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My School Day Online: A Small Project with Big Collaborative Strength
Posted in: Case Studies, Collaboration, Innovators, NCTI Technology in the Works, ResearchTags:Case Studies, Collaboration, Innovators, NCTI Technology in the Works, Research
With an NCTI Technology in the Works grant, the team of Matt Kaplowitz, Director of Technology and Content Innovation at Bridge Multimedia, and researcher Wendy Sapp of Visual Impairment Educational Services compared the ease of use for students and teachers of Bridge’s My School Day Online scheduler to ease of use of Microsoft’s Outlook scheduler.
The grant was opportune—providing just the amount of time and money needed for alpha testing—and Sapp’s existing relationship with the Tennessee School for the Blind gave the team the testing site they needed. Best of all, results verified the effectiveness of the product: students with visual impairments and their teachers (half typically sighted and half either blind or with low vision) at the Tennessee School for the Blind using My School Day Online completed significantly more tasks correctly and independently than those using Microsoft’s Outlook.
Sapp’s careful research could have stopped there but a strong collaborative process with Kaplowitz took the team further, producing concrete, feasible recommendations for product enhancements.
Team Compatibility Strengthens Problem-Solving
Sapp and Kaplowitz never met face to face during any part of the project. Nonetheless, their compatible working styles—both are ambitious, creative, curious, and hard-working—resulted in frequent contact and effective engaged problem-solving through e-mail and telephone.
Researcher-vendor teams can sometimes be weakened by the fact that each has a distinct agenda, but in this case differing points of view and the determination of both to meet their own goals while respecting the other’s vision resulted in credible product validation and ideas for product improvement.
“It was refreshing to see Matt’s approach, which is so different—and I think he had the same feeling about me,” says Wendy Sapp. “We would brainstorm, coming at it from our different perspectives. He is more pragmatic about usability and less interested in whether our findings are statistically significant. For me, the significance of the findings are tremendously important—while I don’t care if the product sells or not. And I shouldn’t. I want others to know what features work but I have no proprietary interest at all. So we would talk about what I was finding out in the classroom from our two different perspectives, each opening a helpful vista to the other. He wanted to know, for example, not only what results I was getting but what he could do to make the product more useful.”
Because Sapp knew from these conversations that her vendor-developer partner was eager to use feedback to design and create practical enhancements, the research design was created to allow for an evaluation of the current product and to elicit feedback on ways to improve the product. The next iteration will improve the layout of links, modify the calendar to improve recognition of dates, increase flexibility in creating student schedule, and add new features such as a teacher’s grade and attendance book, correlation with student IEPs, and e-mail for students.
“Finally, we both got the answers we needed,” she says. “I’m revising the final report for publication. If Matt finds more funding for additional testing—and the results of this research should help with that—I’d be glad to work with him again.”
Benefits for Vendor
Bridge Multimedia benefits from strong research-based evidence of the product’s effectiveness, invaluable in marketing in competition with the more well-known Microsoft product. New ideas for further product improvement and enhancement gives Bridge the opportunity to make the product even stronger.
In addition—and in part thanks to Sapp’s ability to professionally and sensitively engage with students and teachers—users provided gratifying praise for the product. One young woman commented, “If it was a person, I would hug it!”
Benefits for Researcher
Wendy Sapp on Technology in the Works: Pros and Cons
“We were in the perfect situation to take advantage of this award. We were already in discussion, we had a small project, Matt’s staff were able to make time in their workload to be responsive to developments as they happened, and I had the relationship with the Tennessee School for the Blind that gave us a good place for testing. With a grant like this, you have to be ready to go immediately. That isn’t always the case. You might want to give projects six months instead of four, or give more time between the award and the beginning of the work.”
The size and timing of the Technology in the Works initiative was especially suited to Sapp’s needs. “This kind of grant provides good opportunities for young researchers,” she says. “Competition is tough for the big three to four year grants. Small projects let people like me, who have degrees but don’t yet have a substantial track record, demonstrate that we can do high quality work.”
Sapp also describes a more intangible benefit from working with Kaplowitz. “I have been conditioned to think that assistive technology products reach a small audience. Matt thinks he can make this product accessible across many different disabilities, and useful, too, for people without disabilities. This project has really changed my idea of the potential for real-world implementation of universal design.”
Cameos of Featured Collaborators
MATTHEW KAPLOWITZ is an Emmy, Grammy and Peabody Award-winning producer and composer and a Founding Partner and Director of Technology and Content Innovation for Bridge Multimedia Corporation. For the past 4 years, in association with the American Foundation for the Blind, he has been leading the research and development teams implementing universally accessible technology and supporting content for entertainment and educational media. Projects currently in production include the Universal eLearner (TM); the BridgeBuilder(TM), a fully 508-compliant digital asset management application; the original cast album of “WEIGHTS: One Blind Man’s Journey,” by Lynn Manning; the first K-3 children’s trade book simultaneously deploying text and Braille, and fully available as an eBook download; and a 22-minute video for K-12 classroom teachers showing best practices for blind and low vision students.
WENDY SAPP, Ph.D., COMS, is a private consultant through her company, Visual Impairment Education Services, based in Georgia. Dr. Sapp’s professional track has allowed her to balance her interest in research, college teaching, professional writing, and direct services to children with visual impairments and their families. Over the past two years, Dr. Sapp has worked on a variety of projects related to the education of children with visual impairments including the development of modules to train teachers to work with infants and toddlers with visual impairments in collaboration with the Early Intervention Training Project at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, the creation of web-based fact sheets in collaboration with the American Foundation for the Blind, and research into issues related to the education of children with visual impairments.
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