E-Learning Resource Brief: Case Study
Task 2: Ride2Work E-Learning Resource
Client: Bicycle Network
By Mariela Schultz
As students of Tractor Design School, a part of our Graphic Design Diploma includes studying Interactive Design.
I was given a brief which involved two tasks. The first was to develop a prototype for an E-Learning resource specifically for primary school students to prepare them to participate safely in Ride2School day. The second task for the brief will be to develop an E-Learning resource for participants of Ride2Work day, which focuses on teaching adult employees road rules and safety in order to participate safely in Ride2Work day.
This case study will be based upon my response to task two of the brief; developing a bike safety E-learning resource for Ride2Work Day.
Task 1 Reflection: Outcomes, Analysis and Recommendation
The first part of the brief involved making a learning resource prototype for school-aged children to participate in Ride2School Day. This was done in groups of two. Our learning resource focused heavily on bright illustration and applicable content that kids could understand. Below is a screen recording of a user test of the prototype.
We found that there were a few things that could be improved to better the outcome and understanding for the users. The prototype was not fully interactive which then made the game and multiple choice test confusing and caused users to be distracted and therefore disengaged with the app. We found users found the font was too light which made the information hard to read, which impacted on the user flow and navigation in a negative way. Some users also found that there was too much text on some screens of the resource.
Strengths of the prototype were the illustrations and the content. The weaknesses were the the interactivity and the usability of the font and games within the app. The app needed to flow better at times which would eliminate some confusion with how things work and what was needed for certain tasks. Interactive elements were broken/un-clickable, which made the prototype impossible to complete autonomously.
Recommendations for task 2 were to ensure that the usability was improved markedly; making sure that interactive elements worked and the resource was intuitive to complete, as the Ride2Work resource had to be able to be completed autonomously. Content was the strongest feature of the prototype, therefore the goal was to maintain the quality of content whilst making it relevant to adults. Readability was an issue with the Ride2School prototype, therefore it was imperative that this was improved for the Ride2Work learning resource.
Client Profile
Bicycle Network is our client for this brief. The organisation encourages Australians to ride a bicycle as a form of transportation because they believe this contributes to an active, healthy and happy lifestyle. By running large-scale cycling events for charity and the community throughout Australia, they are able to create awareness of the benefits of riding a bike and to engage the community. Bicycle Network aims to inform riders of the road rules, riding etiquette and their rights.
Goal
The goal of the brief is to create an e-learning resource for employees to learn the necessary knowledge and skills in order to participate in Ride2Work day safely. These skills and knowledge include road rules,
road safety and road etiquette.
Learning Objectives of the E-learning Resource
- Users must learn 5 road safety guidelines by the completion of the
e-learning activity. - Users must learn 3 road etiquette guidelines by the completion of the
e-learning activity. - Users must learn 5 road rules by the completion of the e-learning activity.
Specifications
The E-learning resource must:
- Be a digital asset that can be embedded in the Bicycle Network website
- Match or complement the style guide of the Bicycle Network
- Be repeatable. The activity should be different each time the user attempts to complete it
- Be audience appropriate. Adult employees will be taking the activity so the language and imagery must suit their learning needs
- Be autonomous. Users will need to be able to complete the activity without requiring assistance or direction
- Have assessment testing capabilities
- Ensure that all users complete the activity successfully
- Provide a certificate on successful completion of the activity. Employees can take this certificate to their employer to prove they can participate safely in Ride2Work day
- File size must be under 100GB
- Be delivered well before Ride2Work Day
Project Management
I used Trello as a project management tool for this brief. It was helpful to have a platform in which to place all the necessary tasks to complete in one place, because it provided a clear picture what needed to be done. It also helped to schedule tasks involved to complete the brief, and to set an initial budget estimate for each task.
Budget
The below graph displays the initial budget estimate against the actual final budget. Because I already have access to the necessary Adobe CC software that was needed to create the files for the resource, and Geenio E-Learning trial software was free, the only cost for the project was my own personal (hypothetical) wages.
Persona
An initial class activity was to pair up with another classmate to brainstorm various users that would be the most interested in taking part in Ride2Work day, or who would get the most out of completing the e-learning resource. We then developed a matrix to graphically represent the specific group of users to target. Our group decided that a good user to target would be someone that had a bike at home, but possibly weren’t very confident riding on the road. This was a positive user to target because through completing the resource, this user would hopefully become much more confident, enough to participate in Ride2Work day. The shaded area at the top of the matrix represents the users we would target with our learning resource.
Our next task was to individually develop a more detailed user persona based upon this matrix. ‘Robert Wang’ was the persona that was developed. He is a busy accountant, who’s daily interaction with technology is dull. Robert has a bike at home but isn’t confident riding on the road. He is looking to get fit, gain more energy and switch up his daily routine; Robert sees Ride2Work day as the perfect opportunity to get him started. He has a lot of experience with technology and interfaces, but often finds them very boring to look at.
