I’ve started to use Outlook Scheduling Polls more as I’ve started to see others using it. It’s very convenient because it’s embedded within Outlook, but it is very clunky to use. There are a number of reasons why it’s just not living up to my needs.

• No way to enter descriptions which are critical for me in sharing links to meeting notes, full-range of connection options to Zoom meetings, etc.
• No easy way to find the polls. I have to search for past emails to find the “view all polls” link.
• Counter-intuitive creation of events. You have to actually find a time slot to being with and start making a meeting and then select the polling feature for that meeting to initiate the poll.
• Limited meeting length options. Our College’s defaults are 25- and 50-minute meetings. The polling tool doesn’t allow for these durations
• Maximum of 4-hour meetings. While not used often, I need more flexibility.

Microsoft, please expand your features and design this for a greater selection of your user base! Microsoft has always been behind the wave of current UX practices.

I’ve been working on migrating our guide for learning designers to a tiddlywiki to improve usability and up to now, it was OK if I stored the file on my personal server. We’re getting to the point where it’s best if multiple people have access to editing the file.

Fooling around, I’ve discovered that it is possible to host the page in Canvas!

Continue reading “Hosting a TiddlyWiki”

Our office is returning to campus in mid-August. Our directors have wisely scheduled time for us to meet to have a chance to work through our transition. It will not be easy and it should not be something to be rushed. The director of our office, Lisa Lenze, shared these two articles with us to consider as we make this transition.

Continue reading “Return to Campus”

I attended my first UPCEA conference. It was the first fully-remote conference I’ve attended since the pandemic started. I’ve joined a couple of other online conferences on an ad hoc basis, but this was the first that I registered for in advance and set aside time for.

The conference was well structured with synchronous Zoom events and pre-recorded presentations with live chat. Both worked great for different reasons. The best pre-recorded presentations were more organic and conversational. The nice thing is that all of the sessions were recorded and published to YouTube. I’ve included a few of the sessions I attended below.

Continue reading “2021 UPCEA SOLA+R”

November 2020 Update: See comments below, I would like to transition to SmartSheet after using Lists for a number of weeks. I’ve conducted a few tests and they were all successful.

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I have started to use SharePoint to manage projects. I haven’t used it on a real project yet, but if I prepare it can’t be worse than my last two projects which didn’t really use any kind of PM framework.

SharePoint Tasks Lists are:

• Accessible to everyone at Penn State. Smartsheet requires accounts to use the platform and while free accounts are available, this is a critical downside because team members will likely not want to log in or download an app to access information about a single project. SharePoint would not be accessible however to people outside of Penn State. I may have to consider Google Sheets in these situations.
• Robust compared to MS Planner. Planner is quick to learn and has a much nicer interface than SharePoint Lists, but it is very limited and does not allow for nested tasks and custom fields. It does have very nice report views even if they are not customizable.

There is a decent video training series on using SharePoint Task Lists (original post) on LinkedIn Learning.

I was able to create a new Task List for a recurring project that is pretty complex with over 100 tasks and multiple custom fields. I haven’t fully implemented dependencies and timeline views since that will have to wait until we actually start planning for the upcoming event. I was also able to figure out how to clone Task Lists using templates with Ronda’s and IT’s help.

Smartsheet does provide some great, general information about project management on their website. They even have a library of templates that you can use in Smartsheet or Excel.

I’m trying to figure out how to truncate characters from a cell but am having troubles.

For most of the data, it’s easy.

ex. “13: FA16” with the function

=RIGHT([Launch Semester]@row, 4)

yields “FA16” which is exactly what we’re looking for.

However, some of the cells have additional data like “00: Unknown” and returning the last 4 characters, “nown” isn’t useful.

So, I’ve tried this formula

=RIGHT([Launch Semester]@row, LEN([Launch Semester]@row – 4))

based on this article and I’m getting an error, “INVALID OPERATION.” The problem is, I don’t know if I’m getting this error because I’m using tutorial information for Excel or if it’s because I’ve messed something up.

I believe it is the LEN formula because when I use the formula below, I still get the error

=LEN([Launch Semester]89 – 4)

But when I change it to this, I do get the right number!

=(LEN([Launch Semester]@row)) – 4

And there we go… here’s the working formula:

=RIGHT([Launch Semester]@row, (LEN([Launch Semester]@row)) – 4)

Now, “00: Unknown” returns “Unknown” which is exactly what we’re looking for.

Are you interested in creating interactive, choose-your-own-adventure content?

There are many tools, but I recommend that you consider Twine – an open-source solution that is easy to get up and running with. Twine can be used to deliver text-based or media rich stories/projects or it can be used as a planning tool for projects that are delivered via other platforms.

“Twines” or  your stories/projects are created by building links between various passages. Passages are segments of your narrative that either lead the reader to specific choices they can make or they provide explanations of choices they have previously made.

You do not need to download and install the Twine application, nor do you need an account to use Twine online. My recommendation is to use Twine in the browser because it is fast and works great.

Save and archive your work right from the Story List page to make sure you never lose a thing!

Get started!

1. Click the “+ Story” button
2. Name your Twine
3. Double-click the initial passage to start editing
4. Enter your beginning narrative
5. Add links to other passages by using “[[” at the start of your link text and “]]” at the end of your link text, click to view more options
6. Use the “whiteboard” view to rearrange your passages
7. Click play to start your Twine
8. Refer to the Guide for more information about formatting and other features in Twine

Recommendations

• Save your work often – you can save copies of individual Twines by going to the Story List > click on the gear icon > choose the “Publish to File” menu item; import your work by going to the Story List > click on the “Import From File” link under the main menu
• Consider starting with just the main narrative from start to finish or perhaps one of the main threads of the narrative if you plan on multiple endings, then work on the various branches or additional narratives
• Proper planning prevents poor performance – this adage definitely applies to creating branching narratives! Focus on perfecting the architecture of your narrative before adding all of the additional formatting, media and “polish.”

Closing

One possible application of Twine that I’m working on is to help author Analytic Decision Games (ADGs), that our faculty have developed to run in class and for other audiences.

I’ve just created a new Sway to document my progress on maintaining change logs in our Canvas courses.

The idea is two-fold: document all but the most granular changes (i.e. exclude spelling mistakes and similar edits) in all of our Course Templates and live sections, and as another communication tool with faculty to more efficiently share what has been changed in a live section.

Adoption by faculty and designers is not consistent and for good reason, the process is very manual currently. I’ve stopped documenting changes there over the past year or so with increased work in other areas. We are refocusing efforts right now related to improvements with our tutoring efforts across the college.