Case Studies in Knowledge Management

8 Cooper, Nash, Phan, and Bailey

Copyright © 2005, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written

and be able to differentiate 8,000 participants, specific goals that we set for the system
were as follows:

• Make the quizzes challenging but not burdensome


• Ensure that the number of questions we have to generate is reasonable


• Have a broad mix of questions that include some aspect from all areas of the
  Laboratory community

The driving factor in the quiz design was the need to differentiate 8,000 participants
to determine the winner(s). We knew that there was limited project support for this effort
and therefore felt that we would have resources to reliably develop only 100 to 120
questions. This is too small a number of questions to be able to distinguish the number
of potential participants solely based on score, so we determined that a time component
was also needed.
Several options were considered for incorporating a time-based component to the
score. Our executive advocate had suggested a “fastest finger” approach where whoever
got the most right in the shortest time would win. This approach, however, brought to
bear issues of network latency (which is a function of the number of users) and would
require that the system time tag all quizzes, leading to concerns about server load.
A technically feasible approach to the quiz design was not possible until we
answered the question of how to determine the winner. However, it was determined that

Participants?

Current JPL Employees

Issue: What is the time

limit for participation

before required to provide a

charge number?

Contractors

Constraints:

• Need badges for identification


• No changes to individuals’ intranet access

Retirees

Other

Issue: Are resident

contractors allowed

to participate?

Decisions:

• Require <15 minutes (so no charge number needed)


• Upper bound of participants ~8000


• Contractors can participate


• Retirees and other can participate, but not eligible for prizes
  and no special effort made to enable participation

Figure 3. Participation decision map