Client
University of Sydney
University of New South Wales
University of South Australia
Area of Expertise
User Research and Design
The Problem
Develop an online rule-based notification system which tracks students’ learning performance from multiple data sources.
The Challenge
Requirement was to develop a software tool that gathers and assesses data about student’s activities throughout the semester and allows instructors to design personalised feedback with suggestions about student’s learning strategies. By enabling instructors to tailor feedback and suggestions to student tasks across subject course, students will be better informed to consider adjustments to their learning experience. OnTask project is conceived as a relatively new concept, there is no fixed requirement specification nor user-interface mock-ups. Data integration was out of scope. Requirements included working research teams and participating organisations.
The two-year project was funded through a Strategic Priority Commissioned Grant by the Office of Learning and Teaching (OLT), Commonwealth Government of Australia which addresses the challenges faced by Australian higher education institutions to improve the quality of the student experience within the context of increasing engagement, enrolment and
retention.
Project was lead by The University of Sydney (USYD) in collaboration with
University of Technology Sydney (UTS), University of New South Wales
(UNSW Australia), University of South Australia (UniSA), University of Texas at
Arlington and The University of Edinburgh.
Argsen was contracted to design and develop a solution to meet both the
business and technical requirements.
Our Approach
Agile delivery and Visual communication: the project commenced with user requirement gathering. Multiple workshops were arranged across all stakeholders’ groups including students, instructors, administration staff, researchers and management. Workshop planning included several iterations of functional overviews and presentation user interface mock-ups aimed to reach a mature workable functional specification. Immediately followed by proof-of-concept builds for usability testing, where the system could gradually evolve to approved technical solution, installed across production environments within the participating universities, in Australia, USA and Scotland.
Concept and Design hypotheses: Initial concept design evolved over numerous iterations presented as basic digital drawing sketches, to clickable HTML examples, and functional mock-ups with dummy data. Argsen systematically conducted user research on user experience (Desktop and Mobile), function requirements (user behaviour analysis) as well as data requirements.
Responding to feedback and constraints: timely responses and action plans along with additional engagement required with each institution IT department across Australia, USA and Scotland to better understand deployment constraints (i.e. single sign-on, data integration).
The Solution
- A working prototype was designed for key clients University of Sydney (USYD) in collaboration with University of Technology Sydney (UTS), University of New South Wales (UNSW Australia), and University of South Australia (UniSA)
- Automated intervention to improve learning outcome.
- Project received very positive feedback and recognition by the internal learning analytics community.
- Official trials commenced across participating universities.
- Argsen exclusively manages and maintain system for University of South Australia serving 30,000 students in real-time.