K-12 Classroom Platform
Gale In Context: For Educators K-12 Course Platform
Project
Education, K-12, Curriculum, Classroom, Courseware, ELA, Social Studies
Domain
Ideation, requirement definition, research, design, testing, scoping
My Role
Project Time
18 months
‘Project Passport’ is an attempt to establish Gale, a top library database provider, as a top 10 K-12 core curriculum brand with it’s existing product suite, In Context. In Context has a wide customer base within libraries and has begun to make inroads into the classroom with In Context For Educators (ICFE). Core curriculum for K-12 classrooms is a $9 billion market which Gale has captured none of, being currently relegated to competing for a significantly smaller supplemental curriculum market. The creation of a curriculum delivery platform for the In Context suite is a required step on the road to capturing a piece of that market.
A teacher browses available lessons within the first section of a unit on Frankenstein
Problem Space
The K-12 classroom is a crowded market with a few well-known technology touch-points and plethora of newer entrants. Gale’s library research databases provide a depth of content that few match but isn’t well know outside the library. In Context For Educators is a curriculum discovery and management layer which sits atop 9 In Context research databases. Teachers can search across all their In Context holdings using keyword, subject, reading level or alignment to curriculum standards. They can save and organize content within folders and link students to content or folders.
However, the process of managing and sharing folders wasn’t meeting teacher needs. Gale’s text content was both inflexible and non-interactive at a time when teachers highly value flexibility and interactivity. Our solution to the user problems we encountered revolved around three main facets: Creating assignable lessons with digital activities, building a roster-based class and enabling AI-leveling of Gale content.
Problem #1
Teachers can’t easily assign content in a familiar way
ICFE uses a folder-based system to support content organization, collaboration and sharing content with students. All major learning management systems (LMS) use a familiar class structure which teachers are acclimated to and most teacher’s expectations were synced to Google Classroom
Problem #2
Digital activities are a classroom norm Gale lacks
Gale’s content is primarily texts that feature few ways to assess learning. The baseline teacher expectation is engaging content coupled with methods of assessing student learning. Activities need to be ‘bite-sized’ and easy to slot into an existing lesson plan.
Problem #3
One size doesn’t fit all students
Gale’s current customers are citing lack of differentiation support in it’s databases as a barrier to wider classroom adoption. Teachers must provide a wide range of accommodation for students with disabilities including differentiated reading levels and time extensions.
Exploratory Research
I began with a dozen interviews with middle and high school teachers in social studies and English language arts roles. My goal was to gain a sense of their curriculum planning workflow, administrative requirements and how they used technology in their classroom.
After building a better understanding of their context, I collaborated with the content team to design several potential workflows through which teachers could find and assign content. These designs formed the backbone of a second set of interviews which provided a deep enough knowledge base to begin creating personas.
Persona Building
I created 20+ personas covering teachers, students, administrators and support staff. I facilitated ~12 hours of discussion, iteration and prioritizing of these into a person map that the whole team felt ownership of. The presence of our content strategists, a pair of former teachers, provided valuable perspective throughout that process.
Our top teacher personas were those with several years of experience and goals related to curriculum alignment and learning disability accommodation. The primary student persona is a C student, motivated by athletics and frequently using our product on his phone.
Left to right: Persona map featuring teacher, student and customer roles, student persona, teacher persona
Design and Iteration
Over the next 4 months, I collaborated with my Sr. UX Designer to create and test multiple approaches for dozens of unique pages and features supporting class creation, finding and assigning digital activities and student and grade management. I conducted 30+ usability tests with teachers and students in 4 phases separated by design iteration.
We learned valuable lessons about the priorities, values and skills that each group brought with them and applied those lessons to increase ease of use by decreasing cognitive load. The end result is a product design with a delightful visual appeal on top of a set of polished workflows for both teacher and student.
A page of curated lessons and resources from the start of a unit on Frankenstein
An overview of the activities available within a lesson including a 'teacher edition' style view
A gallery walk activity from the student's point of view
The student's list of assignments to be done for their ELA class
The teacher's view of all the activities assigned to a specific class
Content Collaboration
The project required the creation of a significant amount of content, so the team included 2 full-time curriculum strategists for ELA and social studies. Based on prior experiences, I identified collaboration with the curriculum strategist roles as critical to the success of the design process. From the inception of the project, I invited the strategists to our design sprints, research interviews, and design reviews. They helped craft personas and watched users interact with the sample content they created.
We formed a tight feedback loop, working through UI requirements, business requirements and technical feasibility. The end result was content which fit into the visual design smoothly, instead of as a square peg jammed into a round hole. The team's confidence that we had gotten the content 'right' was extremely high and as the final requirements were written, content engineering and development encountered no feasibility surprises.
Scoping and Requirements
After working closely with Product and Development teams, it was determined that the initial project scope wasn’t viable due to it’s large development estimate. I collaborated with the Product Manager to de-scope the project from a multi-year effort into one that could be accomplished in 10 months. I worked to ensure the scope encompassed all critical user flows and advised which parts of the scope had the highest user impact.
While no designer loves de-scoping features they believe in, I believe the aim of a designer shouldn’t be to deliver a ‘perfect’ design. Building software is a messy, complex process and designers own a slice of the responsibility to deliver working software within time, budget and technology constraints. In my mind, the ‘perfect’ design is one that can be delivered within those constraints.