Requirements Gathering in Toronto

On Friday the 23rd, I travelled to University of Toronto to meet with Dr. Greg Wilson, several lecturers and the GSoC students who are working on their projects in one of the computer labs. The first item of the day was lunch with the other GSoC students at Ogrady’s (a local bar and grill) where I got to know them and more about the projects they where working on as well as more about the University of Toronto. The university is some what unique in location from others I have been to in Canada in that it’s camps is right in the city and there are no clear borders where the camps stops and the city begins. The constant activity and close proximity to everything you need is a nice change from being out in the rural land out side of Waterloo and even the smaller and less populated city of Thunder Bay and makes me almost wish I had done my undergrad in Toronto (I will definately have to apply to University of Toronto for graduate studies after I graduate from Lakehead).

The next event of the day was meeting with Dr. Wilson and the lecturers to hear their ideas for what visualisations and statistics they would like to see in a grade book plug in for Moodle (more on Moodle and the specifics of my project in my next post). The meeting consisted of going around the room and getting input from each lecturer about what they would like to see in such a plug in and the results were quite promising with many ideas for visualisations I had not yet considered and hearing from the teaching side of things which I have little experience with as a student. Over the weekend I have been going through my notes of the meeting and trying to sort out what ideas will fit in the scope of the project, what ideas are doable and what these visualisations might look like. One concern that was raised at the meeting and will have to be dealt with in relating to what statistics and visualisations will be protecting the personal information and privacy of the student and what information (if any) should instructors have about a students past performance in their program or classes.

One Response to “Requirements Gathering in Toronto”

  1. Greg Wilson Says:

    My name’s “Greg”, dammit, not “Dr. Wilson” :-)

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