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Case Study – TELS Center
- Headquarters
- Graduate School of Education, UC Berkeley, California, USA
- Industry
- Education Research, Academia
- # of employees
- 60
The University of California at Berkeley (U.C. Berkeley) is known around the world for its academic excellence. The Berkeley Graduate School of Education is engaged in the fundamental mission of teaching, research and public service related to education. Within this graduate school, the Technology Enhanced Learning in Science (TELS) Center (a research consortium supported by the National Science Foundation) studies how instructional technology can benefit teaching and learning in science.
Consisting of approximately 40 researchers within U.C. Berkeley and another 40–50 researchers working in 6 other universities from the U.S. and Israel, the TELS Center must capture and share knowledge across different projects, departments and institutions. Successful collaboration is critical to such an environment, which relies on contributions from numerous individuals working across distinct projects in technology, curriculum and assessment.
Why Confluence?
The TELS Center discovered that the best fit for their needs was a wiki: a web-based application that allows any user to contribute and edit content. Such a convenient and easy collaboration tool would encourage broader based input, getting projects across the line faster, and with higher quality.
Turadg Aleahmad, Directory of Technology for TELS Center, explains why they chose Confluence, "We wanted something we could easily extend. We'd used other wikis in the past with varying degrees of success. This time we wanted something with permissioning, and something that was polished and secure. Confluence met all of these needs.
"We'd previously been a happy Atlassian customer using JIRA and we share a similar open source philosophy. Confluence also had a scheduled release list, which meant we knew the product would keep evolving with additional features. Attractive pricing and the fact that the company had previously listened to and acted on our feature requests made selecting Atlassian easy."
- "Confluence has absolutely increased our productivity. We're now writing serious academic papers using the product. It's just a great tool for collaboration." Dr. Jeff Holmes, Postdoctoral Scholar
The Solution
The TELS Center purchased Confluence and now use it for collaboration in the widest possible sense. "Refactoring documents and revision tracking are great features for writing academic papers. We have the piece of mind of knowing we can move back to a previous document version at any time," said Turadg Aleahmad.
The TELS Center has instigated a number of innovative applications for Confluence. As Jim Slotta, Adjunct Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Education, explains, "We ran a workshop with 50 local San Francisco technologists interested in the topic of open source. Having organised a wiki before the event with activities for delegates to participate in, people were able to brainstorm (wiki-storm) key issues for discussion. At the conference we projected the wiki live onto the wall and used it throughout the session."
Researchers from the TELS Center also used Confluence to help them develop an academic paper on international standards for learning objects. Here, a wiki was set up inviting discussion and contributions about controversial issues in the field. The paper was completed using feedback and opinions from the community, and continues to evolve online as a living document representing the ongoing debate.
The Results
Researchers in the TELS Center have found Confluence to be the right answer when it comes to collaboration, making use of the convenient functionality to encourage broader based input, to get projects across the line faster, and with higher quality.
Several groups at TELS are using Confluence on a daily basis. The adoption of a wiki has been a natural fit for research and academic projects. Users increasingly find Confluence a valuable way to record notes from discussions and meetings. As Dr. Jeff Holmes says, "Using Confluence just keeps things organised. This is especially important as our projects often contain multiple sub-groups and everyone now has access to the latest research."
Turadg Aleahmad continues, "Productivity has definitely increased. It's great to know that there is one central place to go and find or add to materials. We have been able to open up the wiki to people who wouldn't have interacted with us previously. We now have double the user base compared to what we started with, and that number is certainly going to increase. For example, students who use the product are gaining credit by doing research with us.
"Firstly, the academic pricing structure, unlimited licenses and open source philosophy is a perfect fit for the university. And secondly, the technical support is entirely useful. The person I am speaking to is usually always the person who can address the issue. We are getting fantastic value for money from Atlassian."