(For VSNS-PPS members who don't know, GNA-TECH is a group of highly
committed and skilled volunteers who are starting to build robust,
reusable technology for hypereducation and the management of virtual
organisations. Worth subscribing to their list if you are seriously
interested).
VSNS-PPS is a highly virtual course (being composed of some 300 members
most of whom have never met) and which relies very heavily on mail lists
for communication. We're half way through our first week and it's
becoming clear that , although the technology is managing to support some
of the requirements, there are things which would make our life a lot easier!
Please excuse any misconceptions below, and tell us if there are already
easy tools to do what we want.
Most of our mail lists feed to hypermail so that all
correspondence is available on WWW to anyone (including non-course
members). This means that many people do not need to receive masses of
post each day as they can read it on these pages. (I can't say at the
moment how many people have subscribed to each list, but I suspect it's
less than 50%). However, people who aren't subscribed cannot mail - if
the *do* subscribe so that they can mail they get lots of list traffic
they don't want in their mailbox.
The approach we started with is to have a variety of lists for
different topics and for people to subscribe only to those which the wish
both to post to and are happy to have in their mail. We have 7 at
present, but I think that diversifying further isn't the way forward.
What we really want is a set of boards that we can post to without having
to read them in our mail. (Effectively like newsgroups - but that
normally requires sysadmins at sites to configure and I don't see how we
could use that here.) Nor is FORMS the answer, because *WE* would have to
do all the scripts in place of hypermail. In any case mailing is much
easier than forms (e.g. try using the SG forms window (10*8 chars) for a
piece of text - yes we know they're going to fix it some time...)
WISH 1: A project_board/mailing_list/newsgroup that course members can
mail to and can either read with WWW or get in their mail. A command to
the listproc like
To: vsns-pps-general-hypermail-only
is really what we want, with the optional address
To: vsns-pps-general-broadcast
as a deliberate alternative. If the user spams, then at least they have
done it deliberately!
WISH 2: The organisers need to broadcast to the whole course (or defined
subset) at occasional intervals. We set up a list vsns-pps-all for this
purpose. Unfortunately several students REPLIED to it ARGGHHH! It says a
great deal for the maturity of the other 95% that we have avoided
flamewars.
So: we need a write-few-read-many list for admin.
This is likely to be a VERY common requirement for GNA courses and maybe
Diego has some ideas. I'd favour the idea that any course could ask for
this list to be set up in MX and that the acquired experience would help
to generate the best solutions. (BTW DaveHouldershaw has done an
excellent job of setting up lists at BBK - but we've also has serious DNS
changes :-( and we're *just* about managing.
WISH 3: We have split the course into 20 groups of 15 and encouraged them
to collaborate *within* themselves. Each group has a coordinator who has
volunteered to help make this work. We do NOT want this traffic to spill
out from the groups to the rest of the course. Although many students
will manage to set up their own address list there are many wasy they can
get it wrong, perhaps generating multiple bounces. So how do we set up 20
groups with 15 members each? We HOPE that there isn't too much
maintenance required, but there will certainly be *some* as people have to
leave the course for personal reasons, and maybe change because of
timezones. The groups are named A-Y (with BJOUXZ missing - for biological
reasons :-))
WISH 4: (At present I am handling this and can probably cope, but I'd
like comments and suggestions.) At regular intervals I shall put out a
form to the course as a questionnaire for them to say how they are getting
on. (Too much work, browser no good, love it, too hard, etc.) I shall get
the replies mailed to a crude database internally. But's it's an obvious
generic need for GNA.
P.
Of course many of these problems can be solved by MOO technology, but we
haven't yet - I suspect - got > 50% of the course regulalry visiting the
MOO. Therefore posting in the MOO is not going to reach enough people
*at present* . I hope and expect that will change as the course
progresses - many people are already using the pps bulletin board in the
PPS classroom.
P.
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Peter Murray-Rust | "Nothing exists except atoms and empty
pmr1716@ggr.co.uk | space; all else is opinion" (Democritos).
Protein Structure Group, Glaxo Group Research, Greenford, MIDDX, UB6 0HE, UK
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