NYU Course Site

Overview

My Role

Contracted through TEKsystems, I was a Course Development Instructional Designer and Project Manager for NYU Wagner Education. I set up meetings with faculty to discuss how to transition their in-person class to online course, migrating their sites from Sakai to Brightspace. I was also in charge of pitching and using third-party to create interactive content.

Programs

• Sakai
• Brightspace
• VoiceThread
• Google Classroom
• Adobe Creative Cloud

Research

To understand the transition and importance of setting up a resilient online course during time of crisis and change, I took two courses:

University of Michigan MOOC on Resilient Teaching (Coursera)

Teaching with Technology (LinkedIn Learning)

These are some key takeaways that I learned and considered when I was designing faculty course sites:

• Diversify kinds of learning for students to prepare for all scenarios and students
• Teaching and learning needs should drive our technology choices
• Universal Design for Learning principles will guide you in teaching every student
• It’s time to involve student more in process of sharing content
• The common denominator for using technology for any activity is student engagement
• Technology enables students to get more immediate feedback and track their progress
• Extensibility, flexibility, and redundancy should be incorporated in lesson plans

Original Webpage

Many faculty were not using their course sites or frustrated with the outdated ones. However, there is more emphasis due to coronavirus since courses are transitioned asynchronously online. I worked on the "Introductory Immersion: Skill-Building for Healthcare Managers" course, which has four modules and over ten faculty teaching it. Also, there was a change in learning management systems from Sakai to Brightspace. Since many faculty and students were used to Sakai, it was my role to also teach them how to utilize Brightspace. The current course site had no submodules, assignments submission, checkpoint progress, and interactive components for students. In the future, this site structure was going to be used in other course building.

Interview

I set up four meetings for each of the modules to understand the professor to understand what he needed on his site to teach his course. Since their course involves weekly lecture and group assignments, I identify their pain points:

• "I want to create new groups during the live session and have them submit group assignments, so they can collaborate, look at each other work, give feedback, and present in class."
  • The professors wanted the students to meet virtually, work together, and provide peer to peer feedback through online submission.
• "We have a lot of pre-work for students that need to be done before the course starts because they will be reviewed during the live session."
  • They want students to be prepared by submitting pre-work before lecture.
• "All the materials seem outdated/boring and also I don't know how to use Brightspace [the new learning management system]. I want the students to be given the best experience since we cannot provide this course in-person."
  • The professors want to create more interactive content and provide the same experience for students but enough change that they won't get confused using Brightspace.

Target Users

• Graduate Students
• Faculty

Sitemap

The old sitemap had too many submodules and many of the module were not used, so I decided to remove and group similar information together into their same module. The subpages from the old sitemap are going to hosted on one long tab.

Wireframe

Based on my interview above, I worked on a Google document that allowed me to collaborate with faculty in real time. This will allow me to know what information is needed on the modules. It helped create a wireframe to outline each of the module's lesson plan.

Design Iteration 1

The navigation are placed on the left with modules home pages and submodules listed under them. The students have the option of viewing the submodule on the module home module or clicking into the submodule. Groups have been created and it will automatically enroll all of the students to one of the two groups randomly.

User Testing

After seeing what faculty wanted onto their modules, we collaborated with the Usability Lab to set up a research on the design and efficacy of course sites. The results of the research will help make content organization and visual design changes, and determine which tools are most effective for future implementation, which in turn can reduce support tickets from end-users.

Specific research questions to be answered:

• How well did the native or third-party tools meet student and faculty needs?
• How easy or difficult were the native or third-party tools to use for students and faculty?
• How valuable are the tools in enhancing student learning and instructor teaching?
• What aspects of the visual design are the most engaging and easy to use for students?
• What aspects of the visual design are the most confusing or challenging to use for students?
• Can users accomplish what they need to successfully, quickly, and easily?

Research Methodology:

• Comparative Usability Testing
• Qualitative Surveys
• User Testings

Usability:

The following metrics will be gathered during research sessions in order to analyze patterns and synthesize research findings:

• Users’ subjective satisfaction (likes, dislikes, and recommendations)
• Ease of Use (self-reported likert scale rating)Specific sources of user frustration/friction

With the help of the Usability team, we have come up a draft of questions that are to be answered by students at the end of each module. This survey was used for our first user testing of the first design iteration.

Feedback

With this design, we are able to condense the modules and have a more cohesive layout. Students are pre-assigned into groups with their required readings, so faculty don't have to manually input students into groups. However, we learned that we still haven't taught them how to use the new learning management system and create any interactive elements as mentioned in our pain points. The submodule pages are not visually appealing since they have small fonts and monotonous as well. Students are still having trouble tracking their progress.

Design Iteration 2

With the feedback from the first design iteration, I have learned from what features work and doesn't work. Instead of the drop down submodule tab, we have changed them into webpages that they can click into and they can be found on the bottom of every module home page. The drop down navigation initially listed all the submodules but students found that overwhelming and it was something that I was avoiding when I created the new sitemap. The webpages allow for the students to view the content in a bigger format. They can click through the webpages with the arrows found on the top and bottom right. This gives a "seamless course flow" stated by one of our student testers. Additionally, it has a better progress tracking system as each module has a check mark when they are completed. The first design iteration didn't allow for an accurate progress tracker since it shows no indicator whether you have completed it it not.

Testing

I set up group zoom meetings with the faculty, staff, and students to go over this second iteration. Over Zoom, they will share their screen with me and walkthrough the website without giving much instructions except for getting into the initial module home page. This way I will be able to learn what instruction/tools need more explanation. Faculty can also provide additional feedback for us.

Feedback 2

From the survey, we identified some challenges such as:

• "It is not clear to me when things are due or how grading will work."
• "Wish there was all the articles at the top like in classes with links all in the same place"
• "It does feature multiple areas for information to be displayed, which makes finding information a little more challenging (ex. a side tab and a tab on the top of the screen)."

Out of all the students surveyed (116 total):

• From 1-5 with 1 being the easiest and 5 being the hardest, the mean result was 1.91 and the students found the experience easy with using Brightspace to learn within the module.
  • "I do like that it checks off the pages you have viewed."
  • "Completing this module include different types of work, like individual writing, group writing, class discussion, vis a vis negotiation. It really boosts communication skills."
• The mean result was 1.53 and the students found the experience easy with locating requirements and content for this module.
  • "It was a user friendly interface with all the materials centrally located."

Final

Keeping the feedback in mind, we have changed the wording and added a part that highlights what should they have already completed and what they will be in completing (in terms of modules and assignments due date). We have linked all the articles at the same place (i.e. top of the modules).

These are some final screenshots found in the modules and additional PowerPoints and worksheets. This website has officially launched for enrolled students in their January 2021 term.

Takeaways

This was a rewarding and challenging project. The biggest takeaway that I have is the importance of design iteration and user feedback. I was quickly able to learn what layout works better in the early stages when we first tested with faculty, staff, and students. The most challenging part was providing the same in-person experience through online. To solve this challenge, I suggested adding "interactivity," such as interactive worksheets, simulations. etc.

Communication was important since I was working with over 10 faculty. Many of them had last minute changes and had different opinions on topics. By collaborating with them on a shared Google document and then sending them a working prototype, everyone was able to stay in the loop of changes. Overall, this was an amazing learning experience and allows me to continue my goals of designing for plaforms that allow students to have access to education.