Teachr

2020

Role
UX/UI Designer
Team
Ilan Rotenberg - Product Manager
Femi Oluwatola - Software Engineer
Length
5 weeks

In an effort to make grading oral assignments more efficient, my team re-imagined the traditional marking process of teachers struggling to keep track of numerous student rubrics, assessment criteria, while marking on the spot.

Teachr is much more than just a digital rubric, but enables teachers to quickly switch between students who are being assessed, provide quick feedback, and a final grade - all on one page.

Problem


Teachers have two options when marking oral assignments. On the spot, while trying to keep track of multiple students at the same time. Or recording and watching at a later time, making it a more tedious task. Both ways take up time and result in potential inaccuracies. Effectiveness and time value at the core of this problem, we found a solution that tackled these problems.

Inability to mark multiple students effectively at one time

When conducting group discussions, teachers would have numerous tabs open or paper rubrics in front of them, and would hastily flip between them to mark students in real time. This results in teachers not being able to provide enough attention in real time to engage with students or having a halo effect when marking different criteria sections (Knowledge, Thinking, Communication, Application).


Unable to provide adequate feedback

Due to multi-tasking, teachers have to quickly mark multiple students and provide feedback for improvement. However, because they are marking in real time, can only give simple and short notes which may lack enough context for the student.


Time consuming

Teachers, who do some marking in real time but record and re-listen to the whole discussion at a later period give up crucial time as they have the ability to pause and continue - making marking more tedious, and adds on to their big stack of other assignments to mark after hours.

Target Audience

Majority of teacher’s face the seemingly endless task of marking, and are interested it making it easier. Since out focus was on oral assignments, our target audiences for this tool range from elementary to high school who tend to assign these presentations more often.

Original Concept



We created a flow that would allow teachers to do all their marking tasks within the tool. However, through user tests, we soon realized, users were clicking too many buttons and unsure of where each option led them.

Early Designs



Following the original flow, I gave teachers a few options when first opening up the tool, but had the focus solely on the rubric. This didn't tackle the problems teachers were genuinely facing.

Iterations

Numerous user tests allowed us to understand that teachers were looking to do most of their marking work on one page. I originally thought I landed on the final design of keeping the rubric spanning the full width of the page. Soon realized I had to account for potential groups larger than 5 students. This was adapted in the final designs.

Final Designs



The final designs consist of a more effective and efficient user flow, where users can mark multiple students on the spot, provide feedback, and a final grade all in one place.

Simple assessment & group selection

Teachers were able to quickly select the type of assessment and the specific student group they needed to evaluate prior to beginning to mark.

Condensed rubric for quick access to all information

Shortening rubric criteria statements enables teachers to have a full student list on the same page if necessary

Provide feedback and final grades in one place

While marking, teachers are able to provide notes on the fly and enter in a final grade all on the same page. Marking is finished, teachers can exit or export the grades.

Takeaways & Next Steps