Instructors notes

These pages are designed to help instructors use Inspire and INSS as teaching and training tools. On this page you will find:

   1. Introductory notes
   2. Setting up the experiments, and
   3. Links to handouts and materials for participants

Information about several assignments and exercises can be found on page: Assignments and exercises. If you want to register your group please go to: Students' registration. If you would like to test the Inspire system earlier then request negotiations and we will set one for you.

We would appreciate it if you notify us about your plans regarding the use of the system as this would facilitate setting up negotiations for groups of students.

We invite you to write to us after reading this document, using the feedback box at the bottom of the page. We will appreciate knowing in what courses you have used the system and what were yours and your students' experiences.

1. Introductory notes

Inspire and INSS are used by students with very different backgrounds from all over the world. Inspire has been used in Negotiation Management, International Business, Electronic Commerce, Information Systems, Decision Sciences, and Management Science, courses as well as by students in English as a Second Language (ESL) classes.

We have done our best to make the systems functionally useful for training and testing while also making them attractive to students. The purpose of this page is to provide course instructors and educators whose students use either the Inspire or INSS systems, with notes on how assignments are being set up for different courses, how the systems have been used, what tasks or assignments students were given, etc.

Please note and inform your students that for research purposes we record students' exchanges results of this research are described in InterNeg Reports). However, all records are kept confidential and no data entered into the system is disclosed to anyone, including the instructors.

The negotiators are paired anonymously and partners could be from anywhere across the world. We would appreciate it if you do not make any comments to the negotiators about anonymity or about partners. Each individual is implicitly free to develop whatever relationship he or she wishes, including introducing themselves to each other through Inspire or maintaining full anonymity.

2. Setting up the experiments

Inspire has been used by participants of regular and the executive courses and workshops. Occasionally students may not have email accounts and may have very limited knowledge of computers and browsers. In these cases, the course instructor (or a teaching assistant) should provided an introductory session and supplied the students with handouts which can be printed from the Web.

2.1 Initial information

To register your group you need to fill in a short form given in Students registration page. Please provide us with your (or your teaching assistant) name and email address so that we can confirm the registration.

Inspire negotiations are conducted once a month and for three weeks. The dates for the incoming negotiations are given in the form. We will also need a negotiation name; it is often the same for a group of students and should be a simple name that students can easily remember. Together with the user name (which students select themselves) it uniquely identifies an Inspire negotiation and allows students to log in.

Students who negotiate with each other should have different negotiation names. If in your class, students negotiate with themselves then please fill in two separate forms; one for each group (side).

2.2 Information required from your students

All students participating in the negotiations should register themselves 10 days before the expected starting date for negotiations at the latest. They can do it on-line by selecting the web page at:

http://interneg.org/interneg/training/groups/Negotiation name.html

where "Negotiation name" has to be replaced with the negotiation name you entered in the form.

Once a student has the page displayed she/he will be asked to enter his/her login name (user name), last and first names, and email address.

1. User name  A single word without any special characters. Preferably not their real name, however anything is acceptable. Best selected by each participant, however the instructor may assign names if that is more convenient.
2. Real name  Optional, not important, but may help clear mix-ups if people choose similar login names.
3. Email address Optional but very desirable. If an email address is provided, Inspire can inform the participant when some activity occurs (e.g. an offer from a counterpart). If e-mail addresses are not used, you will have to arrange for the participants to necessarily log into Inspire at least once every two days to check whether there has been any activity.

Once we have the list, we will respond confirming that the accounts have been set up and the participants randomly paired (either within the group or with people from outside the group, anywhere in the world). If we've received email addresses, we will contact participants directly.

2.3 Final preparation

A day or two before the experiments, the following checklist of activities may be carried out.

• Participants who are totally new to the Web will require basic instruction on using Netscape or Explorer. They may even need to be told how to use your computers. A handout on "Getting Started" in your local setup would probably be very useful. We can supply you with a draft that you can adapt to your needs.
  
  
• All participants need to be given the URL of the Inspire home page. It may help if Inspire is already bookmarked in all copies of Netscape in your laboratory.
  
  
• Confirm that JavaScript has been ENABLED under the Options->Security menus in all your copies of Netscape or Explorer. Disabled JavaScript or an old version of Netscape (pre-2.0) are the usual causes for complaints that "the buttons don't work" and "there's text missing or garbage on the screen".
  
  
• You may want to explain the initial steps during which the negotiation issues are ranked depending on the students' backgrounds and interests. They should understand that these rankings are used solely for their own benefit and participants should not try to manipulate them.
  
  
• You may provide the participants with a set of the handouts and other materials that we have prepared. The list of the materials is given below.

3. Handouts and materials for participants

We have prepared a set of materials which may be printed and handed out to the participants. Alternatively, you may provide the participants with the Web addresses from which these materials can be retrieved. All these materials are available on the Inspire Web site:
        http://interneg.org/inspire

• Participant handouts.
  Address: http://interneg.org/inspire/doc/handout.html
• Demonstration of the Inspire system.
  Address: http://interneg.org/inspire/doc/demo.html
• Explanation of the roles Inspire can play and its functions.
  Address: http://interneg.org/inspire/doc/about_inspire.html
• Glossary of terms.
  Address: http://interneg.org/inspire/doc/glossary.html
• Answers to frequently asked questions.
  Address: http://interneg.org/inspire/doc/faq.html

Comments, suggestions and criticisms are all most welcome! Please enter them below. We would especially appreciate your writing to us with your observations and experiences. Please tell us how your students used the system and how you incorporated it into your course.

Thank you!