harvard business school case analysis
Harvard University
A listing of works published by Harvard University in the field of technical communication.
- HBS Cases: How Wikipedia Works (or Doesn't)
An ongoing tension within Wikipedia is characterized as the inclusionists versus the exclusionists. The inclusionists argue that one of Wikipedia's core values is that it should be open to all ideas, that truth emerges from a variety of directions. Better to include than exclude. The exclusionists see Wikipedia's utilitarianism diminished if too much froth clouds the valuable information inside. These people delete material they consider inappropriate.The case offers students a chance to understand issues such as how online cultures are made and maintained, the power of self-policing organizations, the question of whether the service is drifting from its core principles, and whether a Wikipedia-like concept can work in a business setting. - Twenty Ways to Make Lectures More Participatory
Lectures play a vital role in teaching. There will always be a place for lectures in the curriculum -- to give technical material or factual information, to provide structure to material or an argument, to display a method or example of how one thinks in a given field, or even to inspire and motivate students to explore further. At the same time, it often enhances both your presentation of the material and studentsā learning when students are able to participate in some way. When students engage actively with material, they generally understand it better and remember it longer. - What Makes a Weblog a Weblog?
Assuming a Wiki is a weblog-like system that allows anyone to edit anything (I know some don't) then a Wiki represents an interesting amalgam of many voices, not the unedited voice of a single person. - Risk Communication: A Neglected Tool in Protecting Public Health
A June 2003 publication from the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis. - Designing for Motivation and Usability in a Museum-Based Multi-User Virtual Environment
This National Science Foundation (NSF) funded research project is creating and evaluating graphical multi-user virtual environments (MUVEs) that use digitized museum resources to enhance middle school students' motivation and learning about science and its impacts on society. MUVEs enable multiple simultaneous participants to access virtual contexts, to interact with digital artifacts, to represent themselves through āavatars,ā to communicate with other participants and with computer-based agents, and to enact collaborative learning activities of various types. Initially, MUVEs were based only on textual descriptions); now, many MUVEs are graphical in nature, or use graphics to enhance textual descriptions. Our project's educational environments are extending current MUVE capabilities in order to study the science learning potential of immersive simulations, interactive virtual museum exhibits, and 'participatory' historical situations (http://www.virtual.gmu.edu/muvees/). To accomplish this, we have built our own MUVE shell based on the Sense8 WorldToolKit (http://www.sense8.com/). - Recommended Readings for Web Usability and Site Design
A list of online and printed materials related to the issues of usability, information architecture, and user-centered design. - Politics, Sound Science and the Precautionary Principle
William Lowrenceās Of Acceptable Risk (1976) began the forthright treatment of the subjective elements of risk assessment. Maintaining that 'risk' was scientifically objective, his discussion of 'safety'āas socially acceptable riskāacknowledged the political nature of the overall evaluation. But even a rigid determination of a clear riskāsay of injury from skydivingācannot tell us why only some people will agree to jump from an airplane.