ALPHA RELEASE

Iterate Quickly

Research told us that the legacy design was too high level, so I researched state standards and went the opposite direction - exposing final endpoints in each subject. 

It seemed crazy that teachers would want to see 56+ expectations (endpoints) for each student, but given time constraints we felt the best way to get feedback was to get it in the hands of our teachers!

Alpha Release

Fail Fast

Knowing that this part of our release had the most opportunity, research was extremely important. I visited sites in Bethesda where I got to see teachers actively using the visualization.

We heard the following feedback: 

Teachers scaffold standards so that students have a good foundation for new concepts. I used that scaffolding to map an 8th grade standard back to it’s original root in 1st grade, then I moved forward into the standards it impacts in the student’s future.

identify the root cause

It was apparent that Student Mastery is great for investigation but if student’s are at that point, it’s already too late. Teachers felt strongly that we should prioritize creating a higher level class view so they could be proactive instead of reactive.

Simplify the Visuals

We knew the visualization would still be too complex for our users, but referenced it to conduct additional research. Seeing the visualization this way helped teachers indicate what data would be helpful in a simplified version. We also learned they can only take action on standards that are two, maybe three years back.

Update the Data

In our research, we found that teachers wanted to be able to input their own observations or evidence of learning, and expected the data model to then propagate forwards and backwards so that entering data would close past and future knowledge gaps.

ITERATE

Identify the Root Cause

We quickly moved away from the linear node visualization, but still needed a way to show the prerequisite standards with the most influence on what students are learning.

Teachers loved having quick access to these prerequisites because they were easy to find and digest. We limited the amount of information in the cards as well as the number of cards shown so that teacher’s weren’t overwhelmed.

ITERATE

Simplify the Visuals

We had concepts where we tried collecting standards into groups by unit, but we learned that was too rigid because teachers constantly reiterate standards to reinforce learning in new or different ways.

We chose to allow teachers to filter their view of student standards by knowledge level in each standard, unit, and influence.

ITERATE | UPDATE THE DATA

Evidence of Learning

Teacher observations are super important because a grade-book does not represent a student’s true knowledge. From extra credit to test anxiety, many factors contribute to grades, but a teacher would know best whether a student understood the material and to what degree.

We could then enable teachers to add observations and attach evidence of learning for additional data points which would then propagate our data model backwards so that teachers knew where to re-focus their efforts.