How To Guide Online Learners
A UX research case study exploring ways to properly equip students planning their online study.
Massive open online courses (MOOCs, pronounced “mooks”) are all the hype these days. The free courses, the certificates, the “bootcamps,” job guarantees, you name it, the offerings are expanding…as a learner, what’s not to like?
Introduction
Springboard, the online learning environment with a global community of more than 10,000 students and 300+ mentors knows a thing, or two, about making 21st-century skills accessible. In helping thousands of students build new and rewarding careers, they’ve learned about some of the challenges they face furthering their education. Among other things, students struggle with study planning and time management (who knew?).
They brought me on board to research and learn more about how students are (or are not) planning their studies so they can better meet their needs. With the project brief in hand, I organized my objectives within a double-diamond (design process) framework in order to offer recommendations on how their current study plan tool might evolve to improve each students ability to effectively plan their study.
Overview
The current (visual) study plan tool Springboard offers provides students with a detailed breakdown of units and subunits for each respective week throughout the course. Each unit and subunit has an accompanied time estimate (an average of how long it might take to complete the contents of the unit or subunit material) which provides additional “footing” for the student… a framework, if you will. These measures act as a reference for students as they begin tackling the coursework, however, user research insights suggest the need for additional considerations. The offered recommendations were strongly influenced by 3 salient factors:
- Students learn and complete their coursework at different paces
- Students, overwhelmingly, track their progress and plan out their coursework by the week, rather than the day or the month
- Students abandon the current study plan tools when they fall behind
Combine these insights with additional context and explore the process I employed to offer recommendations below!
Student Spirit
No student is the same, nor is their “offline” environment. Some students have special abilities, indeed, and some have special needs. Each student has a unique mixture of learning styles that make their journey a very particular experience. In developing the research plan for this project I intended to explore four broad research questions:
- Do students plan their study over their expected enrollment (or are they just “winging it”)?
- If students plan their study what do they want to track on a daily/weekly/monthly basis?
- What would be helpful for them to plan?
- How do students who have taken a break (formally or informally) readjust their plans to meet their needs?
These questions coordinated a sense of direction and inspired much of the coming interview script but, first, I established screening criteria in order to identify suitable participants.
Springboard has an array of course offerings within exploding domains, so, it was important to stakeholders that I capture feedback from students apart of the different courses. Other survey criteria related to course satisfaction, and students’ feeling on their pace-of-progress and their sense of how effective their current study planning methods are. The survey elicited spirited responses from nearly 30 students making it possible to identify the 9 most suitable and diverse participants to begin the semi-structured interviews on-mark.
To Plan Or Not To Plan?… That Is The Question
Imagine for a moment that every student identified with their own perfect strategy to effectively plan and prepare for each task they wish to accomplish…and imagine they’re able to communicate their process with crystal clarity. Yeah, I know…it’s a stretch, life’s far too messy, plus, you know what they say…humans seem to be rational but, only after the fact… and this seldom discussed truth makes interviewing sessions all the more intriguing. In other words, I’d need to evoke responses associated with each student's recent behavior in order to steer clear of the inevitable rationalizations summoned by abstract questions. An early design challenge, to be sure.
It turns out, keeping things simple and concrete goes a long way. I devised a series of questions aimed to trigger recollections of the most recent past regarding the students' concrete behavior, in this case, oriented towards their study planning. “For example,” I’d gab, “let’s say, last week…how did you know you were “on track” with your coursework?” and so on, eagerly prepared with follow-up questions as to “why?”. Of course, it became evident certain students identify with the concrete measures they take and other students, seemingly, do not. In any case, with only 45 minutes for each session, I tried my best to acclimate myself with each student early in the interview to develop a, certain, camaraderie giving way to a fruitful open-ending dialogue leaving about 10 minutes or so to perform a couple of usability tasks with the current interface of study plan tools Springboard offers.
Although a formal usability test was beyond the scope of the research project and while it would have been nice to have a few students completely unfamiliar with the current visual study tools the mixed methodology approach proved to be contextually useful. “Is there anything that you use in the curriculum to help you plan your study?” I’d howl and, again, eagerly spry to engage with follow-up questions. Would this “close the loop” (so to speak) on insights? (Show me how you really feel!!)
Visualize and Learn
My goal was to present the research findings and deliver recommendations to stakeholders such that we’d vote on potential solutions to test first. I was confident this approach minded the project time constraint (40 hours) and served to elicit constructive dialogue and feedback for next-step directives. This lean methodology would also prioritize alignment as I produced the definition stage deliverables. Something I was eager to begin as I “downloaded” the user interviews.