Robert is a visual and kinaesthetic learner. This means that he learns best when presented with images, and enjoys reading about a topic. His kinaesthetic tendencies encourage him to jump in and try things out for himself. Robert is social and is a leader amongst his friendship group.
Persona type analysis/ E-learning and interactive activity recommendation
The resource will begin by introducing some of the benefits of participating in Ride2Work Day, which would encourage and reinforce the user (Robert in particular) to participate.
Because Robert is a visual learner; he responds well to reading content as a form of learning. I have decided therefore to make the content the hero of the resource. The learning objectives of the resource will be split up into sections of bicycle road rules, bicycle road safety and bicycle road etiquette. This information will be separated and introduced screen by screen.
He also needs to be able to interact and make his own decisions during the learning resource to satisfy his kinaesthetic learner type. Therefore, after the information is presented, there will be multiple choice quizzes where he will be able to test his knowledge.
Concept Development
The design for the screens of the resource remain consistent through all stages. Content will be centred, framed by a circular device which is a reference to a wheel. It will use the style guide of the Bicycle Network, using the same colours and fonts that are used on their website to retain brand consistency. Because the resource will be completed by people on a short time frame (e.g. workers completing the resource in their lunch break) it will be heavily content based with little excess decoration. A bike motif will also be used to separate content. A half-circle will remain consistent throughout as the interactive element of the resource.
Storyboard
The learning resource begins with a welcome screen, titled “Get On Your Bike!”. The next screen will list benefits of completing the resource.
You are then directed to a screen where you can choose what information that you need to know more about, either rules or safety. This directs you through 5 x screens of either rules or safety information; at the completion you are led to an etiquette screen. Then you are brought to a multiple choice quiz, which will test you on the information that you didn’t choose to read through (e.g. if you chose to learn about rules, you will first be tested on safety). This is to ensure that the user knows enough of both learning objectives to ride safely to work. The test includes etiquette questions. If the quiz is passed 100% correctly, then the user moves on to be tested on the information that they read about in the beginning (this time excluding etiquette). If this quiz is passed 100% correctly, then they complete the resource and are presented with a congratulations screen that pronounces them ready to ride to work. This includes a link to download their completion certificate.
If they do not answer all questions correctly at the first quiz, then the user is directed to read through the information (e.g. safety information). They then complete the quiz through completing the quizzes.
Users are forced to read through the information and pass 100% on the quizzes to ensure that they are able to safely ride a bike to work, as per the requirements of the brief.
Feedback
Once I had mocked up the initial screen layout, my tutor for the course liked the structure of the resource and interface design. They commented that the content hierarchy worked well and that I had done well to make the brand colours appealing to look at. From this point, I begun building the resource by creating the screens in Adobe Illustrator, and importing them into the Geenio E-learning resource builder.
User Testing
User testing was completed to test the resource. The users were asked a series of questions prior to the test, and after the test to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the resource.
This is a video of User#1 test of learning resource.
Analysis
Strengths of the learning resource: Consistency, readability, visual design, content hierarchy, relevant and concise content. User felt as though after completing the resource they would feel confident riding to work.
Weaknesses of the learning resource: User didn’t like being forced to choose which content to focus on first, user felt as though you should be able to go back and look at other information once in the resource, one part of a road rule was incorrect.
Conclusion
My conclusion is that the E-learning resource that I created answers the requirements of the brief, because it teaches the user the required learning objectives, and ensures that they have learnt them to an acceptable standard.
Recommendations
Recommendations for improving the resource are:
Introducing more flexible navigation into the resource so that the user can alter their path through the resource and attain a more rounded knowledge base.
Should the resource be purchased by the client, the quiz pages would need to be modified to suit the rest of the interface.
The ‘riding on footpath’ incorrect information would need to be amended.
Budget Conclusions
As is shown in the graph, the budget estimate was roughly accurate. At the beginning of the project however, I thought I was giving myself a slightly too -generous time frame to complete the tasks, which ended up being just about the right amount of time. It turned out that the actual development and build time for the resource was longer than I anticipated; this was due to the restrictions of using the free version of Geenio software. In this version, you were only able to use the restricted styles and colours that were embedded in the program. Because I wanted to use the style guide of the Bicycle Network, I had to make build each screen in Adobe Illustrator and export each screen as a png. These screens were then imported into Geenio as background images. This process was timely but worthwhile. Another restriction of using the free Geenio software was that you weren’t able to place images onto the background of the multiple choice frameworks. This would be another cost factor to bring up with the client should the brief go ahead in real life.