Reimagine Remote Education
- Designing a personalized learning experience from home
Overview
New School SF is a tuition-free K-12 charter school currently serving K-8. The core values of the school are Inquiry, Equity, and Personalized Learning. 50% of the incoming students will be eligible for the Free or Reduced Priced Lunch program.
We were approached by New School to understand how the school calendar and schedule could potentially be redesigned to improve academic equity, especially the summer slide that happened after school breaks.
Our final design includes with a new school calendar model that will be implemented in the school and a new take-home package system that can supplement remote learning during school breaks.
adviser
team nü
Kush Dave
Monica Poddar
Tess Hannel
Wilson Wu
contributions
Aligning Project Scope, Research+Interview+Case Study, Steering Project Direction
poc at New school sF
duration
6 months
skills
Stakeholder Analysis, Remote User Research, System Modeling, Service Blueprint, Figma, Miro
team value
Research with Empathy
Strive to understand where families are coming from and what their goals are.
Frame with Inquiry
Synthesize data with an open mind and without bias.
Design with Intent
Create purposefully, armed with research and insights.
Test with Patience
Prototype with families' best interests in mind and keep iterating.
Approach
We approached the project with a dedicated plan of research, ideation, and prototyping. Our process started with discovering the stakeholders' values, continued with defining their needs, and landed with prioritized design prototypes.
comprehend the situation
We started the project by understanding our partner through various systematic thinking tools.
Stakeholder Analysis:
To identify key stakeholders in the school network and the information flow regarding function, finance, emotion, identity, and meaning.
Iceberg Modeling:
To uncover the hidden mental models by laddering the structure, pattern, and event-level above it.
Waveline Mapping:
To outline the key variations through the emotional journeys for three types of families.
research overview
We utilized a combination of various research methods to gather a comprehensive understanding of all stakeholders' perspectives.
Including:
Comparative Analysis:
3 Case Studies of Modified Calendar
2x2 Mapping Exercise:
For New School SF Leadership Team
Interview:
2 Expert Interviews
6 Staff Interviews
3 Parent Interviews
remote collaborating
COVID happened in the middle of our research and we were forced to shift our collaboration completely online.
The seemingly difficulty did not stop us from pushing forward our project. We quickly adapted to the unprecedented situation and continued the research via different tools like Figma, Miro, Zoom.
synthesis research data
The data gathered from all our research provided a solid foundation for insight generation. We used affinity mapping for each stakeholder group and sorted the quotes into themes.
After multiple rounds of iteration, we arrived at our four main insights and one opportunity statement.
Key insights
Academic Equity
An effective approach to academic equity that represents New School’s principles of autonomy and agency should be based on choice and flexibility, instead of imposition.
Remote Learning
Without the physical environment of a school, teachers are redefining what it means to give and receive feedback — for both themselves and their students.
Learning Over Breaks
Varying expectations about vacation make it difficult for New School to implement a systematic approach to learning over breaks.
Modified Calendar
A calendar redesign should also be focused on exploring ways to effectively use the break time to supplement student learning.
opportunity
"How might we extend the New School’s approach of personalized, inquiry-based learning into school breaks in order to improve academic equity?"
prioritization
Migration towards a balanced calendar contains hard work on many aspects. We as a team of designers decided to focus on ideation the breaktime utilization as part of our proposal.
ideation
Modular and personalized intersessions during break times from school.
A comprehensive tool for teachers to create and manage intersession learning plans.
A custom take-home package for each student to enable their intersession learning plan.
storyboard
We used a storyboard to communicate the idea visually to our partner at New School SF.
theory of change
Desired Outcome
Ease the academic slide for students during breaks.
Inputs
For students: Personalized intersessions and take-home packages
For teachers: Tool to create and manage intersession learning
Outputs
Better feedback from teachers during break time
Social-emotional learning + Inquiry-based learning + Better collaboration
Measurement
Better student engagement during remote learning
Improvement in student performance across grades and demographics
proposed calendar model
Our team also assisted in designing a the new calendar model presentation that conveys the key research learning for parents.
proposal for new school sf
Summer 2020
Co-design and develop take-home packages prototype
Fall 2020
Evaluate packages
Explore alternate calendar options
Co-design in-person intersessions
2021
Implement the redesigned calendar in New School
2025
Inspire city-wide and nation-wide schools with our calendar model
Reflection
The project faced critical challenges from COVID not just on our modes of working, but also on our project focus. While the initial goal was to redesign the calendar, we targeted specifically the take-home package and the packages ended up critical for the remote learning situation amid COVID. The process was a huge learning experience for me in terms of conducting remote research and also rapidly shifting gears against challenges. These insights are undoubtedly beneficial to a designer in a rapidly changing world today.