Mission Graduate
Redesign of the program orientation for students at NYU Steinhardt’s ECT program
Note: Please visit the project website for a detail-documented workflow and presentation.
Project Introduction
Educational Communication and Technology (ECT) program is a graduate-level program in NYU's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. Each year, there are roughly 30 to 40 new graduate-level students from all over the world joining ECT to learn about cutting-edge technology and research from the cognitive and learning sciences as well as how to design digital learning tools for varied contexts.
Our team is focused on developing an interactive and inspiring orientation program to support newly admitted ECT Master students in preparing for their graduate experience, and equip them with necessary academic and professional skill sets, in order to build confidence for them to pursue their core values in their career path.
Timeline: Jan. 2021 - May 2021
Teammates: Samhita Tankala, Martin Charles, Qiran Sui
My roles: UX researcher, Website/Visual designer and Project manager
Scope and goals
While orientation practices vary across institutions, it is commonly understood that “students’ expectations of graduate school may be based on their previous undergraduate experience” (Rafael R. Almanzar, Rebecca Hapes, and Gail Rowe, 2018). An undergraduate experience is very different from a graduate one in a lot of ways.
We learned through an interview with ECT Program Director, Maaike Bouwmeester, that “graduate school is usually the first time where students are asked to take responsibility for their own learning” (M. Bouwmeester, personal communication, March 4, 2021). It is key for graduate students to take responsibility of their learning because graduate school has a dual socialization process which includes socialization into the graduate study as well as an academic discipline or profession (Poock, M., 2004). Self-directed learning allows students to integrate these two elements effectively. It allows learners to meet their individual learning needs, informed and guided by a critical analysis of prevailing social needs" and build skills for the professional world (Hammond & Collins, 2016, pg. 13). This is a big mindset transition for graduate students from their undergraduate experiences. How can we better prepare and scaffold ECT masters students, from the beginning of their experience, to feel empowered over their professional goals through the dual socialization process? How can we build their confidence and equip them with the necessary skills to be successful in graduate school and beyond? The problem is that graduate students aren’t effectively equipped with the skillset to feel confident and prepared from the start of graduate school. Our learning design can help bring clarity for ECT Masters students by helping them keep track of what they need to do to prepare for their first year as graduate students.
Design process
For this project, our team followed The Successive Approximation Model (SAM) which is an agile approach of instructional design that has an emphasis on rapid iterations during the process.
The Successive Approximation Model (SAM)
Iterative SAM
However, we did encounter some challenges along the way because of the "redesign" nature of our project. We found that the lack of research and analysis became a major challenge for our team that it took us several weeks to narrow down our scope of the project. Our ideal design process model (shown above on the right)for this project, in particular, would have an emphasis on iteration in the analysis and research phase, and a slight twist of the orders of the tasks during the development phase.
Agile project management
The word 'Agile' represents 'Rapid' and 'Respond To Change' and it will continue driving changes in all types of organizations, especially, software development. Given the time constraints, we have for this project, we adopt two design sprints for the final roll-out by the end of the semester. Each of us have multiple hats along the way, which mine are:
Visual Designer: design the project website, wireframing and prototype of the final product
Project Manager: organized weekly team meeting, took meeting notes and follow-ups with the teammates and professors
UX researcher: conducted primary research and user research including designing user survey, facilitating user testings
Learning goals and objectives
Goal 1: ECT students will be able to apply basic ECT knowledge and procedures so that they can effectively plan for their first year in graduate school.
Complete logistical tasks are given to students, by NYU, before the ECT program begins.
Complete self-paced resources for students to understand the workload and skills needed in the foundational courses before deciding semester course load
Create a personal checklist to review with advisors in their first meeting
Goal 2: By participating in a variety of learning activities and events, students will become integrated into the ECT student community so that they have a community support system when they join the program. Students are able to:
Build personal connections and relations with their peer cohort within the ECT community by a variety of online and offline activities
Develop an active and safe ECT community with students and faculty to discuss coursework, program or department or university logistics, ed tech resources
Design solutions
Our main goal for the ECT orientation experience is to support new students in applying basic ECT knowledge and procedures to effectively plan for their first year in graduate school while also integrating themselves into the ECT student community and developing a strong support system while in the program. Here is a list of activities that we defined as essential for students’ orientation experience:
NEW “ECT New student website”: After students accept their offer to begin studying with ECT, they receive an email via their personal and NYU emails with a link to the ECT New Student website.
Contents:
ECT logistics checklist: Students will be given a timeline and checklist of ECT logistical and communal tasks that they need to complete before classes begin.
Bite-size ECT logistics videos: Students will navigate and complete mandatory videos on course requirements and the registration process
Connecting learning theories and strategies:
Tell story
Show, don’t tell
Social & Informal Learning
Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Design
Students cohort Slack community: Students will sign up for ECT slack community, as well as explore and join specific channels for their cohorts. Slackbot (Donut) will be hired as an orientation buddy that assists and notify the students by sending out reminders and prompts to the tasks and assignment designed for the orientation.
