RESEARCH, DESIGN AND EVALUATION | 2023 | INDUSTRY-SPONSORED PROJECT
Increasing engagement during office hours
DURATION
January 2023 - April 2023
ROLE
PROJECT OVERVIEW
Office hours are a way for students to receive help from professors and teaching assistants, as well as a way to bond with their educators. These sessions involve the professors setting up time slots for students, and students attending these office hours, coming into their designated meeting locations, and receiving help from educators.
During our collaboration with Innovatemap sponsors, we examined the mechanics of office hours at Purdue University and explored strategies for enhancing overall engagement within this system.
Product Designer leading a team of 7 undergraduate designers at Purdue University
DESIGN OUTCOME
A service design prototype of the proposed product's final design vision.
WHAT I DID
Mentoring, User stories, Wireframing, Feedback Iterations, Hi-Fi prototyping
PROBLEM DISCOVERY
What problem am I trying to solve?
Getting students more involved
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Many professors have office hours to help their students through their courses and provide other guidance for their college careers.
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Lack of student attendance can cause professors to lose the sense of connection to how their students understand the course and cause students to go on with unanswered questions.
SOLUTION
Introducing 'Sync': A Dynamic Hub for Student-Professor Collaboration
Schedule office hours
Discuss and collaborate on the forum
View professor and TA profiles
The Home Screen
Students can -
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View all of their upcoming meetings, including office hours and class timings.
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Schedule office hours appointments with professors and TAs directly from the home screen.
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Reduces confusion and discouragement by providing students with a clear and concise way to find the information and assistance they need.
The Forum
Students can -
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Ask questions anonymously, which can help them feel more comfortable asking questions they might be embarrassed to ask in class or directly to the professor.
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Discuss and collaborate, which can help them learn from each other and develop their understanding of the material.
The Profiles
Students can -
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Get to know their professors on a personal level, which can make them feel more comfortable asking for help during office hours.
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Provides students with a starting point for conversation during office hours, by highlighting the professor's interests, hobbies, and research interests.
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Encourages students to explore potential research opportunities.
So...how did I get here? Let's take a look at the user research
METHODS : SECONDARY RESEARCH, INTERVIEWS AND AFFINITY DIAGRAMS
Understanding how students currently navigate office hours
- Research Areas
Seeking Help
Current Structure
Student Motivation
What do we need to know to understand the problem space
Realising Benefits
College Teaching
Academic Support
- Key takeaways from Affinity Mapping of research findings
We found that the two main aspects of encouraging students to attend office hours were under the social and logistical domains. There were also barriers students faced such as personal stigmatization, physical barriers, and misunderstanding of office hours.
Social and Logistical aspects
Personal stigmatization, physical barriers, and misunderstanding
What are the students and professors saying about office hours?
- Interviews
Identifying the challenges encountered by students during office hours, including communication gaps with professors, limited availability of faculty and teaching assistants, and scheduling constraints.
- Key takeaways from Affinity Mapping of 18 interviews - 12 students and 6 professors
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Professors and TAs are always occupied with other people during the 1-2 hours they have
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Students face a variety of challenges and obstacles that prevent them from attending professor or TA office hours, such as time constraints, distance, a lack of direction, and unclear believed advantages, resulting in a lack of engagement with the resources at hand.
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Students are afraid they’ll ask stupid questions and they get easily intimated by professors who are not very approachable
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Students said they discovered that most of their peers had the same doubts but nobody brought it up in class.
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Professors mentioned that they like to discuss any ideas that the students might have related to academic work, answer their doubts etc.
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Professors desire a welcoming environment where students don't feel anxious or guilty about approaching them. They encourage students to drop in and greet them, rather than thinking of it as a bother.
Who exactly am I designing for?
80%
of the students in United States are Undergraduate students - primary users of higher education
Undergraduate students are often new to the university environment and may be unfamiliar with the resources and hence hesitant
Using empathy mapping, I was able to understand the emotions and thoughts of our user group and come to a clearer understanding of how we should tackle office hours.
