MyUOC: A New Solution for Creating Versatile Learning Environments (presented at ELI)

A New Solution for Creating Versatile Learning Environments: MyUOC (Learning Technology))

Speakers:

Caroline Copestake Christy Alicia VallsSenior Project Manager User Experience Designer

Who are we?…

The Office of Learning Technologies (OLT):

We are a multidisciplinary team whose mission is to create a virtual campus environment that goes beyond functionality and usability.

A campus where students can enjoy their learning process, and also, contributes to their life-work balance, enriching them as students as well as people.

The latest version, known as MyUOC, follows a User Centered Design (UCD) approach.

This approach consists of implementing design processes in which end users influence how a design takes shape. It is both a broad philosophy and a variety of methods. There is a spectrum of ways in which users are involved in UCD and the key issue is that users are involved in the definition, design and evaluation of UOC’s applications and online environment.

A three piece puzzle

3 pieces with their different

REQUIREMENTS

The UOC’s requirements:

• Students worldwide - Headquarters in Barcelona, Spain

• Wide range of degrees - Fully online university (BAs, MAs, PhD)

• Constant update in technology - Founded 15 years ago as an online university

• 3 basic profiles with individual needs - 47.000 students, 500 full time faculty, 2000 part-time faculty

The UOC’s faculty requirements:

• Communication with students - the online environment is their only medium to teach and motivate

• Their “teaching” is asynchronous – Time-zones, working hours ……

• The contents they use, evolve – Change in documents, materials

The UOC’s students requirements:

• There are as many typologies of students as students are in the University

• They have different ages, backgrounds, experiences, needs, desires and expectations

• They are “on” 24/7

• They are active participants in the learning process

• They are overwhelmed with information

Jointly lead to:• An open source learning environment

• An environment that integrates other solutions desired by faculty to help enhance learning for the different subjects

• A more engaging-to-all-students learning environment to help increase overall satisfaction and motivation to learn (Joy of Learning)

• An accessible-to-all environment, anytime, anyplace

• Versatility in regards to formats

MyUOC …

A homepage thought for anyone of the main users profiles.

A home page gaim to be personalized

A home page open to the world-wide

A base for the main uses of the campus

A guide for the tasks to be carried out

The new on-line virtual platform

How to acheive an adecuate MyUOC?

The three basic elements included in this title are:

User centered design

Emotional aspects

Technical aspects

User centered design

User-centered design is used by UOC because it offers the most effective path to useful and usable products.

UOCs solution to Functional aspects

Short definition

User-centered design is a product development methodology based on actual user needs, behaviors, abilities and perceptions.

Is a design philosophy and a process in which the needs, wants, and limitations of the end user of an interface or document are given extensive attention at each stage of the design process.

“The user is not like me”“The user is not like the client”“The user is not the boss”

Short definition

Short definition

What was the process we follow for MyUOC?

Specify organizational anduser requirements

Produce design solutions

Specify context of use

Plan UCD process

Evaluate designs againstuser requirements

The system satisfies the requirements

ISO 13407 Model (Human centred design processes for interactive systems)

What was the process we followed for MyUOC?

The system satisfies the requirements

Specify context of use

Plan UCD process

Specify organizational anduser requirements

Produce design solutions

Evaluate designs againstuser requirements

InterviewsFocus groupsContextual inquiryObservation/EthnographySurveysLog analysisBenchmarkingCompetitive and comparative analysis

Some examples of the methods we used…

Competitive analysis: (also called comparative analysis or benchmarking) is the process of analyzing products which are similar to, or compete with, the product we are designing in order to generate ideas.

What was the process we follow for MyUOC?

The system satisfies the requirements

Specify context of use

Plan UCD process

Specify organizational anduser requirements

Produce design solutions

Evaluate designs againstuser requirements

User Profiles / Personas

Brainstorming

Scenarios

Tasks analysis

Flowcharts / Storyboards

Some examples of the methods we used…

Personas: Personas are a fictional characters that represent actual groups of users and their needs, which can be a general description of person, context, or usage scenario.

UOC personas:

Martina Jordi

What was the process we follow for MyUOC?

The system satisfies the requirements

Specify context of use

Plan UCD process

Specify organizational anduser requirements

Produce design solutions

Evaluate designs againstuser requirements

Wireframes

LoFi / HiFi Prototyping

Cardsorting

Participatory Design

Some examples of the methods we used…

Wireframes: is a visual illustration of a Web page, product, site... It is meant to show all of the items that are included on a particular page, without defining the look and feel (or graphic design). It's simply meant to illustrate the features, content and links that need to appear on a page so that the design team can mock up a visual interface and the programmers understand the page features and how they are supposed to work.

What was the process we follow for MyUOC?

The system satisfies the requirements

Specify context of use

Plan UCD process

Specify organizational anduser requirements

Produce design solutions

Evaluate designs againstuser requirements

User testing

Cognitive walkthrough

Heuristic Evaluation

Some examples of the methods we used…

Heuristic: is a method for finding usability problems in a user interface by reviewing it for compliance with a checklist of recognized usability principles called heuristics. It is conventionally performed by a group of trained evaluators who individually evaluate a system and then combine their results to come up with a prioritized list of problems to be fixed.

