Enriching the online experience
Overview
Brief
SCAD eLearning offers 25 complete degree programs online via Blackboard in multiple disciples. Creative courses often require collaboration among peers and translating that essence of an on ground class experience into an online experience is the focus of this project.
The mission was to identify insights about the SCAD student’s online learning experience.
Duration
10 weeks
Role
Design Research Consultant
I got to interview a diverse range of students, assimilate the date and apply frameworks to draw insight.
User Problem
The major areas of pain points are collaboration, the relationship between the students and teachers and the structure of the course content. These three factors interplay with each other and makes the online learning experience a difficult one despite the rich content.
Research
The research was based on personal interviews conducted in a semi-structured format with the help of a discussion guide. The discussion guide was formulated with reference to previous quantitative surveys conducted by SCAD and iterated with members of the SCAD e-Learning Department.
Research Participants:
4 - Full-time online students
4 - Hybrid students (Students taking on-ground and online classes)
Research Techniques:
Research Matrix
Interest Group Discussion
User Interviews
Stakeholder Analysis
Affinity Mapping
Priority Mapping
Stakeholder Analysis
Primary Stakeholders (Blue):
Full time Online Students
Hybrid Students
Professors
Secondary Stakeholders (Green):
Instructional Designers
Writers
UX Designers
Developers
Blackboard
External Collaborative Services (Google suite, Mural, Hangout)
Additional Responsibilities (Other classes, job, family)
The stakeholder map was plotted with the data from the personal interviews. Each stakeholder was ranked on a scale of 10 against influential power and operational power and then plotted on the map. It is observed that full time online students feel they have the least amount of power with the professors also relatively close by. This space is identified as the opportunity area to aim, utilizing the key learning to influence the change.
If the students are at arm-length power, it would increase ownership over courses thereby improving engagement.
If the professors are at comprehensive power, it would give them more space to personalize pre-developed course to their style.
Affinity Mapping
Once all the data points was gathered they were transcribed into yellow post its and 3 rounds of affinity mapping was done.
Round 1: Post its are clustered based on their relevance and likeness thereby showing us the major areas of pain points
Round 2: The clusters are rewritten with a user voice as first person statements and reflect what users think or do. Clustering these groups builds categories of pain points.
Round 3: This round narrows down the key learning.
The 8 key learnings are:
1. A stimulating Platform
2. Flexible Class Structure
3. Activity/Event to make the class memorable
4. Agile feedback Mechanism to Fail Fast and Learn Fast
5. Redefine peer engagement
6. Transform the role of a Professor
7. Create Tools for Collaboration
8. An experience that extends outside of the platform/computer
Round 4: The overarching themes are identified as:
a) Collaboration
b) Teacher-Student Relationships
c)Structure/Organization of classes.
An example of the affinity mapping process
Mapping Key learning to Overarching themes
Priority Mapping
To narrow down the key learning into actionable insights, the key learnings are mapped to a priority map. The map is charted based on the direction of the e-Learning team is focusing their growth.
The map is divided into Must Haves, Need to Haves and Nice to Haves. THe ‘Must Haves’ are targeted as high priority to design a better user experience.
Actionable Insights
Rigidity of the course content
The content keeps moving forward regardless of the students progress levels and professors lack the freedom to rework course content as how they see fit
“You become a slave to the platform”
Lag in feedback loop
The current feedback system is formal and does not offer students a safe space to fail fast and learn quickly.
“It’s like you don’t even need the professors”
Prescriptive collaboration
The nature of group projects are still individualistic because students divide the assignment and work separately rather than work together to solve the problem.