Milestone 4
Overview Video
A. High-Fidelity Prototype
Below is our high-fidelity prototype đ
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User Stories / Demos
- âAs a teacher, I want to check direct messages from my students so that I can stay in contact with them and help them with issues.â & âAs a teacher, I want to directly message a student so that I can check on their class progressâ & âAs a student, I want to be able to receive assistance during class so that I do not have to use other forms of communication outside of class to reach the teacher.â
- We decided to add a chat feature on the zoom screen of our prototype similar to that of Twitch.tv so that students would be more likely to engage with the chat during class. We also included the feature to easily send a private chat to the teacher in case a student wished to send a question anonymously during class and also an unmute button and show camera button in case verbal/visual communication was required. Also, a messages tab exists and functions similar to Outlook but is separated based on class inboxes, allowing conversations to carry on outside of class time between both teachers and students.
- âAs a teacher, I want to see the results of past class questions in order to see how my class has been progressingâ & âAs a student, I want to be able to see my previous scores (and the correct answers) so that I can track my progress and use the in-class practice quizzes to study.â
- We created a Grades tab in our prototype where students can review past assignments ranging from previous in-class assignments to tests/quizzes. This tab also funtions differently for teachers by allowing them to see how the class scored on assignments. Also, thanks to a âQuick Overviewâ button, teachers can quickly see which questions students struggled with the most and go over material that might have proved difficult for students to comprehend.
- âAs a teacher, I want to ask my virtual class a question in order to measure their understanding of the current topic.â & âAs a student, I want to demonstrate my understanding or lack of it so that the teacher can appropriately pace the class to the studentsâ needs.â
- For our prototype, we also created a pop-up quiz overlay that the teacher could turn on mid-lecture to access how students are comprehending information as well as an Assignments tab that displays active assignments to be done outside of class. By seeing if students are understanding material while class is still happening, teachers can quickly go over a topic that may have been unclear or move forward if the class understand the previous topic.
B. Testing Protocol
Research Question
Does having easier access to communication and grade related info during online learning help students achieve higher grades and reduce stress on teachers?
Methodology
We will use a combination of experiments using focus groups and interviews for testing. The focus groups will be used so that we can compare online classrooms that utilize our application with classrooms that use something else, such as zoom. By doing this, we can compare classes throughout the semester to each other and conduct interviews with the teachers to see how things are going. We can also study the same group of students, and have them use some other application at first and then use our application to see if their grades or attitude towards the class improves or not.
We will also conduct interviews at different checkpoints in the semester with both the teacher and a random group of students from the classes. The interview will consist of a few general questions and ask them to rank their satisfaction with how the class has been going. We will also gather more specific data from the teacher.
Testing Procedure
- We will need consent from the school we will be using to conduct our research, as well as the consent of the parents of the children that we will be observing.
- We will anonymously collect grades as data from the classrooms, as well as interview responses from the teachers and some of the students. The data will be organized by classroom so that we can compare the effects of our application on the grades and feelings of the teacher and students with their feelings about zoom or whatever other application they are currently using.
- We intend to analyze the study data by organizing the interview results and the results of the grades into a plot. We will separate the data based on data gathered from our control groups and data gathered from the groups using our application. In this way we can see if our solution helped improve the class grades, and we can also see how the students and teachers responded to the change in the classroom.
- To conduct this safely during the pandemic, we could gather all of the grades remotely from the school as well as conduct our interviews remotely.