Filling a hole in school curriculum by a gamified learning experience

Designing an e-learning app for secondary schools focused on teaching students media literacy and critical thinking through a gamified learning experience, which effectively solves the problem of lack of teaching materials and time for methodologic preparation, and enables teachers to include the topic seamlessly.

Field

Product Design for Education

Client

Ministry of Investment, Regional Development and Informatics of the Slovak Republic.

Context

Underperforming school system, Slovak students ranking below the average of OECD

Memorisation-focused curriculum not reflecting the challenges of 21st century

Increasing number of youth voting for radical political parties

Problem

How might we help high school teachers to seamlessly include Critical Thinking and Media Literacy in their teaching plans?

My role

Product Designer working in a team of Project Manager, 2 Developers, 2 Curriculum Creators, Content writer, and a high school teacher as our consultant and QA.

My role was to design the interface, but also together with the project manager, guide the team within the design process.

The Design Process

Research and product specification

As we were already well-aware of the situation in Slovak schools and the absence of innovation was clear, we focused our research on the target personas - teachers and students, to tailor our solution to their specific needs.

To ensure broad coverage with our personas, I defined them as extremes on both ends of the spectrum. On one side, we have a young, tech-savvy, enthusiastic teacher seeking new ways to enhance lessons; on the other, an older, reluctant teacher wary of technology. By designing for the most challenging users, we can better serve everyone in between.

Based on our knowledge of the personas and school environment, as well as the structure of similar learning apps, we created a list of requirements and features for our MVP product:

💡 Our Minimal Viable Product (Condensed)

BASIC REQUIREMENTS

Teachers would like to not only assign modules, but also have a discussion with students about a topic, or be able to attach additional materials.
As many teachers are not technically literate and have trouble with adapting new softwares, the app needed to be simple and resemble the softwares they already use (Edupage, Google Classroom).
Teachers have little spare time, adoption needs to be smooth and fast, ideally it should take between 10-15 minutes to understand and set up the app and assign students the first topic

The app should be accessible via web, but also downloadable as students prefer the latter.

BASIC REQUIREMENTS

Teachers would like to not only assign modules, but also have a discussion with students about a topic, or be able to attach additional materials.
As many teachers are not technically literate and have trouble with adapting new softwares, the app needed to be simple and resemble the softwares they already use (Edupage, Google Classroom).
Teachers have little spare time, adoption needs to be smooth and fast, ideally it should take between 10-15 minutes to understand and set up the app and assign students the first topic

The app should be accessible via web, but also downloadable as students prefer the latter.

BASIC REQUIREMENTS

Teachers would like to not only assign modules, but also have a discussion with students about a topic, or be able to attach additional materials.
As many teachers are not technically literate and have trouble with adapting new softwares, the app needed to be simple and resemble the softwares they already use (Edupage, Google Classroom).
Teachers have little spare time, adoption needs to be smooth and fast, ideally it should take between 10-15 minutes to understand and set up the app and assign students the first topic

The app should be accessible via web, but also downloadable as students prefer the latter.

FEATURES

The app should deliver ready-to-use modules for the teacher, have automatic grading and progress tracking, a discussion forum and space for additional learning materials.
Allow teacher to see their student’s progress, monitor behaviour in discussion channels, and individually praise students for good work.
Have option for teachers to change the order of topics within the curriculum or skip some.

As there are sometimes multiple teachers teaching the same subject, or one teacher teaching multiple classes, the app should allow teachers to switch between and manage multiple classes.

FEATURES

The app should deliver ready-to-use modules for the teacher, have automatic grading and progress tracking, a discussion forum and space for additional learning materials.
Allow teacher to see their student’s progress, monitor behaviour in discussion channels, and individually praise students for good work.
Have option for teachers to change the order of topics within the curriculum or skip some.

As there are sometimes multiple teachers teaching the same subject, or one teacher teaching multiple classes, the app should allow teachers to switch between and manage multiple classes.

FEATURES

The app should deliver ready-to-use modules for the teacher, have automatic grading and progress tracking, a discussion forum and space for additional learning materials.
Allow teacher to see their student’s progress, monitor behaviour in discussion channels, and individually praise students for good work.
Have option for teachers to change the order of topics within the curriculum or skip some.

As there are sometimes multiple teachers teaching the same subject, or one teacher teaching multiple classes, the app should allow teachers to switch between and manage multiple classes.

With MVP criteria as my base, I then continued with designing in low fidelity:

User flows

To get the basic idea of how app will structured.

Wireframing

To see what elements will be placed on each page.

Information architecture

To map out what needs to be designed and how.

Creating full user flows

Firstly in low fidelity, then in high.

Rounds of ideation, iteration and testing

My design process encompassed rounds of ideation, design, feedback and testing, and iteration. We divided testing into sections - with different classes of high schoolers from Secondary School of Mechanical engineering in Bratislava, we were separately testing all 5 parts of the app, gathering qualitative but also quantitative feedback. Simultaneously, the app and our progress was oversaw and reviewed by officers and technical experts from the Ministry.

