The Intake Meeting

What to expect in the intake meeting

When your project request has been received, the Senior Digital Media Specialist on our team will reach out to schedule a meeting. This is an opportunity to learn more about your project and determine if we are able to partner with you on it. Project approval is based on the ITRC's bandwidth and your project's relevance to our department's mandate. 

What questions to expect from the team

Every meeting will vary based on the project’s needs, but you can expect to discuss the following topics:
  • What is the goal of the project? What do you want to achieve with this project? Think about the learning outcomes and the results of your course previously. Will this project improve the experience for students, and does it reflect your learning outcomes?
  • What is the format of the project? We can accommodate any of the types of project work listed above. It is important to consider that different project types take different amounts of time. For example, a 5-minute video may take us a month to complete, whereas 5-minute animation requires several months of work.
  • What is the scope of the project? Consider how many elements you need created and how much content will go into each. For example, if you are requesting video work for example, how many videos, and how long would each video be?
  • What takes priority? Sometimes, we need to adjust for unexpected changes in the project process. Setting an order to what the most important elements are will help the team to keep focus on the core of the project and allow for added pieces if time and resources allow.
  • Is there anyone else who needs to be consulted when making decisions? It is important to know when we need to make time to receive feedback form external stakeholders
  • Are you receiving external funding?

Content expectations

One of the biggest questions we will discuss in the first meeting is this:

How much of your content is ready?

The ITRC cannot begin any design work until we receive content from you. The most successful projects have all content ready at the time of the project request – this allows us to start working on your project right away. If you are still developing your content before you come to the ITRC, you may face the following limitations:

  • You will have less time to dedicate to reviewing the media we create from your content
  • If you need to consult other stakeholders on the material, you will need to account for that time in the plan. This will allot less time for development work.
  • If you do not meet a deadline for providing your content, the ITRC cannot make up that missed time within their development period. A delay in providing content creates a delay in media development, which may prevent the project from meeting its deadline.

What happens next

After this meeting, our Senior Digital Media Specialist with consult with the rest of the team and determine if we are able to approve your project. If your project is successful, a technical lead will be assigned from our team, and they will reach out to move into the project agreement and planning stages. The technical lead of a project may be an eLearning Technology Specialist, a Digital Media Specialist, or a Digital Media Designer.