Atlas of Creative Tools
Liz Lerman, Institute Professor at ASU, reached out to the team at Herberger Online Learning in the hopes that we could help turn her nationally recognized workshop "Atlas of Creative Tools" into an online course.
Team: Chrissy Dongell (Multimedia Specialist), Allison Hall (Instructional Designer), Stephanie McNicol (Interaction Designer), Courtney Sanders (Instructional Designer)
Phase 1: Finding comfort in ambiguity
Liz is a high-level, creative thinker. In our initial kick-off meetings we learned to be okay with ambiguity and that our job would be to define and shape the project to match Liz's vision. As the interaction designer, this held the promise of creative freedom and taking the lead on developing the online experience. My responsibilities in phase 1 included:
- Define the brand and UI visual standards for the online classroom, and art direct in-person video shoots for brand uniformity.
- Front-end development of the course shell.
- Create media and activities that engaged the student in active forms of learning while also keeping in mind our limited developer resources.
- Making sure the student experience flowed cohesively from the in-person classroom to an online environment based on the course design from the instructional designers.
Defining the brand and UI of Atlas
One of the first things I had to do was meet with Liz and John and discuss the look and feel they wanted to have for their course. We explored many different ideas, but eventually settled on the celestial theme of star maps, so as to give the students freedom to explore and map out unexplored areas of their own creativity. To balance the 'cold and endless' feel of space, we balanced that theme with warm colors and made sure to shoot lecture videos with the instructors in an inviting space.
The Beatles course below is the template shell for new course creation. There were plenty of design changes I made which included applying the brand aesthetics of Atlas. I also made minor development changes to better accommodate Liz and John's busy schedules which included implementing auto-graded assignments, and gated lecture modules so students could progress at a designated pace set by the instructional designers.
Design to engage students
The team and I also brainstormed ways to keep the students engaged with online lectures that are traditional a passive style of learning. We needed a way to bring Liz's very active learning style from the classroom to the e-learning environment. To counter this, we incorporated student journals and used Adobe Captive to give us the ability to insert reflective questions, prompts, and mini physical activities to engage students. For these screens, I designed icons so students could quickly know what the prompts we asking.
The other problem instructors face in the online environment is cognitive overload. Anxiety is increased when students have to learn material and also learn how to navigate a new digital experience. To reduce this anxiety, and to help students identify content coming up in the lecture I created more icons so student would know, at a glance, what would be expected of them throughout the lecture.
Phase 2: Research and Iteration
The first iteration of the course launched in August 2017. We knew the class would need a couple iterations before it was ready for a fully online experience. During the second phase, I would be involved in collecting qualitative and quantitative research to be incorporated in subsequent iterations to improve the user experience. During this phase my responsibilities included:
- Implement UX research methods: unstructured interviews, in-person observations, contextual inquiries, questionnaires.
- Gather and analyzing qualitative and quantitative research.
- Implement changes to the learning experience based on student feedback.
Qualitative and Quantitative Data
"Atlas for Creative Tools" is a 7.5 week class. The main deliverable at the end of the class is an online portfolio of work the student can use in their own creative art-making. Since this was unlike any class we had produced for ASU we decided to shadow the in-person classes so we could align future iterations of the course with a more cohesive student experience. During classes, I took notes and occasionally participated in activities to better understand how we could reinterpret this creative studio for an online environment that encouraged participation for a diverse audience.
Observing each class was a great opportunity to see how the students reacted to the duality of each environment, and gave me the opportunity to fix any issues with the website in real time. At the end of each class we encouraged students to give us their suggestions and feedback, letting them know they were helping to shape the direction of the course. At the end of the class I designed and sent out a survey for the students to fill out. Over 90% of the students responded and we were able to secure three participants who were willing to sit down for an unstructured interview.
“The ladies at Herberger Online Learning brought my vision for Atlas to life when no one else could.”
Findings
The biggest take away from our research was that students thought 7.5 weeks was, too, short to learn and apply the material they were learning. We also found that students were struggling to find a solution to any technical issues they were experiencing. Based on these two areas of concern we decided to turn the course to a 15 week class that would span the semester. Liz would also add two weekend "workshops" to the curriculum. To solve the second problem, I turned our text-heavy help page into a forum to give students a clear place they could submit help tickets. I reduced the number of steps students had to take to submit a ticket and also simplified the verbiage so non-technical students could understand the content. The second iteration of Atlas runs Spring 2018.
