[Zoomed out above image is the team’s gantt chart.]

Early activities of this project are made up of specific actions to allow the group to formulate a fair and safe strategy to make outreach with students submitting their entries. Then the project shifts to a more reactionary period where we will build out our prototype. We have 14 weeks to complete the project, and plan to build a working prototype of the digital collection with a goal of 6 student entries by May 13th.

The digital collection of student entries will be open to the general public. Our primary audience is made up of two groups. The first group is educators, graduate students, child psychologists, and other education professionals that would use the student narratives in their research. The second group is students and parents to learn from and empathize with their peers that have been and continue to have their typical educational lives disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic.

Resources being used include Smartsheet and Trello for project management, Discord for team communication, Google docs for sharing documentation, Adobe Portfolio and WordPress for content management and prototyping, and a storage software that saves student submissions and allows us to organize with metadata.

Roles/Personnel

Phil Agee, Web Developer
Karyn Delay, Team Leader & Outreach Co-Coordinator
Maggi Delgado, Multimedia Manager
Amanda Filchock, Project Manager
Vallerie Matos, Research & Outreach Co-Coordinator

Deliverables

Deliverable 1: Consent form

• Component: A permission form for student contributors and their parents to learn how we will be collecting, storing, and sharing student submissions. Part of this consent form will include 2-3 control questions about their experience as a student during the coronavirus pandemic.
• Staff: Maggi Delgado, Karyn Delay
• Resources: Consultation with Rebecca Banchik with GC IRB, Lara Alonso and Víctor Clemente with Coronastories
• Duration: 2 weeks from draft to final form

Deliverable 2: Student outreach

• Component: Outreach to a total of 6 students. Goal for prototype: 3 students in the NYC area and 3 students living outside the U.S. Vallerie and Karyn will use their networks of educators to help connect us to participants. We hope to recruit one or more students learning with a disability to share their experience of attending school during this unprecedented time.
• Staff: Karyn Delay, Vallerie Matos, Maggi Delgado
• Resources: Contacts within educational institutions.
• Duration: 1 week for students to provide submissions

Deliverable 3: Prototype of our collection

• Component: Collection of website pages.
• Staff: Phil Agee, Maggi Delgado, Amanda Filchock
• Resources: Consultation with Lara Alonso and Víctor Clemente with Coronastories
• Duration: 3 weeks to build prototype

Deliverable 4: Media storage system

• Component: Storage services and User Interface
• Staff: Phil Agee, Maggi Delgado
• Resources: List of vendors and their feature/price matrices.
• Duration: 2 weeks to evaluate and select.

Deliverable 5: Content strategy

• Component: Devise a metadata strategy for organizing student entries both within our backend development and also for users to click through the collection based on factors such as media type, student age, and geographic location. 
• Staff: Amanda Filchock, Phil Agee
• Resources: Use our chosen CMS and media storage software to define and categorize media submissions.
• Duration: 1-2 weeks to come up with strategy and execute.

Deliverable 6: Social Media & Publicity

• Component: Deciding on which social media platforms on which to share our process and execution. Once this is complete, we can use our platform to engage other participants. We also plan to use our existing network and contacts within the education industry to draw attention towards the project.
• Staff: Vallerie Matos, Karyn Delay
• Resources: Meeting with GC faculty and IRB admin.
• Duration: 1-2 weeks to learn which platforms we are allowed to share on and which are best for our intended outreach.

Week by Week Breakdown [subject to change]

Week 1 (Feb 8th): Team and role assignments.

Week 2 (Feb 15th): Finalize project proposal.

Week 3 (Feb 22nd): Define audience and participant scope for prototype. Draft consent form. Create a work plan and gantt chart.

Week 4 (Mar 1st): Meet with GC IRB. Consult with coronastories creators. Choose a CMS platform and media storage solution. Finalize consent form and questions for student submission.

Week 5 (Mar 8th): Distribute consent form and questions to students. Begin to collect submissions from 3 students. Establish metadata strategy for tagging and organizing media entries. Develop social media and publicity strategy.

Week 6 (Mar 15th): Collect submissions from 3 students. Store entries and publish media to CMS. Finalize work on collection prototype draft ahead of 3/19 due date. Begin posting to social media and working with our educational networks to gain interest and publicity in the project.

Week 7 (Mar 22nd): Identify and share issues that occurred on the back end during the first phase of student submissions. Work out solutions to these problems. Draft and send a survey to send to participants to gain feedback on user experience.

Week 8 (Mar 28th): Spring Break. Independent work to catch up. No team meeting.

Week 9 (April 5th): Digest UX survey results and make improvements to the outreach process and social media strategy. Distribute the improved and/or revised consent form and questions to a wider group of students for phase 2 of submissions. 

Week 10 (April 12th): Begin to collect additional student submissions. Promote publicity via social media and educational networks.

Week 11 (April 19th): Collect submissions. Store and publish media to CMS. Promote publicity via social media and educational networks.

Week 12 (April 26th): Continue to collect submissions. Store and publish to CMS. Maintenance work on final prototype. Promote publicity via social media and educational networks.

Week 13 (May 3rd): Fine tune prototype/project site.

Week 14 (May 10th): Final, minor tweaks to project site. Create presentation for the GC Digital Showcase on May 13th. 

Week 15 (May 17th): Write assigned individual sections and piece together the final group project report. Due May 20th.