Ideation

The following user stories were selected

Student Engagement: User Stories

"As a student, I want to have access to feedback and lecture content that persists across lectures and sessions so that i can have a reference to bolster my learning experience."

"As an instructor, I want to receive immediate feedback about student engagement that persists across lectures and sessions so that I can gauge the interactivity of my content."

As discussed in Milestone 1, poor active student engagement in online classes is a huge problem for online classes. Our group sought to unify the engagement experience of both online and in-person classes by providing functionality that benefits both groups and improve the classroom experience no matter where the student is.

Online classroom tools like ELC were used at UGA before the rise of hybrid-synchronous learning, and the market share of similar online learning platforms, like Moodle, suggest they will only see increased use in the future. However, the location of interactions between instructors and students seem fractured and lack a convenient central location for all modes of learning. ELC has mediocre forum posts, and works well for quizzes and tracking grades, but lacks live communication. Piazza is an effective forum-type discussion tool, but is a separate tool from ELC. Zoom is an effective live-communication tool, but chat and other forms of non-verbal feedback are secondary and non-persistent. Even in a class focused on Human-Computer Interaction, the lack of a unified tool necessitates students using all 3 platforms for their specialized purposes. We aim to combine the best features of each into a tool that will benefit traditional, remote, and hybrid-synchronous learning.

Functional Goals

Question: User Stories

"As a student, I want to get the attention of my instructor so that I can ask a question without significantly interrupting instruction."

Communication between students and instructors is a core part of any classroom experience, and often serves as an effective generator of student-student discussion. Currently, there is a big difference in how in-person and remote students simply get the attention of the instructor to ask a question or make a comment. Zoom, where much of live-communication occurs in a hybrid-synchronous classroom, features ineffective tools for virtually raising your hand, and the lack of emphasis on the chat feature means the student must hope the instructor does not miss their attempt to communicate. For shy students, the thought of interrupting the professor might cause them to not speak up despite having an urgent question. We aim to improve both the ability for students to communicate non-verbaly while still being unobtrusive to the instructor or other members of the class, and introduce a new system of asking questions that will benefit even those physically in the classroom.

Functional Goals

Mockup Progression

Discussion Section

Teacher View

Quizzing System: User Stories

"As a student, I want a quizzing system that makes me feel like I actually should be engaged in the course material rather than the traditional “attendance polls."

"As an instructor, I want a better quizzing system so that I may discern the current state of my student’s learning journey, regardless if they’re remote or in-person."

Quizzes - both formal graded quizzes and question-response actions in the instructor are vital to gauging a student's mastery of the material, as well as give the instructor feedback on their effectivess. Learning platforms like ELC are fine for formal quizzes, but if the instructor simply wants to ask a few questions, it is not practical to expect the students to switch over, answer a few small questions, then switch back to their learning material.

Zoom has a "polling" system, but while it allows students to select answers, it simply gives the percent-answer spread over the answers and not which is correct. It also requires teachers to create polls on the fly, and any long-term tracking of quiz performance is lost unless manually tracked. We aim to improve the ability for hybrid-synchronous students actively engage with the material, while also improving the instructors ability to create quizzes and associate them with the material.

Functional Goals

Mockup Progression

Gradebook

Quiz View

Design Evolution

Wireframing

As a group, we discussed the user stores and decided to wireframe what we considered the most important: student engagement, student questions, and the quizzing system. Next, we split into 3 teams, with each pair creating a rough wireframe with no design standards in mind. Finally, we met back up as a group to review each design and any additions, changes, or removals, before deciding on a unifying theme and moving to the mockup stage.

Mockup & Prototype

Mockup

We decided on using the Microsoft Teams UI as we linked the simple but clean design and it generally contained most elements we would need to create our new learning platform. As a group, we worked on one figma canvas and worked the wireframe for each user story as a group, with each pair giving most of their attention to their user story. Once satisfied, we began to create our prototype.

Prototype

Like the mockup, each pair was first responsible for creating the interactions specific to their user story. Next, the group as a whole created necessary common screens that link frames, and created and tested the more general interactions (such as shared navigation elements).

Testing

Research Question

Does our solution reduce the gap between the learning experience of in-person/remote students and interactions with the instructor?

Methodology

We will utilize surveys as they provide a good look into the impressions of the design from the user base. Experiments that observe the time it takes to complete certain user stories (i.e. going to the gradebook for a certain class) versus other learning management systems can also provide valuable insight into how our solution stacks up against the competition. After each session, the users can then be interviewed to gauge their impressions of the application in part or as a whole.

Testing Procedures

1. We will be sure to let our participants know what data we are collecting and for what purpose. Importantly, we will make clear (especially to the experimental group) that the results of their answers or performance have no impact on their current standing in any class.
2. There is nothing about our project that needs to be concealed from our participants, so we will be able to answer all questions the participant may have, and will communicate this to the participants.
3. Participation is voluntary, data is anonymous, and we will make this clear to our participants, emphasizing their role in future decision making.
4. Once all the information is reviewed and questions have been asked, participants who are willing to participate in the study will sign a form stating as such.
5. We will make sure that the participants know that they can leave at any time and can refuse to answer any questions.

Data Collection & Organization

• Instructor response time to in-person engagement/online students
• Use of discussion queue (time devoted by instructor and student participation)
• Time to access and complete quizzing/assignment vs secondary app
• Percentage of responses missed from remote students
• The data will be organized with bar graphs to represent the difference of our prototype vs control

Analysis of Data

As many online students struggle to have their questions answered in a timely manner, in stark contrast to that of in-person attendance, the instructor’s time to respond to questions and/or comments will be used as a measure of consistency between the in-person and remote students’ learning experience. Additionally, interactions between the students and instructor are paramount to having students properly understand the course content, so measuring how many questions/comments are missed by the instructor before, during, and after lectures will provide ample insight into the effectiveness of our solution and its competitors in bridging the gap between in-person and remote attendance.

Covid-19 Precautions

All surveying, experimentation, and interviewing will occur remotely, so there should be little to no increased risk of infection. Additionally, collaboration between the testing and design team can take place in a remote environment.

Project Summary

Most Useful Parts of the Project

• Learning the process of wireframing, creating mockups, and prototyping with tools used in professional design
• Thinking through the testing process - what data is relevant, which studies are appropriate, and what to do with that data
• Practicing remote collaboration with a larger sized group (6 people) in order to meet deliverable deadlines

Most Enjoyable Part of the Project

The group agreed that making the high-fidelity mockup on Figma was the best part of the project. It was satisfying seeing the process come together over the entire summer session to create an interactive prototype.