ReadBuddies

Inspiration/Problem Our Solution Addresses

The transition to online learning in light of the Covid-19 pandemic has been difficult for all students. Furthermore, there has been a lack of innovation targeted towards online learning for elementary schoolers who are in the most formative stages of their development.

Reading buddy programs in which older elementary school students are paired with younger students to read together are commonly implemented in elementary schools throughout the nation. Studies have shown that through cross-age tutoring and partnerships, students improve their reading and fluency skills and gain broader literacy and social benefits. Several research studies have found that augmenting traditional classroom instruction with one-on-one interventions, such as a reading buddies program, is a powerful combination that can accelerate students’ oral vocabulary gains. Others suggest that cross-age tutoring is effective at supporting children’s reading.

Many reading buddy programs across the nation will likely be cancelled as schools shift to online learning.

Why Did We Pick This Solution/How does it address the problem?

We chose this solution because we felt that there weren't a lot of tools out there to help elementary schoolers with the transition to online learning. As students ourselves, we knew that there were a lot of different resources being implemented to ease our transition to virtual learning in college, but we hadn't heard of many technologies being leveraged to help replicate the elementary school experience. We saw this as especially concerning given that elementary school is also key for developing social skills, and an online learning environment can induce an isolating experience for children. For both of us, we realized that one fond experience that we both had in elementary school was our participation in reading buddy programs. By developing a virtual platform for these programs, we promote the development of literacy and social skills in young students as well as help foster a sense of responsibility and connection.

What it does

Our application provides an online platform for reading buddies for elementary schoolers. There are two different roles, a reader who is an older student (3rd to 5th grade) who will read to a readee (K-2nd grade). Readers and readees are matched based on a profile and availability. Once matched, the readee can propose times to the reader to have reading sessions, and the reader has the freedom to accept and reject sessions. Once a session is confirmed, a reader can choose a book from our internal library for the session. When the time comes for the session, the reader and readee will both join the session which will feature a virtual version of the book as well as video interaction.

Ultimately, we hope that our application and its simplistic design will continue to allow elementary schoolers to develop the reading and literacy skills that are so crucial for their development.

Target Audience

Our target audience and end users are elementary schoolers who have transitioned to online learning and their parents. Depending on the age of the student, they may not be that tech savvy which is why they will likely need the help of their parents with the application. Because of this, we tried to make our UI as simple as possible.

How we built it

ReadBuddies is built entirely through Figma.

Challenges we ran into

Lack of experience with Figma - One of us had no prior experience with Figma and the other had minimal experience. There was definitely a bit of a learning curve at first but things went more smoothly after a couple hours of experimenting with Figma.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Some accomplishments that we're proud of include learning how to better use Figma to build prototypes and learning to map out user pathways. Both of us are more used to more software engineering oriented tech roles, so we really enjoyed viewing a project from a designer's point of view.

What we learned

Some things we learned include:

• Using Figma to design prototypes and run through a demo
• Mapping out user pathways
• The ideation process for designing new projects
• The importance of designing from a user's perspective and defining the problem statement clearly

What's next for ReadBuddies

In the future, we’d definitely like to build out some additional flows as well as redesign various aspects of the UI once we get more experience with FIgma. It would also be cool to start working on the actual implementation of the application.

Built With

• figma