Meeting Scheduling inHigher Education

An Experimental Design & Evaluation

CS 294 Fall 2001Sabrina Hsueh

Saifon ObromsookJuha JohanssonStephen Morris

Motivation

• There are currently no distributed meeting scheduling tools broadly adopted in school.

• Available commercial tools are not designed to be used in school settings

• We want to explore– Nature of the meeting scheduling process

as part of overall project management– Applicability of an electronic means to

facilitate the scheduling process

Study• Interviews & observations

– Static + dynamic schedules– Dependence on due dates– Conflict resolution: choose inconvenient

time or only ask ‘key’ people to come

• Literature Review– Disparity between effort & benefit [Grudin]– Structured pattern of communication

[Coordinator]– Trend of mixed communication medium

[Palen]– Transparent overlay of schedules helps

visualization [Beard et.al.]

Design Implications• Mixed communication mediums

Hybrid model (web-based + e-mail)• Semi-structured communication• Asynchronous communication• Each member’s availability is visible as

well as the aggregate one• Visual display of availability• Compatible with heterogeneous

computing environment Web-based• Lightweight enough that it’s not seen as

a task in itself

Design

Time

Meeting Scheduler (our system)

Coordinator (Anyone in the group)

All TeamMembers

Approx.Schedules

Milestones/Assignments

Beginning of the semester

AssignmentReminders

MeetingRequest

Invitationsw/ 3 options

Replies

AggregateReply

Chosentimes(/place)

NewRequest…

MeetingConfirmation

Experiment• 20 groups of USF business students

scheduling a meeting• Compare two models:

– Pure Email– Web-based + Email

• Hypothesis: For meeting scheduling process in school project groups, our hybrid system is preferred over a pure e-mail-based system.

• Online survey to capture data

How useful was the online meeting scheduler overall?

OVRALLU2

OVRALLU2

5Not Useful

4Slightly Useful

3Somewhat Useful

2Very Useful

1Extremely Useful

Perc

ent

40

30

20

10

0

What is your level of interest in using this again?

UAGAIN2

UAGAIN2

5Not Interested

4Slightly Interested

3Somewhat Interested

2Very Interested

1Extremely Intereste

Perc

ent

40

30

20

10

0

Which system provided you with more useful information?

Which one provide more useful info?

MOREINFO

No Answer1Email0Scheduler

Perc

ent

60

50

40

30

20

10

0

Which system better helped you schedule a meeting?

Which one better helped schedule a meeting?

BETTERSY

No Answer1Email0Scheduler

Perc

ent

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

0

- What communication tools do you use to schedule a meeting?- What communication tools would you like to use to schedule/receive information for a meeting?

What did you use and would like to use to schedule a meeting?

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

In Person Phone HandWritten

Web App Email IM PDA

Communication Tools

Per

cen

tag

e

in use now

w ould like to use

Contributions

• Gives a better understanding of how a project group’s meeting scheduling works in educational settings

• Design implications to a scheduling tool for students working in project teams

Sign In Screen

Enter/Update Availability Screen

Request A Meeting Screen (Top)

Request A Meeting Screen (Bottom)

Invitation E-mail Message

View Results Screen

Aggregate Result E-mail

Meeting Confirmation E-mail