Study Hall

Understanding the course registration process from the student perspective.

Image sourced from Giphy

Synthesis

Over the past sprint, we talked to students and counselors about their experience with course selection and registration and generated valuable insights:

1. Teachers are the most important touch points in the course planning process. This reverses our initial assumption that counselors play a huge role.
2. The Program of Study is underutilized by students, but it’s frequently used by counselors.
3. Peers, parents, older students, and siblings are also important resources for students. Combined with teachers, they make up the informal channels of communication about navigating the high school experience in terms of academics.
4. Some students have a clear idea of their schedules based on interests and future career and academic goals, which makes it easier to plan their courses. It’s the students who don’t have this clear direction that need the most help.
5. Students seem fine with the current system but may not be familiar with alternatives.

From intercept interviews during lunch hours, we also discovered that students use a platform called PowerSchool to register for courses, which we previously had no knowledge of. From there, we focused on understanding how students make decisions before and during course registration, how they use PowerSchool, and how they receive outside guidance beyond the content inside the course catalog (the Program of Study).

Checking Out the Process

After some coordination, we scheduled some time for our team to visit the high school during the students’ course registration week. This process only happens once a year, so we really wanted to take the opportunity to observe the students in action. Our plan was to observe the students register for classes through PowerSchool and ask them questions about their thought process.

We broke into teams of 2 to interview and note-take. In total, we interviewed roughly 12 juniors and seniors about their experience and process when it comes to picking classes and how PowerSchool works. We discovered a few main things through this process:
Firstly, PowerSchool use is not confined to only class registration periods — students and teachers alike use it on a regular basis multiple times a week to check and manage grades and attendance.

Secondly, PowerSchool does not have any search or filter options for class registration. The core classes are categorized by subjects for ease of use.

One other surprising detail was that although PowerSchool course registration listings do have a place for course descriptions, South Fayette doesn’t use it. Curiously, students don’t seem to mind this too much. Students who care seem to check in with the Program of Studies or a teacher if the course content isn’t immediately clear from the title, but that seems to be outside the norm. Instead, students tend to get their more common questions about any given class, such as the rigor or what a teacher was like, answered through friends and word-of-mouth.

The World of Work

Alongside understanding students’ interactions with course planning systems, we’re continuing to examine decision-making around course schedules. One of the lenses we’re using is career-thinking: do students know what they want to do after high school, does it align with their values, interests and strengths, and do their course selection reflect this?

To support this, we learned more about the World of Work (WoW) program, which helps students explore career options. Initially, we worried that WoW might feel prescriptive or limiting, but Ashli, the WoW coordinator we spoke to, opened our eyes to WoW as a tool for students to make sense of themselves and the world around them. For example, Ashli shared a story of a young girl who found unexpected joy in working on engines while learning about diesel technicians. While she doesn’t necessarily want to be a diesel technician, this student was able to discover how much she enjoyed putting things together. It’s these “AHA!” moments that WoW hopes to cultivate.

While talking to juniors at South Fayette, we heard that the majority of them did in fact have some idea of what they were interested in pursuing after high school, and used that information to guide course selection. Yet, one quote in particular stood out to us.

“I wish I had taken more ‘smart’ classes versus ‘fun’ classes my freshman year”

This particular student categorized classes by “smart” — directly related to college or career preparedness or “fun” — just for personal enjoyment. While some classes could be both “smart” and “fun,” it depended on the student and their interests. This revealed an interesting mental model that other students seemed to share as well, assigning value to courses based on their perceived, direct benefit to the students future, and differentiating that value from the enjoyment students get in seemingly unrelated courses. This begs the question: how might we use a framework like World of Work to help students find classes that feel both “smart” and “fun” and help them see the value that each class brings to the whole student?

Xoxo,
Team South Fayette

Note: This project is not intended to contribute to generalizable knowledge and is not human subjects research.