Hello Gibbon community!
As part of a university course, I’m planning to develop a guide to help schools get up and running with Gibbon. More than a technical document, this guide would aim to help address organizational issues and the human-side of introducing a new piece of technology, as well as answering questions like: why open source, what does it mean, and who does it affect. This guide would include sections on needs assessment, creating a narrative for change, involving stakeholders in the process, and developing support strategies. It would also include a starter guide for helping establish a team of people who will handle the technical aspects of setting up Gibbon.
I could naively develop the whole thing based on my own experiences from the three schools I’ve personally setup, but to make a truly useful document I’d love to have some input and feedback from our community. To begin with, if you’d be interested in sharing some of your own experiences getting up and running with Gibbon, it would help me frame the design phase of this guide.
As this is part of a project for my university degree, I’d like to share a consent form with you, that covers your privacy and how your answers might be used. Please click here to read the consent form, and understand that submitting your response constitutes consent to use your feedback to help design this guide. All responses will be generalized and anonymous in the final document, but since this is a public forum, if there’s any thoughts or experiences that you’d like to share privately please email sandra@gibbonedu.org
Some questions to consider if you’d like to share your thoughts:
- Why did your school choose to go with an open source solution?
- Did you encounter resistance in choosing open source over a paid solution? If so, what were the concerns?
- What strategies did you find effective in planning and managing setting up Gibbon?
- At what rate did teachers and students begin adopting the system? Was there resistance to learning to use a new platform?
These questions may help get you started, feel free to share any experiences that you feel could help other schools as they plan to adopt Gibbon. You are also welcome to email your responses directly to sandra@gibbonedu.org
Thanks!