T-Bot

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Introduction

T-bot is an individual academic project completed during the UX/UI design boot camp at Barcelona Code School. The goal was to design a web application for online teachers that provides a comprehensive dashboard to better plan, build and deliver their online lessons.

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Problem statement

The recent pandemic has shaken educational systems around the world with both teachers and students replacing their physical classroom with an online classroom.
This change of environment has increasingly prompted the need for providing teachers with the proper tools and resources to plan, manage and support their online classes.

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Project Objectives

To design a web application that supports teachers in delivering structured and organized online classes that facilitate student engagement and encourage active learning.

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Discovery

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I began my desk research by looking at theories in psychology on cognitive learning and development which resulted in discovering two major theories; Lev Vysgotsky's zone of proximal development and Jean Piaget's stages of cognitive development.

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Main Points:

Learners are active participants

Social Interactions are essential in order for a learner to make sense of what is being taught.

Learners can perform more challenging tasks when assisted by more competent individuals

Different age groups will have different cognitive ways of learning.

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Benchmark

Having researched the current tools and applications that are being used by teachers and schools to carry out their online classes .

Main points:

There is no 'one-size fits all' online classroom application.

There are many available e-learning tools online but no centralized platform to access them.

The use of gamification and digital media are some of the top tools used to increase online student engagement and active learning.

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Online Interview with Teachers

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Recorded quotes from semi-structured online interviews from online teachers.

Expert Interview

With some luck I was able to get a hold of a PhD student and trainee in education and child psychology from East London University who during our semi-structured interview highlighted the following:

A young learner's ability to focus is very much dependent on the environment around him.

Diversifying the way a teacher presents the same information to students is important for them to remember later.

Young learners are naturally competitive gamification and reward systems can provide incentives for students to be more positively engaged in a class.  

Some students who have school social anxieties have come to prefer online classes.

Define

How-Might-We Sprint

User Persona

T-bot User Persona

Ideate

My solution is to a create a website with the following functions and features:

Teachers can register their classes, prepare and deliver their online lessons with the help of an integrated classroom management system.

The website aims to have a large number of digital tools catering to the teacher's needs.

The user is assisted by an online mascot to support teachers before and during their online lessons.

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Information Architecture: Site Map and User Task Flow

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Low-Fidelity Wireframes

Style Guide

Prototype

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Testing

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The prototype was tested with the teachers that had previously been interviewed in the discovery phase.

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RESULTS

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Design Sprint Summary

The Objective was to create a website that support teachers and their online lessons by providing an integrated classroom management system that is easy to set up and flexible for each individual classes.

The UI specifically for the classroom dashboard is being revised following the testing results as many found the layout a bit confusing and rigid. In the next design sprint I would aim to make the classroom dashboard elements more flexible where users can layout their lesson/class components depending on their preference.

The prototype received overall positive feedback and it should be noted that its content was primarily focused on language teachers and therefore further research and ideation would be required to appropriate it to general online teaching in the next design sprint.

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