“After analyzing these findings, we came up with several themes that would guide our design. These high level design implications provide motivations as well as constraints, and come directly from the results of our research and evaluation.”
From the research and evaluation we conducted using various HCI techniques, came many findings. After analyzing these findings, we came up with several themes that would guide our design. These high level design implications provide motivations as well as constraints, and come directly from the results of our research and evaluation. Many of these implications considered together inspired a higher level theme that impacted our design – the theme of sharing.
Awareness
There are often situations where instructors ask students questions that they may need data to best answer. This may occur at the end of a station or at the start of a new one. Also, at any point during a station, if students are working separately then they may be disconnected and not know about what their fellow students are doing. This implication proposes that solutions promote maintaining an awareness of data, so that the whole class can stay connected and use it to the best of their ability.
Our solution looks to solve the problems of sharing information between instructors and students in class. Displaying the digital artifacts on a size big enough that instructors and students can all see and comment on encourages discussion and dialog to happen during the station.
Attribution
Students are often very proud of the work they do, in terms of identifying organisms, getting test results, etc. Associating students with their findings acknowledges their efforts, and may serve as a motivating factor for them to gather more data and help them learn. This implication reminds us to keep in mind attribution as a motivating factor for students when considering the data they interact with.
As mentioned above, our solution includes displaying artifacts so all the people participating in the station can see the information at the same time. Using our solution instructors are allowed to share one student’s individual finding with the whole group, creating a shared experience that each person participating can feel as their own. It is no longer just a class that an instructor teaches, it is a discovery process that all individuals in the class potentially build while performing the tasks designed by the Voyager educational staff.
Useful and Usable
Students collect and record many different types of data throughout their voyage. These findings are significant and have a relevance that’s scope reaches outside of simply the day’s short voyage. It is important for students to be able to appreciate this, and so that the highest value possible is yielded from their efforts. This design implication ensures that data is always presented to, and able to be collected by students in a usable way, so that students can be able to take advantage of its usefulness. Knowing that the data they collect will be useful can also serve to motivate students.
Our solution not only allows instructors to make digital artifacts big, but also by allowing several different types of media to be displayed, it opens the possibilities to show the information relevant to the students’ current activity in a meaningful way. Giving the students a clear purpose for participating in these activities will make them feel that it is not a preformatted experience but one that is being created as they participate and discover new concepts onboard Voyager.
Dynamic
At times the instructors will need to supplement their teaching with multiple artifacts, depending on the particular student group and their needs. Different types and levels of students will all respond to examples that they specifically can relate to. It is also useful when an instructor can share findings found that particular day with his/her class. This implication simply stresses the importance of allowing the presentation of shared artifacts to be dynamic, and changeable on the fly, to ensure that students can get the most out of the teaching and learning process.
Our solution incorporates this principle by allowing instructors quick and efficient access to resources in the Media Library. The application also allows instructors to have groups of media that they might anticipate to be needed for certain groups of students, without having to include them as part of their presentation, while making them as accessible as the rest of their presentation.
Group Interaction
Most of the activities on the boat are done with the students working with each other in groups. Even when groups are not assigned, if students naturally form groups they can be most effective. It is important that artifacts are able to be used by a group collectively, as students may lose focus or become distracted if they cannot be involved. This implication has us keep in mind the students needs for group interaction and how it enhances their learning experience.
Our solution observes the “group interaction” design consideration as it provides a central object for the class as a whole to focus on and be involved with. It takes students out of their individual “little worlds”, minimizes distraction and allows them to benefit from a shared interaction.
Make It Big
In many situations, instructors need to display artifacts to a group of students. Many artifacts are currently restricted to small cards, paper reference sheets, and at best posters the instructor must hold up to show the group, which are often difficult for students to see. The Make it Big design implication stresses that solutions should enable instructors to display a variety of artifacts on a large display, naturally turning students’ collective focus to one area in an unobstructed way.
Our solution is centered on the “make it big” principle. It lets instructors present images and videos of their choice on large displays that are easily visible to a room of students.
Artifacts which may have been previously difficult to make out or read, now fill an entire screen.
Organization
Instructors usually prepare the materials for their classes, previous to the trip. While testing and asking instructors about our initial solution interfaces, we could corroborate that there was an inherent need from both the full time educational staff and the instructors at the boat to create comprehensive groups of artifacts in order to make them easier to retrieve and file. We discovered that the educational staff could control the artifacts used by the instructors at each station. This is possible by creating high-level conceptual groups of elements that will help the individual instructor, in turn, to organize their individual presentations while keeping the basic concepts required in each presentation.
Our solution reflects this finding by implementing the idea of having a central repository of digital artifacts grouped by station and further organized by broad categories. Originally, the educational staff at Voyager creates these categories. At the same time, an instructor is able to arrange his/her own presentation, by using the resources placed in the media repository.
Ordering
We found that instructors’ liked to have control over their presentations and have them follow an order determined by them. They set up sequences between concepts, as well as within them. They also needed the ordering of their artifacts to be flexible enough so that they could easily jump to artifacts out of sequence if needed. This design implication guides us to make sure we create something that is flexible enough to support order, as well as a lack of it.
Our solution supports a flexible ordering system via the media group queue. It allows instructors to arrange their groups in any order they deem appropriate, and to go through the parts of their presentation sequentially. It also allows them to easily jump from group to group, and present artifacts out of sequence. The same is true within groups – media can be ordered and the sequence can be just as easily observed as unobserved during presentation.
| Findings Quick List | |
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Awareness Attribution Useful and Usable Dynamic Group Interaction Make it Big Organization Ordering |
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