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Are parents efficient with the school's digital resources?
Are parents efficient with the school's digital resources?
A bilingual interactive eLearning experience
This project is a scenario-based eLearning experience designed and developed to help new parents at Education Française Austin (EFA), a Saturday French school, with the use of the school's custom Learning Management System.
Audience: Primarily new EFA parents, as well as seasoned EFA parents and EFA teachers.
Learning objective: EFA parents support their children's use of the school's digital resources for homework throughout the school year.
Responsibilities: Instructional design from conception to implementation.
Tools used for interactive prototype: Google Slide, Character Builder in Canva, draw.io, and Google Forms.
Tools used for full development: Articulate Storyline 360 (pre AI assisted), ttsmp3.com for lifelike AI voices.
The context
The context
EFA is a Saturday morning French school designed to maintain and develop French proficiency for the children of French bilingual families in Austin, TX.
EFA has developed its own Learning Management System (LMS). The families have access to a private website where they can find all kinds of school information and their children's class website(s). These class sites are used throughout the school year for class content, educational resources, homework assignments, and occasional virtual classes. Therefore, the EFA families must be comfortable accessing these class sites right from the start of the school year.
The problem
The problem
EFA is a supplemental, on-site school by design, as being immersed in a French-speaking environment on Saturdays greatly impacts the children's learning.
Nevertheless, EFA parents need to make the extra effort to access the Google-based EFA online resources to ensure their children get the full enrollment benefits and continue to improve their French.
EFA teachers often notice a correlation between how much the children participate positively in class and how regularly they do their homework, with some support when needed.
EFA parents need to access their children's class site(s) and do so throughout the year to support homework and other projects.
The solution
The solution
On the one hand, the parents need their children to easily access the EFA LMS online to follow up during the week with their assignments. On the other hand, the parents must ensure their children follow through every week by doing homework, with some help if needed.
In addition to environment-type initiatives already in place, I propose a scenario-based learning experience where parents can explore diverse attitudes and actions, potentially resulting in different outcomes for their children, while in a risk-free environment. Following Mayer's Personalization Principle, I will use a casual, friendly tone and create relatable and engaging characters.
Not every EFA parent is fluent in English, and some are not fluent in French, so the experience must be available in French and English.
My process
My process
As familiar as I am with the ADDIE model from my background in software development, to plan and create this learning experience with a working prototype, I used the Successive Approximation Model (SAM) of instructional design. This led me through an ongoing analysis, feedback, iteration, and testing process.
I analyzed the problem, identified the learning objective, mapped the main obstacles toward that objective, wrote a high-level storyboard, developed a visually engaging interactive prototype, evaluated the learning experience through learner evaluation, and finally fully developed the project.
The high-level storyboard
The high-level storyboard
Inspired by "Action Mapping" (Cathy Moore), I had identified the main factors preventing the EFA parents from using the EFA digital resources efficiently and already implemented some environment-type actions. This time, I prioritized the most important actions to highlight in the learning experience:
A) Introducing the story and protagonists: David, a relatable new EFA parent, and Jasmine a seasoned EFA parent in a mentoring role.
B) Understanding the importance of the EFA digital resources. This relies on an environment-type initiative already in place: the first homework for EFA students is a digital project.
C) Solving the technical difficulties. This relies on another environment-type initiative already in place: The way to connect to the EFA digital resources is emphasized at the back-to-school meeting and emailed to the parents.
D) Following up with using the EFA digital resources every week. This illustrates the most classic situations for EFA parents.
Then, with a specific story in mind, I wrote a high-level, text- and flow-based storyboard to isolate choices and consequences. As the learner goes through the scenario, they are presented with three choices: an ideal choice and two less smooth options.
Learners who choose the ideal action will see the positive consequences and continue through the scenario. If the learner chooses a less beneficial action, they will see a real-life negative consequence with varying severity.
If the learner needs help at any time, they have access to a mentor button that gives them advice from Jasmine, a seasoned EFA parent. This allows the learner to choose when they receive information instead of being forced to read information they may already know.
Curious learners can restart the learning experience to select different paths and explore other scenarios.
