First Day of School
Meeting our client and understanding the problem space!
“Take chances, make mistakes, get messy!” — Ms. Frizzle
We’re jumping into the Magic School Bus and heading to our next adventure: MHCI Capstone!
Our team is partnering with the South Fayette School District, an innovative public school district around 30 minutes from CMU’s campus. They’ve tasked us with reimagining a school staple: the course catalog. Gone are the days of pages and pages of vibrant learning opportunities, diminished to a few lines of static text. Make room for the course catalog of the future.
We invite you to join us on our journey as we ask: how might we revolutionize the course catalog experience to be more interactive, engaging, and technology-driven to support student success better and benefit the entire school community?
First Day Introductions
Lori Chen
I graduated from NYU with a major in Film & TV and had the opportunity to work at DreamWorks Animation for a couple of years in program management. From my time at CMU, I hope to learn and better connect storytelling with user-centered design. In high school, my favorite class was art.
Rebekah Julicher
I’m a techie at heart with a degree in Computer Science from the University of Arizona. I’ve worn many hats, from being a teaching assistant to diving into business applications, firmware engineering, and simulator development. My favorite “high school” class was photography (I didn’t go to a traditional high school).
Vivian Li
I recently graduated from the University of Chicago, studying Art History and Media Arts and Design. I wrote and edited for a fashion & lifestyle magazine, designed for the annual student fashion show, and worked part-time doing graphic design and social media marketing for local nonprofits. My favorite class in high school was science fiction!
Erin Sawyer
I’m a curious researcher, quantitative storyteller, and recent graduate of Michigan State University with a B.S. in Data Science, a B.S. in Psychology, and minors in Japanese and Quantitative Data Analytics. I am passionate about games for good and have had the opportunity to work in player experience as a mobile game developer, as well as with the Center for Transformational Play at CMU. My favorite class in high school was Japanese!
Understanding the Problem Space
We immersed ourselves in the project brief and the problem space to begin our adventure. First, we took to the brief, covering it in stickies with our ideas, questions, assumptions, and even concerns, approaching our analysis with eager and curious eyes. This process guided us into our initial discovery, where we sought answers to our questions and information to add to our ideas.
During the first sprint, we…
- Learned all about South Fayette. We conducted secondary research by looking at the district website, the current curriculum and catalog, basic overviews of all schools in the district, and graduation requirements. This answered our basic questions and helped us focus on more complex problems that could not be immediately answered.
- Created a Stakeholder Map. As an exercise to clarify some of the roles and dynamics involved, the team created an initial analysis of key stakeholders.
- Investigated analogous products. We surveyed other platforms (Coursera, LinkedIn Learning, etc.) providing educational options to students of all kinds, as well as how other places present a course catalog, identifying products that performed particularly well.
- Welcomed South Fayette back to MHCI. As a second-year client, there was already a knowledge base to consult. We familiarized ourselves with last year’s team’s work to propel us forward in our first sprint.
- Consulted the literature (and soon experts). We identified subject matter experts and literature in relevant domains to offer a theoretical backing to the concepts we will tackle.
This background research gave us the perspective we needed to plan a great kick-off meeting!
Playing with Legos
With only a week between team formation and our scheduled kick-off date, we focused on two goals: to learn enough about the South Fayette school district and to plan our first client meeting. After discussion, with faculty, significant priority was placed on making sure that activities had the potential to facilitate discussion that could go beyond the surface level of the problem.
We needed a main activity to generate as much information as possible about how the client felt about the problem space. Rather than learning about the class registration process, we needed a holistic view of the student experience. Thus, we planned to co-create a journey map, followed by Rose/Bud/Thorn, to discuss pain points and opportunities at each stage. We also created a stakeholder map to validate our current understanding and ensure the team and the client were on the same page.
Crafting the icebreaker activity was surprisingly challenging. We aimed for something both relevant to the topic and conducive to sparking creativity. Initial concepts like sharing high school experiences or playing last year’s project (which was a board game) felt too on-the-nose, and we struggled to connect them to the intended goal. Fortunately, we received valuable advice from faculty that guided us in the right direction, and we ultimately settled on Lego Metaphors — participants would build something reflective of their school experiences, to set the tone of the meeting and kickstart meaningful conversations.
Synthesizing Our Findings
After the kickoff, we were inspired and motivated to synthesize our findings. Here are some of the insights and questions we have:
- How might we leverage current student experiences to generate value for them and benefit future students with regard to course selection?
- Students choose courses based on perceived advantages, like weighted grades, and place less emphasis on passion or exploration.
- There should be a connection between the courses taken and how they apply to outside life and decisions after high school.
- Any meaningful change will require buy-in from teachers, but we risk teacher resistance and further burnout. In other words, how might we engage them as learners themselves, without causing more burnout?
- The administration would like a way to verify students received a holistic academic experience rather than just taking courses to fulfill requirements. For instance, opportunities for showcase and celebration of student work are lacking.
Next Steps
After a successful kickoff meeting, we produced some actionable items for the upcoming weeks. The collaboration with our clients led to much feedback about the current course catalog, student/teacher relations, and student mindset about navigating high school. Their feedback also guided us to understand the long-term impact of course selection and how it can affect a student’s experience in high school.
In the upcoming weeks, we hope to receive our clearance to start interviewing students and gaining a better understanding of their perspectives. We will also draft a letter introducing our project to the South Fayette High School staff and create a list of people we would like to interview.
XOXO,
Team South Fayette
Note: This project is not intended to contribute to generalizable knowledge and is not human subjects research.
