Wisdom
An education application based on building a bridge between in person and remote education systems for elementary schools. Places the power in the hand of the teachers and students to build lessons and track progress.
The Premise
Technology has radically changed the way we engage with the world.
During the Covid pandemic remote work and education have become a normal part of our lives. Due to the hastened necessity of these systems, there is a lack of uniformity in presentation, access, and proven methods of engagement for students.
Creating an application that can teach organizational principles, encourage success, and make students more familiar with how technology can be used as a tool will be a key part of them having a positive relationship with technology in the future.
Product Specifications:
Straightforward lesson planning and tracking for students and teachers
Social/communication features such as help forums
Reward system to encourage positive feedback
Simple, easy to use interface
Must be able to be used by elementary students
Must have robust enough functionality to be useful
Universal Design for Learning Guidelines
Engagement - Utilize gaming and social systems to engage young students more effectively.
Representation - Give teachers a wide variety of tools to build lessons that can be easily modified for different student needs.
Action and Expression - Simple easy to learn user interface with self guided learning. Social tools for students to ask questions to their peers to build confidence. `
The Process
Reasearch
Math Land
A great example of gamification used to further education is MathLand. It is a structured math learning system developed by high school teacher Kate Fanelli.
After implementing a system of levels and achievements as her grading system, she found that her students were more engaged with their math lessons, and found the process rewarding and fun.
The students she was teaching weren’t exactly excited about math before. She teaches at a Special Education High School, and the students she taught were the furthest behind in math, taking remedial classes to pass her state’s graduation requirements.
She implemented an Avatar system, where each students avatar could progress through each level by completing lessons, and they could progress in a level system, up to level 20, for completing tests.
In the end, after 3 years, overall passing scores for the high school improved 22% after implementing her MathLand system.
Survey
Survey data showed that one of the most important parts of the education experience is peer to peer social interactions.
Although social media is often seen to have an overall damaging effect on development, it has potential to be used in the context of education. In my survey data, students were split on online education, they saw many downsides, but also many upsides to their experience with the system. This leads us to the conclusion that a type of hybrid education system could be an ideal situation for student outcomes. Utilizing social aspects to boost peer interaction, and giving students tools to ask questions and participate in discussions on topics that they struggle with could be an important part of improving outcomes.
Not only does this benefit social students, it could also benefit students who tend to be shy. Some students are actually more likely to participate in discussion or social situations online than in person.
Providing a diverse set of tools, with some kind of reward system in place seems likely to benefit students in the K-12 group.
Users
Stakeholders:
Students, focusing on elementary school, teachers, and parents.
Personas
User timeline/problem exploration
Stakeholders:
Students, focusing on elementary school, teachers, and parents.