Rationale: Our survey that was sent out to current first-year students illustrates that new students are generally confused on where to ask for assistance for levels of getting set up for graduate school. Slack is a tool that ECT began using in 2020 to help bring different communities together in an online platform. However, there are not currently Slack channels dedicated to new students to ask questions or find information. This makes it harder for new students to find the resources in the right place and at the right time in their orientation journey. New Student Slack channels can become a safe forum for ECT to provide relevant information to new students and answer questions in real-time. ECT can monitor the chat to see what types of questions and conversations to help current students and future students
Design product: New student cohort Slack channels
Connecting learning theories and strategies:
Learning community
Show, Don’t Tell
Ideas that are a part of the orientation experience while not being prototyped yet due to the time constraints:
Live orientation sessions/events: Students will sign up for the live orientation session, ECT new student check-ins, and at least one ECT student mixer within their first semester.
Design product: Interactive, collaborative Student Monthly Mixers (led by students) during the first semester of graduate school
Connecting learning theories and strategies:
Community of Practice
Social learning theory
Social constructivism
Meeting with the advisor: Students will create a checklist of items to talk about with their advisors using provided prompts
Design product: ECT new student and faculty Pulse Check-In Coffee Chat
End-of-Semester feedbacks: Students will provide feedback on their experiences in survey responses after each event and at the end of the semester check-in survey.
Prototype
Introducing "Orientation buddy" Donut
Donut is a powerful Slackbot that helps to introduce teammates for different purposes via direct message right in Slack. And it also helps with setting up reminders for the tasks, giving out tasks and assignments, and many other things. We are hiring Donut to help with:
Remind students what needs to be done for the orientation week
Usage of Watercooler - connect students with another cohort peer(s) or building connections!
Send out RSVPs and reminders for program orientations and events beyond
Giving out donuts!🍩
...many others!
Admin invites students of the Fall 2021 cohort into a channel and sends out prompts to guide the students to get familiar with each other and the ECT community
Donut, students’ orientation buddy, will be sending out reminders of the assigned tasks and assignment during the orientation period. Students have the option to mark it as “complete” or snooze the reminders.
With the help of Donut, students will finish each task assigned to them for orientation in an organized and systematic way.
“Watercooler” will be used as a tool to push students to start to engage and communicate with each other even before they meet each other in person or in class, as a way to promote an enhancement of a sense of belonging to the ECT community.
On the other side of Donut, it provides a tracking system that shows the admin the completion rate and related data for each reminder it sends out, which can also be seen as a mini LMS and evaluation tool for the entire experience. The admins can use Donut to:
Track students' processes of completing or dismissing the assigned tasks
Provide RSVPs and keep track of the participation rate versus the attendance for synchronous orientation activities such as Student Mixer or Live orientation session
Send out reminders of important deadlines of academic logistics to the new students (or the entire student population) to help to guide them through when the program just starts
Create opportunities for students to connect with each other informally by using Watercooler function and push them to start socializing.
Channel admins can schedule reminders and tasks to be sent out on a calendar base to all the students in the new-cohort channel
Admins can track students’ processes on completion of tasks and assignements, as well as RSVPs and so on.
ECT new students website revamping
In our new student website redesign, we included a landing page welcoming new students, the exploratory page where students are able to click into different topic areas essential to the new student experience (i.e. get connected, academic support, skills and other important information) and finally, we showcase videos and relevant resources that students are able to explore. Within the exploratory page, students have the option to click into the new student interactive checklist which helps learners monitor their preparation progress prior to joining the graduate school.
The purpose of the new student website re-design is to provide a more centralized area for all important information necessary for new students. The checklist and videos are aiming for helping new students complete the logistical and educational tasks that will help them succeed in planning for their first year. The website will include videos that show students how to connect with their peers through different tools like Slack. Through these videos, which are created by students and faculty, new students are also able to feel part of the community before their first day.
Instead of a step-by-step guide, through our design, new students are able to explore the necessities of their first year in a fun and engaging way based off their personal needs.
Future recommendations
We decide to conduct usability testing to test our prototype as a portion of the entire orientation experience with some ECT first-year students for the next round of iteration. Ideally, we would propose for a soft launch and pilot with the incoming new students coming Fall 2021.
This is a viable product that can be piloted this Fall semester with the help of ECT faculty with a soft launch. In order to do this successfully we recommend:
Meeting with Stakeholder over the summer to review design and feasibility
Identify resources that can be converted into short videos for the website
Confirm whether or not ECT can leverage Donut or another Slackbot
Identify student and faculty volunteers to provide feedback on the new asynchronous format for the fall semester