ATLAS

A teaching and learning system (SaaS & mobile applications) that utilize iBeacon technology to open new modes of communication between students and teachers, allow new paths of learning engagement in all physical learning spaces.

Released:

2019

Lead University:

Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Collaborating Universities:

The University of Hong Kong, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Baptist University, Lingnan University, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

My Role:

Entire design and development from conducting user researches, content design to final deliverable validation

Project aims

Developing a multi-platform application system for teaching and learning using BLE technology based on LBS to make the campus more “Smart”
Promote BYOD in the class
Implement classroom attendance checking system
Implement classroom response system
Encourage and support on the implementation of scenario-based learning
Better tracking on the performance of the students

Research methods performed

Persona analysis
User journey analysis
Focus groups
Interviews
Wireframe
Trial run
Pre- and Post- surveys

User understanding

Meeting with Educators

To understand the educators' needs in relation to functionality for the holistic system which will be developed, a sharing meeting was held.

18 educators from various backgrounds attended to discuss their perceptions of current learning spaces and technologies; Habits of current technology usage and teaching within learning spaces; Future requirements for technology in classrooms.

Educator Interviews

Interviews were conducted with 7 professors, digging into their teaching experiences challenges they had.

Moreover, their perception towards engaging new technologies into teaching and learning had been interviewed. Most of them had positive attitude towards technology in classroom, and would be interested to use them and be beneficial to their teaching.

During the interviews, we also discussed about their future needs in teaching, and expectations towards our system. They provided valuable insights of using new technology to help on their specific subject teaching.

Findings

After the meeting and interviews with educators, our team summarised the following findings which were valuable to our future development process:

Calculations, theories, and concepts are the three topics that students had frequently found challenging over the years.
All educators has experience in using technology to enhance their teaching efficiency.
More than half of our interviewees agreed limited in-class technology can enhance and benefit teaching and learning experience.
Classroom interaction should still be mainly carried out by human interaction.
Educators prefer to have movable furnitures in classroom, to facilitate flexible teaching environment.

User analysis

With the sharing from professors on their teaching experiences and interaction with students, I came up with the following matrix to define types of teachers and students. The following categorisation domains were with reference from the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) proposed by Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung's conceptual theory, and later constructed by two Americans, Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers.

From the four teacher types and four students types, I picked two opposite types from each identity for focusing on further design developments.

Four personas were developed for these four picked user types and would be defined as our user targets for future development.

Competitor analysis

Before getting started on defining system functionalities for our system, we had looked into different existing teaching and learning platforms, such as Blackboard, Canvas, LOCLY. Knowing their current services helped us to understand what the market is now serving our educators, what services did they get used to, and peek into their system expectations.

System Identity

With the name ATLAS, abbreviation of Augmented Teaching and Learning Advancement System, I designed a logo for our project. Since our platform would be a location-based system, I combined a globe, a location symbol and iBeacon signals as our project logo.

Technology analysis

To implement a location-based system, an indoor positioning technology must not be forgotten. iBeacon technology is developed by Apple Inc., utilising Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) devices to broadcast their identifier to nearby portable electronic devices, thus to enable indoor positioning in teaching and learning environment.

Among the three positioning methods existing in the market, trilateration, fingerprinting and proximity. Our technical development team conducted field assessment in all lecture rooms in HKPolyU and selected rooms in our partner universities.

Information architecture

Based on the insight from various analysis. System structure was developed for ATLAS for evaluation and future reference.

Functionalities

Summarising the expectations of professors, current teaching environment, communicated with our development team and understood the strengths and limitations of iBeacon technologies, we have the following functions in our system.

Different considerations were required for our team to go through every tiny bit of details before concluding how were we going to present these features. For example, we had to consider how to avoid students to cheat on our attendance recording features? How to define whether the student was inside the classroom or just receiving the iBeacon signal at the corridor? How to avoid students searching for answers when they are taking a test in ATLAS?

Structure map

Structure maps were created for our developer's tendering process, indicating our requirement and provide them a clear understanding of our system ideas.

There are different user scenarios when our students are using ATLAS. We defined two modes as use cases: online mode and offline mode, each mode has different contents available to show. While this online and offline is not referring to users' internet accessibility, but whether they are located in the classroom during class time (ie. being detected by our pre-installed beacons). Therefore, different structure maps were developed for one application.

System infrastructure

An ATLAS online portal was developed for both teachers and system administrators. It allows teachers to upload and organise their teaching materials. System administrators can operate and monitor and system status and oversee the whole system, helping teachers and students to solve their problem in case they come across one.

A smartphone application was developed in iOS and Android platform, allowing students to view their class materials as set by teachers.

iBeacon devices were deployed in every classroom. Therefore, students can only view certain materials once they are in the range of iBeacons signal. For example, they can only participate in the class quiz in the app only when they are inside the room.

User journey

Journey maps for our users were developed to help our team to obtain a better understanding of how our system would be used and their experience on them. Adopting new technologies in their teaching and learning process enable favourable experiences.

Wireframe and prototyping

Clickable mid-fidelity wireframe was created by myself through Adobe XD for development process, demonstrating the UI of student app, teacher CMS, administrator CMS and visitor app. The wireframes were then passed to our tendered developer for their further UI development.

After receiving their prototypes, we went through our internal user testing before developing the actual application, which targeted to be available for our first trial run in semester 1 (18/19).

User Test

We recruited professors to have eleven subjects from universities to participate in our pilot implementation. We planned different teaching materials and activities for their students to participate, which required them to try ATLAS.

Pre- and Post- survey were also conducted to all participated students and professors for collecting their opinions towards ATLAS.

Findings

Compare with professors, students are good at technology. Almost none of them had came across any problem during first-time use of ATLAS.
The iBeacon infrastructure needed to be enhanced for more stable signal and better user experience.
Both students' and professors' favourite ATLAS features is the attendance recording function, which save their on passing the attendance sheet around and do manual input after class.
Professors do not prefer to spend much time to learn a system, they let their assistants to do the preparation work instead.

After collecting students' and professors' opinions and suggestions, we made adjustments with the tendered development team and had another round of pilot implementation in semester 2 (18/19).