The process of storyboarding allowed me to create an authentic experience with genuine consequences that immerses the learner in the story to promote understanding, learning, and retention.
The prototype visual design
The prototype visual design
When I was confident that my storyboard laid out an engaging, learner-centered experience, I moved on to visual design. I wanted to quickly develop a functional prototype in Google Slide, using real-life backgrounds that EFA parents can relate to, and 2D characters. I used the Character Builder App in Canva for the characters. It was sufficient for the different poses and expressions, but the characters confused the learners: The characters looked too young, mainly the male one, so I gave him a beard.
My main objective was to include visuals and scenes that helped tell the story while maintaining a balance of verbal and visual information. For visual clarity (see Mayer's coherence principle), despite my characters referencing their children a lot, I chose only to show the two adult characters, and to use their expressions to convey the degree of ease in their different situations.
The interactive prototype
The interactive prototype
When building the prototype in Google Slide, I focused on ensuring correct navigation between the slides when the learner would click on something on the screen by only having the diverse "buttons" (forward arrow/mentor face/choice of action) be responsive. I also disabled the navigation menu, which usually appears at the bottom left corner of a Google slideshow. Nonetheless, people in the know can still click on the "PgUp" and "PgDn" arrows on their keyboards to browse the slideshow sequentially, bypassing the preordained navigation experience. It is a prototype!
From a visual design perspective, I ensured the mentor button was easily accessible by introducing it to the learner because people learn better when cues, that highlight the organization of the essential material, are added (see Mayer’s signaling principle).
Finally, I duplicated all the slides to have one set in French and one in English as not all the EFA parents would be familiar enough with English or French. Clicking the "Démarrer" button on the first slide launches the navigation between the slides in French, whereas the "Let's Start" button launches the one between the slides in English.
The feedback
The feedback
To start assessing the impact of the learning experience, I included an optional survey, in a Google Form at the end of the experience.
Some of its questions are directly inspired by Kirkpatrick's evaluation model and are meant to solidify the impact of the learning experience.
The full development
The full development
Once I had iterated enough through the Evaluation/Design/Development phases, thanks mostly to learners' feedback, I started the full development of the project with Articulate Storyline 360. The full development of this project was very rewarding.
I kept most of the basic interaction from the fully functional prototype with the following differences:
The characters were finally real-looking adults!
I added some backgrounds, mainly for the mentor Jasmine, grounding her in Austin, and reinforcing her relatability for EFA parents.
I used the Storyline states and layers, with a language variable to manage the bilingual experience. No duplicate slides here.
Visually, I created a more consistent look with only three colors: The blue and orange from the EFA logo to reinforce branding, and a rosy beige (extracted from the Mon EFA's site header) used for text and Storyline Player backgrounds.
I added very few animations/transitions, all related to the mentor's advice to stand it apart from the main navigation path, so as not to distract the learner from the story at hand. I paid special attention to the last mentor's advice as it serves as a "job aid" accessible from the last slide of the learning experience.
For a more comfortable learner experience, I added AI lifelike voiceovers for all the texts, appropriately in English or French, while still displaying the texts for better accessibility. If needed, the entire story can still be experienced without sound.
I wanted to add just a subtle way to show the most positive choices for the learner, as there is much to learn with the consequences when exploring the other choices. I experimented with hearts but some feedback suggested stars, like in the EFA logo.
I kept the same content for the feedback form I used for the prototype but adapted the header to match the visuals of the learning experience.
I added a simple progress bar using text, reference variables, triggers, and some JavaScript.
At first, I disabled the Storyline Player (while still using its custom background color), but I liked the idea of giving easy access to experiencing other choices and their consequences using a "meta-level" Previous button. It makes it more straightforward for the curious learner wanting to quickly explore all paths.
Using the Storyline Player opened the door to using the Resources menu to include the Chrome Profiles video recommended for EFA Parents this year, giving every advantage to new EFA Parents.
The follow-up
The follow-up
This experience having established David and Jasmine as relatable EFA members, their characters can be used further to introduce more detailed information or new topics throughout the year.
Ready to turn knowledge into action with learner-focused, effective learning experiences? Let's chat.
Ready to turn knowledge into action with learner-focused, effective learning experiences? Let's chat.
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