Horizon Assessment

[February 1, 2002]
During the past few months DALNET has been working on an assessment of Horizon. This assessment initially began as an idea at Wayne State University and was then applied to other DALNET sites that chose to participate. The timeline for this was very short since we had to get the final DALNET assessment to epixtech by January 31, in order for them to incorporate the results into their coding for Horizon 7.3 and 8.0.

Duryea Callaway sent the survey to DALNET members and then analyzed and compiled the results. Ten DALNET members participated in this assessment of the various Horizon modules. She looked for trends and common issues in the responses and presented those results to the Steering Committee. They reviewed the responses and discussed them at length at a series of scheduled and specially called meetings. The Steering Committee produced a document that was shared with epixtech when they came to visit in late November. DALNET Board members, Project Managers, and other members joined us for the discussion with epixtech. We reviewed the report and epixtech agreed to respond to it before the Winter break.

DALNET made use of some small working groups to help set priorities from the functional areas outlined in the report. We received a good response and everyone who volunteered was able to participate in the working group of their choice. These groups did an excellent job of reviewing DALNET's report and epixtech's response and establishing two-four priorities in their functional area. They met their very short deadline and their recommended priorities were presented to the Project Manager's in mid-January. DALNET staff turned these individual reports into one comprehensive report that was presented to the Board.

The Board of Directors reviewed the report and suggested for additional information that would tightly focus on DALNET's needs and priorities in a streamlined form. Their comments were incorporated into a final report. The final document was sent to epixtech on Friday, February 1. Mother Nature did not cooperate and allow us to send it in on January 31.

Our next step will be to follow-up with epixtech on their plans for addressing DALNET's priorities and share that with our members. DALNET staff will also lead a discussion to reflect on ways to improve the assessment process next time.

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