These insights paired with our secondary research findings allowed us to determine that the most prominent issue is -
Scheduling office hours and the feeling of intimidation
IDEATION
Narrowing the problem frame
PROBLEM/OPPORTUNITY SPACE 01
“How might we develop a centralized platform for students that simplifies the scheduling process?”
The Problems being addressed :
1. Large class sizes in some majors
2. Overcrowding during office hours
3. No online alternatives (Professor's office is too far away from the classes/clashing class hours)
We analyzed the various scheduling options already available in the market - Google calendars, Calendly, Apple Calendar, Outlook etc. and picked features that would make sense for a student trying to book an appointment with a professor
Initial sketches for the homescreen which would have the scheduling system:
Scheduling systems on the homescreen
Different ways to schedule
PROBLEM/OPPORTUNITY SPACE 02
“How might we encourage collaboration between students and professors?”
The Problems being addressed :
1. Feeling lost and intimidated during class
2. Unable to address all doubts during class/office hours
3. Fear of being called out if the question doesn't make sense
During our interviews, we noticed a pattern among students which was their fear of being called out for asking dumb questions during class and as a result being left with unanswered doubts.
And of course, the overcrowded office hours didn't help them!
As a result, we came up with an idea for a forum where people could post anonymously and have a feedback system established with the professors
Initial sketches for the forum:
Some of the sketches from our Crazy 8's for the forum screens
PROBLEM/OPPORTUNITY SPACE 03
“How might we establish a sense of connection between the professor and students?”
The Problems being addressed :
1. Students tend to find professors intimidating and unapproachable
2. Lack of engagement occurs since they don't feel connected to the professor
3. Feeling anxious and guilty during office hours
Students often skip office hours when their questions seem too trivial or already covered in class, while professors aim to cultivate a supportive environment for student assistance.
To foster a stronger student-teacher connection, we proposed creating comprehensive profiles for professors and TAs, highlighting their interests, research areas, and hobbies, facilitating more meaningful interactions.
Initial sketches for the professor and TA profiles:
TESTING
Ideations for the profile screens
To organise our design opportunities, I came up with a possible workflow of the platform we were imagining
Check out all the Low-Fidelity and Mid-Fidelity versions of the platform
TESTING
Now alllll of this needs to be validated
Getting Feedback
"How do I go to scheduling from the home page ?Calendar view or click on class?"
"Appointments vs Classes colors are very scattered"
"On the week page, how do i know that I’m supposed to click on the class to schedule something"
"If you could put in your classes into this and combine those” “have it send out your current schedule."
The calendar was removed from the home page and scheduling class cards were added instead.
A simpler navigation to the forum and notifications page on the left
An Upcoming meetings section added on the right to make it easier for the students to view appointments
The Professor's and TA's profile sections could be accessed directly from the home page by clicking on their icons
Interests, Research Interests and other classes taken by them were added to the profile in order to give the students a personalized view of the faculty
The forum section was modified to have an overview of all classes and upvoting, commenting, and replying features were added
A direct CTA for asking a question was added which had the option of posting questions anonymously as well as a filter for sorting questions and search results in the forum
Drumroll please...
FINAL DESIGN
Time to deliver the interactive prototypes
To make our platform look more appealing we altered the layout and UI Design to make it more straightforward and accessible for the students. Some of the UI Design changes included -
1. Using the Atlassian Design system as a reference
2. Left navigation to different pages
3. Hover interactions for information
4. Click on the name card display and several CTAs to be redirected to the scheduling screen
Taking a step back, I now know
During iteration, we identified limitations in our design that would be addressed with more time.
Emotional Aspect
Students often go through fears, and intimidation and are self-conscious when it comes to talking to professors, and while our forum section helps them ask questions anonymously and discuss and collaborate with other people, it doesn't necessarily remove all the emotional aspects of being an introvert.
Social Aspect
Just providing interests and hobbies for a professor doesn't give them the actual interaction factor other than just looking at a bunch of information on the screen. That information does not force students or professors to increase their personal time.
