How can we make it easier for teachers to memorize their students names at the start of the year? How employing gamification and spaced repetition can help educators learn faster.
Contribution
UX reasearch
Visual design
Tools
Figma
Project
UX Challenge
With a global average class size of 24 students and some teachers teaching over 100 students a year the start of the year can be stressful time. During this time teachers are expected to learn all of their students names quickly on top of everything else.
In this self-directed project I looked at how an app could be used to help teachers in those first few weeks to memorize all their students.
Defining the target user base - User interviews and creating user archetypes
The first thing that I needed to know was what methods teachers were using and how much success they were finding with them. I spoke with teachers at various stages in their careers teaching at kindergarten to high school levels as well as those working in English language schools.
The findings of from my interviews revealed that most teachers relied on physical methods such as name tags and seating charts to help them memorize their students. It also revealed that it took on average 3 weeks to memorize 80% of students first names for teachers with over 100 students and 1~2 weeks for those with small classes.
The Newbie
Struggling to learn the ropes, making it hard to focus on name memorization.
The Mid Career
Has systems but struggles with taking teaching students from many classes.
The ESL Abroad
Struggling with the language barrier, making it hard to memorize names accurately
Defining methodologies - Combining user responses with the science of memory to create an app
After conducting user interviews I looked at what science says is the best way to memorize something. I could see many parallels between what the teachers were doing and what science suggested.
The three methods that I saw would be best to incorporate into the app were:
• Spaced Repetition
• Meaningful Connections
• Self Testing
Designing the experience - An SRS system that incorporates multiple forms of self testing with tried and true methods teachers have been using for years
The primary method this app employs is SRS with self testing to help teachers lock in those tricky names faster and avoid wasting time studying the ones they know.
Another feature is the seating plan. During the research phase almost all the teachers said they used a seating plan in the first months of class when learning their students names. The seatin plan feature allows teachers to create a virtual seating plan and test their recall of which students sit where.
Creating within constraints - Considering privacy laws when creating apps that use students names of students and their names
When starting this project I began with four questions:
1. How might we help to expedite the memorization of students names?
2. How might privacy laws hinder our efforts to design this experience?
3. Does this problem require a tech based solution?
4. How might we apply science based techniques to solve this problem?
Of all the questions, number two "How might privacy laws hinder our efforts to design this experience?" was the one that needed the most consideration. For this app to be fully utilized teachers would need access to full databases of their students photos. During the interviews I learned that several schools did hand out class lists that included photos. This leads me to believe that there is potential that this app could actually be made but there would probably need to be a consent form that went out from the school level.
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