Creating a New Online Education Program

overview

The BeAM Learning & Innovation Studio is a network of maker spaces at UNC, where any student, staff, or faculty member can design and create things for school projects, entrepreneurial ventures, research, or fun.

Opened in 2015, the studio provides both access to digital and traditional fabrication tools (like 3D printers, laser cutters, and sewing machines) and materials (including 3D printer filament) at no cost to the user. The only requirement before making is to attend an in-person training session. Unfortunately, because of high demand and limited availability, their in-person training sessions are hard for students to get into. Due to the brevity of the training sessions, students also often require later onboarding. Overwhelmed by those eager to join the maker community, BeAM sought a solution to onboard new users faster and more effectively.

I worked as a design researcher and learning experience designer to help create a new online education program. Over the course of this project, I produced a variety of educational videos, redesigned the LMS experience, wrote practice-based online curriculum modules, created feedback loops, and developed formative and summative assessments to deliver data-driven insights.

This project ran from September 2019 to December 2019.

background

Originally, BeAM planned to hire a professional videographer to make instructional videos in coordination with the new curriculum. Unfortunately, due to budgetary restrictions, no position was created.

BeAM and I considered instructional videos of the tools, safety hazards, and the community of BeAM instrumental to user engagement. Qualitative interviews and student surveys also suggested that videos would contribute to fostering a sense of community during the online trainings, which might otherwise be missing. So, I volunteered my time to create them.

process

I used the iPads I had access to at my fellowship to create rough prototypes of the BeAM “Welcome to the Makerspace!” video, a video on safety hazards, and several GIFs of tool trainings. After I’d made prototypes, BeAM ordered a camera and tripod to create more professional videos.

results

The orientation and safety training videos were included in all online trainings. Archival footage of the maker space 3D tours (shot by the BeAM community) was included for panoramic shots. The program manager, Anna Engelke, and I collaborated on editing.

Audio was recorded on a Zoom H4N Pro Digital Multitrack Recorder and edited using Adobe Audition.

overview

Sakai, the learning management system used at UNC, was to be considered “highly visually unappealing” by stakeholders. Not only was it clunky and hard to navigate, it had few front-end editing capabilities – which wouldn’t be terrible, but that was in addition to poor back-end usability.

Though I tried “working with” Sakai for a few weeks, I quickly realized this dinosaur of an LMS was not a friend of visually attractive design, and so I took a more aggressive approach – creating almost all of the instructional materials, art, and landing pages on Adobe Illustrator, and only using Sakai functionalities for the development of assessment pieces. I used CSS/HTML to override native Sakai features.

role

Built and developed all the content for the online trainings, created art and other materials in Illustrator, conducted qualitative and quantitative research, created assessments, and leveraged design skills to make Sakai visually appealing.