the Trace center in Information Transaction Machines will be summarized and adapted for application in the context of web-based distance collaboration. 2. Knowledge Opportunities (1). Long title: Opportunities for knowledge to contribute to cross-disability access in telecollaboration - Release 1: gaps. When: in Quarter 2, not later than five months after grant. What: The strong points and weak points in cross-disability access to information resources and telecommunication services will be analyzed to answer the questions: what knowledge assures success? what knowledge is missing when the connection fails? This will lead to a set of candidate functions in the collaboration infrastructure where additional knowledge will be applied or intelligent functions will provide assistance. This analysis concentrates on the interface to a human participant as an information sink. Compare with the way the search engine at infind.com lifts hits to an appropriate start page for the site where the hit was found, as opposed to disclosing a link directly to the page where the hit occurs. 3. Interface Strategies (2). Long title: Cross-Disability information access strategies for distributed collaboration - Release 2: exploratory. When: in Quarter 3, not later than three months after grant. What: This document supparizes at a functional level strategies which the team expects would improve cross-disability access to groupware. The Trace center will edit this volume with significant input from team dialog. This volume complements and does not replace the baseline. 4. Knowledge Opportunities (2). Long title: Opportunities for knowledge to contribute to cross-disability access in telecollaboration - Release 2: sources and strategies. When: in Quarter 4, not later than ten months after grant. What: Information and knowledge sources both human and archival will be considered as candidates to fill the gaps identified in the first release on this topic. In addition, strategies employing different kinds of knowledge representation and application will be compared: XML tags vs. metadata vs. rulesets, client-side vs. server-side knowledge application, etc. The focus in this analysis is on retained knowledge and people participating in real time as providing what is missing in the gaps identified earlier. 5. Evaluation plan contributions. During Quarter 5 it is assumed that the prime grantee will be consolidating an evaluation plan for the team. Trace will contribute to this plan in the areas where it will be conducting evaluations. 6. Laboratory Evaluation. Long title: Laboratory evaluation of human-computer interface performance in the Block 1 release of the infrastructure. Dependency: Presumes that the prime grantee will release a Block 1 software package with sufficient visually-impaired usability within the first year of the grant. When: A report will be available in Quarter 6, not later than sixteen months after grant, or four months after Block 1 release, whichever is later. What: This study will compare performance in the prototype telecollaboration environment with usability of the baseline techniques in their Information Transaction Machine versions. 7. Operational Evaluation. Long title: Operational evaluation of collaboration impacts from cross-disability access to telecollaboration. When: A report will be available in Quarter 10, not later than thirty months after grant. The experimental infrastructure will be used in actual work tasks, the biweekly caucus of the WebFocus team at Trace or equivalent, and also in situations where a person with a visual disability is organizing and leading the interaction session, such as tele-demonstration for webmasters whose sites we are reviewing. 8. Interface Strategies (3). Long title: Cross-Disability information access strategies adapted for distributed collaboration - Release 3: summary. When: in Quarter 11, not later than thirty-three months after grant. What: The strategies from releases 1 and 2 will be updated and weeded out based on the results of team evaluation in the prototype experiments. 9. Knowledge Opportunities (3). Long title: Opportunities for knowledge to contribute to cross-disability access in telecollaboration - Release 3: best practices. When: in Quarter 12, not later than thirty-five months after grant. What: This will be a consolidated description of recommended practices for knowledge capture and access, to ensure seamless integration of people with different disabilities in collaborative work and learning/teaching activities employing both retained knowledge and real-time interaction.