What was the process we follow for MyUOC?

The system satisfies the requirements

Specify context of use

Plan UCD process

Specify organizational anduser requirements

Produce design solutions

Evaluate designs againstuser requirements

What was the process we follow for MyUOC?

Specify organizational anduser requirements

Produce design solutions

Specify context of use

Plan UCD process

Evaluate designs againstuser requirements

ISO 13407 Model (Human centred design processes for interactive systems)

The system satisfies the requirements

The system satisfies the requirements

New home page; My UOC video

Emotional aspects

Emotional Aspects

Motivate – engage – community

Emotional Aspects How?

1. By integrating psychological and consumer research methods into the UCD process

2. By continuously monitoring and analyzing emotional responses

3. By identifying emotional elements of interaction and design

4. By designing methodologies that can be easily applied by the design and development teams

Emotional

Emotional Aspects Engaging elements

• Choices for everyone (i.e., for faculty to choose which tool is best for their subject, for students to choose how they wish to participate or communicate)

• Humanizing interaction (i.e., photos, images)

• Having control of what they see on their first screen - 100% “perceived” satisfaction

• Innovative and “cool elements” (i.e. Mac-style menu bar)

• Adding external modules allows students to bring in their lives

• Choices for everyone (i.e., for faculty to choose which tool is best for their subject, for students to choose how they wish to participate or communicate)

• Humanizing interaction (i.e., photos, images)

• Having control of what they see on their first screen - 100% “perceived” satisfaction

• Innovative and “cool” elements (i.e. Mac-style menu bar)

• Adding external modules allows students to bring in their lives

Emotional Aspects Engaging elements

Emotional Aspects Engaging elements

• Choices for everyone (i.e., for faculty to choose which tool is best for their subject, for students to choose how they wish to participate or communicate)

• Humanizing interaction (i.e., photos, images)

• Having control of what they see on their first screen - 100% “perceived” satisfaction

• Innovative and “cool elements” (i.e. Mac-style menu bar)

• Adding external modules allows students to bring in their lives

Emotional Aspects Engaging elements

Emotional Aspects Engaging elements

• Choices for everyone (i.e., for faculty to choose which tool is best for their subject, for students to choose how they wish to participate or communicate)

• Humanizing interaction (i.e., photos, images)

• Having control of what they see on their first screen - 100% “perceived” satisfaction

• Innovative and “cool elements” (i.e. Mac-style menu bar)

• Adding external modules allows students to bring in their lives

Emotional Aspects Engaging elements

Emotional Aspects Engaging elements

• Choices for everyone (i.e., for faculty to choose which tool is best for their subject, for students to choose how they wish to participate or communicate)

• Humanizing interaction (i.e., photos, images)

• Having control of what they see on their first screen - 100% “perceived” satisfaction

• Innovative and “cool elements” (i.e. Mac-style menu bar)

• Adding external modules allows students to bring in their lives

Emotional Aspects Engaging elements

Emotional Aspects Engaging elements

• Choices for everyone (i.e., for faculty to choose which tool is best for their subject, for students to choose how they wish to participate or communicate)

• Humanizing interaction (i.e., photos, images)

• Having control of what they see on their first screen - 100% “perceived” satisfaction

• Innovative and “cool elements” (i.e. Mac-style menu bar)

• Adding external modules allows students to bring in their lives.

Emotional Aspects Engaging elements

Emotional Aspects Engaging elements

• Drag & drop widgets

• Select a background

• Change colour of widget

• Easily create your own widgets

• Delete what you don’t like

• Personalize, customize

• Select visualization type (# items, etc.)

• Bring in external widgets (i.e. Gmail, RSS…)

• Choose, choose, choose

• Endless opportunities

Instead of 1 design for everyone we now have as many designs as number of students (47.000). One design does not fit all.

Emotional Aspects Users Actions

video

Technical aspects

Technical aspects:

• Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) in order to achieve real interoperability

• An Open Source and Lego-like environment connected with each other

• Open Knowledge Initiative (OKI) technology

e-learning tools

OKI Bus Services

Gateway Common LMS

Technical aspects

MyUOC at present

MyUOC challenges:

• Keeping control over the learning model

• Ability to change as we go

• Personalization for both faculty and students

• Flexibility and opportunities to innovate and explore new learning approaches.

• Accessibility

• Automatically generation of multiple formats. Versatility of Formats

For us the future in e-learning will be focused on interoperability.

• Maintaining and evolving the environment

• Continuing UOC's user-centered tradition integrating psychological and consumer research methods into the UCD process

• Reaching out to the community so we can all evolve webservices and interoperability together

Questions?

Thank you for your attention!!

Learning Technologies: learningtechnologies@uoc.edu

Alícia Valls: avallssa@uoc.edu

Caroline Copestake: copestake@uoc.edu

Want to try MyUOC?http://www.uoc.edu/portal/english/Username: educause Pasword: eli