Teaching by Proxy
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際際滷s from my talk at Interaction16's Education Summit about redesigning General Assembly's part time User Experience Design curriculum to increase the likelihood of student and instructor success.
Teaching by Proxy
- 1. Teaching by Proxy Redesigning General Assemblys part-time UXD curriculum to increase the likelihood of student and instructor success Jessica Greco @grecasaurus
- 2. How I redesigned a design curriculum
- 3. Jess Greco Independent UX Consultant
- 4. Jess Greco Independent UX Consultant Instructor @ General Assembly
- 5. What is General Assembly? An educational company that helps people pursue meaningful work by teaching the most current and in-demand skills.
- 6. 15 locations across 4 continents Design, Programming, Data Science, Product Management
- 7. Fall 2015
- 8. The Course Part-time User Experience Design (UXD) course Project-based learning experience Aims to train the next wave of experience designers Taught by practicing designers
- 9. Thousands take the UXD course every year Wide variety of skill sets and career goals Theyre all committed to making a change The Students
- 10. Why refresh the curriculum at all?
- 11. Students and instructors were asking for schedules that were easier to fit into their busy lives Students found long evening lectures to be tiring First-time instructors found that the bare-bones curriculum required a lot of customization Lots of variation in student feedback across locations and instructors Challenges
- 12. Mark Graveline Product Manager Julie Kerner Instructional Designer Aaron Neeley SME Pre-Work Roxanne Mustafa SME Homework Jess Greco Lead SME Lesson Planning The Team
- 13. 1. Bring student feedback scores up 2. Decrease lecture time; increase class time for activities 3. Make the course easier for new instructors to teach 4. Adapt to the shortened timeframe of the course Goals
- 14. It is hard to design a curriculum, but its even harder for students to redesign their lives. Students faced unique challenges
- 15. Students needed to trust theyre getting the best education possible, regardless of location or instructor. 皚
- 16. Students also struggled to relate what they learned in class to the real world.
- 17. Could the classroom experience better reflect what its really like to work as a designer?
- 18. Being a great designer isnt the same as being a great instructor. Instructors had different challenges
- 19. How could we help instructors help their students more effectively?
- 20. Its important to leave instructors the space to share their unique experiences.
- 21. What We Did
- 22. The biggest challenge students faced was taking in feedback and then actually taking action. We switched to an iterative, sprint-based course structure. ゐ #1
- 23. Iteration 1: Learn the process and theory behind design thinking on a practice project. Develop a hypothesis about a topic of students choosing and validate it. Refine the concept, and the interface itself, then validate again. Iteration 2: Iteration 3: 10 weeks of 3+ iterations
- 24. Working iteratively pushed students to validate early and often. @grecasaurus
- 25. Students became more comfortable working in quick, imperfect cycles.
- 26. Students had a hard time staying focused during lectures, especially after a long day of work. We flipped the classroom. #2
- 27. CLASS TIME (2 hours) HOMEWORK (varies) Concepts + Lecture Time Practice Activities Work on Personal Project Old Curriculum
- 28. CLASS TIME (2 hours) HOMEWORK (varies) CLASS TIME (2 hours)PRE-WORK (1 hour) HOMEWORK Concepts + Lecture Time Practice Activities Work on Personal Project Old Curriculum New Curriculum
- 29. Sometimes the hardest part is having the confidence to just begin. @grecasaurus
- 30. Students found the time spent on activities really helpful. When teaching creative people, talking is rarely enough. We created fun learning activities for each lesson, and facilitation guidelines to match. #3
- 31. Its easy to forget how much your students dont know.
- 32. students are creating their own knowledge through experiments and learning to make decisions
- 33. this shifts the conversation from opinion-driven decisions to an evidence-based rationale
- 34. Expanding topics (like user research synthesis, design patterns, responsive and native mobile design, motion and gestures) better prepares students to work as designers. We updated the content to teach the most relevant topics. #4
- 35. Supplemental content also helps resolve common challenges. Developing the voice & tone of a project Not enough storytelling: onboarding, microcopy Lack of value: Hooked model for habit formation Lack of simplicity: decision fatigue
- 36. We spent time learning software. Students kept asking to spend time learning Sketch and Invision. #5
- 37. Spending time on software leveled the playing field for those without prior experience.
- 38. This was completed in eight weeks.
- 39. Was the pace too fast? too slow? Did we spend enough time on each topic? Was the content useful? Did the activities make sense together? Would this actually improve anything? I hoped it all made sense
- 40. Then I was asked to teach the pilot course.
- 42. By Week 8, my students were so much further ahead than expected. It was nice to reach out for help while working in class and get instant feedback.
- 43. Their feedback reflected a newfound confidence. It felt like what I would be doing at a job.
- 44. Positive student feedback has increased by 51% Based on the 8 classes that have completed since Nov 2015
- 45. students felt happier and more confident
- 47. Dont spoon feed your students the answers. Let them create their own complexity and then resolve it. Make it real without the risk. Lesson 1
- 48. Question your assumptions about what needs to be taught when. Skills are learned quickly, but developed over time. Lesson 2
- 49. Provide enough context for instructors to understand what theyre doing, so they can learn to improvise in the future. Instructors (might) need guidance too. Lesson 3
- 50. Being a designer is about working quickly and purposefully to validate solutions, not just sitting at a desk. Teach the process by doing the process. Repeatedly. Lesson 4
- 51. You cant avoid teaching a topic even though you personally may not enjoy it. Planning and teaching can be a tool for self-reflection. Lesson 5
- 52. The way design is taught is evolving
- 53. Making decisions + Explaining why that decision was made
- 54. Help students navigate uncertainty, without resolving it for them.