Edtech: hackaSchool

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Problems

80% of the world's top academic institutions reportedly use Blackboard tools, according to Times Higher Education Reputation Ranking. However, as much as 93% of people hate BlackBoard in a survey by Fast Company. Both students and professors detest BlackBoard because of:

The excessive and unused features.
Too many clicks and complex navigation.
Slow loading pages, which combined with above, means that last minute assignment submissions are difficult.
Although BlackBoard is customizable from the teacher’s view, most academic professors do not have the time to, and/or the expertise to, optimize BlackBoard for their needs.

Considerations of Other Platforms

There are other Learning Management Systems (LMS) similar to BlackBoard, but have their own issues:

Google Classroom: Extreme lack of features such as timed quizzes, attendance, etc.
Canvas: Has issues with saving files and using its editors.
Moodle: View organization is extremely limited, and like BlackBoard, the number of clicks needed is extremely high for navigation.
Schoology: Search, deletion, and other features are outright absent.

Objective

Analyzing all the problems, our objective is to prototype an interface that resolves all the above issues by:

Improving navigation process, ease, and speed
Placing extraneous features in advanced sections
Keeping style and design simple for faster loading time and accessibility.

Solution

The problem was identified when college students and the teachers constantly have problems with navigating Blackboard as well as other learning platforms. We create the EdTech tool to solve the ongoing issues that other elearning platform have. Using Figma, we designed a education learning platform for university students and educators that had the key features of:

Simple and fewer clicks
Necessary and simple features
Providing templates for teachers classes
Create a gamified experience for students
Grade tracking process for students

How we built it

Firstly, we sat down together and brainstormed ideas in different industries. A story comes up about how the Blackboard is hard to used with too many features which we thought could be improved. We decided to look into top e-learning companies and platforms and look at their pros as well as cons and conducted competition analysis. Secondly, we create the road map for the EdTech which includes competition research, user research, color psychologies, website solution, navigation movements, UI wireframe, features needed) Thirdly, we began developing the wireframe for the solution which includes the on boarding experience, classes and assignments navigation and students grading process.

Challenges we ran into

One group member was replaced. It took us some time to figure out how we were to go about the process of creating the optimal design and whether we would analyze competitors and create our own or just look at blackboard and redesign to solve common issues many students face with that platform. Another major challenge was deciding what type of UI would fit with this theme and coming to one solution from our contrasting perspectives.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Coming up with a unique design with basic functionalities in the prototype, which aims to solve the most common problems seen in top online learning platforms.

What we learned

We learned about implementing design practices to solve problems in an educational setting. We also learned to navigate our different ideas and how to ask the right questions to come to an agreement while making design decisions.