I started by designing the core features of the app, creating the least used sections as last. Started with mobile version of student interface, followed by its desktop equivalent, then used components in student’s interface to create teacher interface and then lastly, license admin management section.

Building the app gradually in chunks (Home Screen, Weekly Challenge, Discussion Forum, Educational Materials, Profile, User Management), I followed the same process for all parts:

Design system

To make file management and development easier, I was simultaneously building and editing design system of our app, and in case of more complex designs, such as an interactive roadmap, provided the developers with ready-to-implement building blocks.

Translation of developer specifications for the roadmap element.

Gamification elements

After rounds of research, our app ended with these gamification elements, approved by our test groups of highschoolers:

Result

Reflecting on the fulfilled Minimal Viable Product Criteria we set at the beginning, combined with positive feedback we got through user research, our app should significantly lower the effort teacher will have to make in order to introduce Critical Thinking and Media Literacy into their teaching plans. Here are the key features our app offers to teachers and students:

1. Curriculum presented interactively
Students learn through Weekly challenges featuring short explanational sections combined with practical exercices.
2. Additional materials
Students who want to learn more than what the standard curriculum offers have the resources to do so, with links to educational materials, as well as projects and competitions to join.
3. Progress tracking and motivation
Students can easily see their progress and compete with classmates.
4. Discussion feature
Students can engage in discussion about the presented topics with the teacher and classmates, earn bonus points, a practice newly gained argumentation skills.
1. Curriculum presented interactively
Students learn through Weekly challenges featuring short explanational sections combined with practical exercices.
2. Additional materials
Students who want to learn more than what the standard curriculum offers have the resources to do so, with links to educational materials, as well as projects and competitions to join.
3. Progress tracking and motivation
Students can easily see their progress and compete with classmates.
4. Discussion feature
Students can engage in discussion about the presented topics with the teacher and classmates, earn bonus points, a practice newly gained argumentation skills.
1. Curriculum presented interactively
Students learn through Weekly challenges featuring short explanational sections combined with practical exercices.
2. Additional materials
Students who want to learn more than what the standard curriculum offers have the resources to do so, with links to educational materials, as well as projects and competitions to join.
3. Progress tracking and motivation
Students can easily see their progress and compete with classmates.
4. Discussion feature
Students can engage in discussion about the presented topics with the teacher and classmates, earn bonus points, a practice newly gained argumentation skills.
1. Curriculum presented interactively
Students learn through Weekly challenges featuring short explanational sections combined with practical exercices.
2. Additional materials
Students who want to learn more than what the standard curriculum offers have the resources to do so, with links to educational materials, as well as projects and competitions to join.
3. Progress tracking and motivation
Students can easily see their progress and compete with classmates.
4. Discussion feature
Students can engage in discussion about the presented topics with the teacher and classmates, earn bonus points, a practice newly gained argumentation skills.

1. Ready-to-assign tasks and curriculum
Without putting effort into thorough lesson preparation, teachers can introduce the topics of Critical Thinking and Media Literacy into the curriculum
2.Flexibility
Teachers can opt for different degrees of implementation of our app into the teaching process. Either just simply let the app assign a Weekly Challenge, make use of discussion features, or even combine it with in-class discussion or other theory and activities:
3. Evaluation and progress tracking
Teachers can easily view and monitor progress of the whole class or individual students through interface patterns similar to Edupage, an educational software already well-known to them.
1. Ready-to-assign tasks and curriculum
Without putting effort into thorough lesson preparation, teachers can introduce the topics of Critical Thinking and Media Literacy into the curriculum
2.Flexibility
Teachers can opt for different degrees of implementation of our app into the teaching process. Either just simply let the app assign a Weekly Challenge, make use of discussion features, or even combine it with in-class discussion or other theory and activities:
3. Evaluation and progress tracking
Teachers can easily view and monitor progress of the whole class or individual students through interface patterns similar to Edupage, an educational software already well-known to them.
1. Ready-to-assign tasks and curriculum
Without putting effort into thorough lesson preparation, teachers can introduce the topics of Critical Thinking and Media Literacy into the curriculum
2.Flexibility
Teachers can opt for different degrees of implementation of our app into the teaching process. Either just simply let the app assign a Weekly Challenge, make use of discussion features, or even combine it with in-class discussion or other theory and activities:
3. Evaluation and progress tracking
Teachers can easily view and monitor progress of the whole class or individual students through interface patterns similar to Edupage, an educational software already well-known to them.
1. Ready-to-assign tasks and curriculum
Without putting effort into thorough lesson preparation, teachers can introduce the topics of Critical Thinking and Media Literacy into the curriculum
2.Flexibility
Teachers can opt for different degrees of implementation of our app into the teaching process. Either just simply let the app assign a Weekly Challenge, make use of discussion features, or even combine it with in-class discussion or other theory and activities:
3. Evaluation and progress tracking
Teachers can easily view and monitor progress of the whole class or individual students through interface patterns similar to Edupage, an educational software already well-known to them.