For those of you curious as to how many participants actually plan…well, 5 of the participants identify with planning their studies and a whopping 4 participants totally “wing-it.” This rough split made for a wide range of qualitative insights so, of course, the affinity diagram process enabled the assembly of and unique exposure into candid opinions and insights. My goal was to draw connections between these individual elements and develop new and deeper insights. I was able to group the data into five categories:
- Time estimates
- Visual study plan tools
- Winging it or planning?
- Daily/Weekly/Monthly goals
- Mentorship/community
If I were to draw a line connecting two sets of clusters to begin translating compelling feedback, I’d couple the visual study plan tool insights with the daily/weekly/monthly goals insights. An intersection highlighting user needs (pain points) and user behaviors ultimately cultivating the formation of a target user group.
The goal at this juncture was to visualize, continue learning, and advocate on behalf of this forging target user group, however, there needed to be a better understanding of the user experience from their point of view. Also, it was evident the subcategory insights in aggregate (unmistakeably) informed the broad research questions I sat out to explore as specific pain points emerged and as planning strategies uncovered that which would be helpful for students to plan.
I created an empathy map as a tangible way to feel in-the-shoes of our developing proto-persona and to garner a deeper understanding of the persons I’d be designing for. In maintaining this “lean” approach I created said proto-persona as a utility for project definition and to live as a reference point and a lens through which customer-centric perspectives can be seen in ongoing planning and decision-making processes.
Meet Evolving Emma! Her goal is to finish the course on time. She travels periodically and enjoys the flexibility of studying online as she sometimes takes her work with her. She plans around her changing schedule by maintaining a calendar and writing out tasks to be completed through the week. Because Emma is in-between jobs and changing careers the coursework demands can be overwhelming at times leading to burnout and distraction which effects the pace of her progress. Emma needs a study plan tool that adapts to her progress so she feels a sense of coordination while getting back on track.
So as to provide stability or support
A handrail is a rail that is designed to be grasped by the hand so as to provide stability or support. Commonly used while ascending a stairway, some utilize it, others don't…it’s, nonetheless, present, for all to access. In the same way, Springboard’s study plan tools need to be accessible in a meaningful way.
Recommendation #1: Provide adaptive dates
The current study plan tool acts as a reference for students until they fall behind and then it becomes “noise” because it just states “week 1, week 2, week 3,” and so on with no reference to the students' proximity of their desired finish date. Students have busy and unpredictable schedules and need a tool that provides value by being adaptable. When students fall behind they blister through as much work as possible, sort of, losing their orientation and grasp of time totally abandoning the rather “generic” study plan tool. Adding dynamic dates that adjust to the students' pace facilitates coordination and prevents abandonment, ultimately, providing a type of guidance every student can yield their own way.
Recommendation #2: Augment the adaptive dates with useful notifications
Although students enjoy the flexibility online learning provides it turns out they also need a little reprimand. And by that I mean a little semblance of the “rewards and punishments” many students attribute to traditional institutions. User research insights hinted towards the need for more accountability on the students end as, sort of, a driving force for productivity. What's more, a few students commented that their mentor didn't realize how far behind they were. A friendly email notification alerting the students of the adapted timetable based on their current pace (while also signaling the mentor relationship) rounds out the coordination (intercepts burnout) and implicitly motivates an increase in accountability.
Takeaways and Next-Step Directives
All-in-all this research project provided a wealth of insight into students’ relationship with online learning and the “programs” they establish to accomplish their study goals. I had a brief conversation with another stakeholder at the outset of this project regarding technical constraints and the feasibility of implementing dynamic interactivity and adaptability to these tools at scale and while I remained cognizant of those details I intended to present the research insights in a way that contextually teased out new and unanswered questions for future testing and research efforts. For example, regarding the adaptive dates on the study plan tool…what constitutes falling behind? Is it 24 hours of coursework or 168? and so on… the presentation (15 minutes long) elicited meaningful dialogue with a full Q&A session at the end to iron out and clarify design decisions. As no project is ever completely finished and now feeling inspired to learn more about the methods students employ to effectively plan their study and accomplish their goals, I’m curious how we might implicitly increase students’ accountability. For example, a few students referenced their “study buddy…” someone who isn't their mentor and someone who is, essentially, on an even playing field going to bat against similar (study) challenges at the same time in the same course...and how they motivated each other creating, in their words, “a healthy competition.” Something other than the slack channel. This implicates the different learning styles as some students prefer working in a silo while others are social as can be, nonetheless, an exciting future research endeavor exploring ways to provide students with the unassuming guidance they deserve.
Lifelong Learner? I figured as much…leave a comment below with your unique study planning methods for online learning, I’m confident we can all learn from each other!
