A community-based learning platform that enhances the learning experience and social cohesion for college students in online education
OneCommune was designed with the goal of promoting social connections and interactions between college students. As an online learner, I noticed that the lack of in-person interaction often leads to a sense of social disconnection. To tackle this issue, I developed a platform that provides a sense of community and connectedness while learning online for learners.
Result
92%Â satisfaction rate for the developed features
100%Â of participants would like to see this concept further developed
Role
Research: User interview, Affinity mapping, Competitor analysis, Usability testing
Design: Ideation, Wireframing, Information architecture, Storyboarding, Prototyping
Team
Capstone Project
2 UX Designer
Tool
Duration
16 weeks
Background
Why this project?
Online college students often experience low motivation and engagement while learning remotely, which also leads the social disconnection from their peers and instructors
After the pandemic, online learning is drastically growing. Even though online learning is convenient and flexible, it still causes isolation, social disconnect, and loneliness for learners based on the survey, research, and secondary sources, especially, my personal experience as an online master’s program student at the University of Michigan.
Learning is an important journey in life that allows us to form friendships, connections, and networks. As online learning continues to grow, more and more people are turning to gain knowledge and skills through online education. While remote learning provides flexibility and convenience, it can also lead to isolation, social disconnect, and loneliness for online learners.
How to do?
✨ How might we help online students gain social connections with their peers in online education?
This project aimed to create an online learning environment that promotes a sense of community, engagement, and connection among students, thereby improving learners’ satisfaction, expectations, and motivations while learning remotely.
Hence, the object of this project focuses on the questions:
- How might we improve the engagement between the learners-to-learners and learners-to-instructors of learning remotely?
- How might we minimize the social disconnect while learning remotely
- How might we increase the social cohesion of learning online?
Discover
Dive deeper into what the root causes are
Current e-learning experience is task-oriented and doesn’t provide any casual moments for online students
I conducted 11 user interviews remotely with online students at the University of Michigan in order to better understand:
- How do online students deal with the sense of social disconnection and isolation?
- What motivates online students to continue learning remotely?
- What are online students’ expectations before taking the classes, and how much satisfaction do they have after completing the online courses?
Key Insights
Lack of peer interaction and collaboration
Many users lack the opportunity for casual interactions, engaging in-class activities, or having free time to connect with other participants
Desire a supportive learning community
Communication requires trust. However, limited opportunities for building this trust when peer interaction is missing. This makes it challenging to collaborate through teamwork even if e-learning courses include collaborative peer exercises
Mental health problems
Online students sitting in front of their computers without much social interaction may experience negative effects on their emotional well-being. The inability to showcase their personality may result in a diminished sense of belonging and impact their mood and motivation.
Explore what online learning marketplaces are offering
Large user bases of MOOC platforms offer supportive communities for online student engagement
All Interviewees mentioned before applying for online education, they compared various MOOC e-learning platforms between e-learning marketplaces and academic education based on factors such as cost, flexibility, and quality.
Top leading massive open online courses (MOOC) learning platforms have big user bases and formed spontaneous supportive communities and instant feedback to enhance engagement with online students. Therefore, I analyzed 5 top leading online learning platforms, including Coursera, Codecademy, edX, Udemy, and Skillshare in the market to identify potential opportunities and understand:
- What features do the platforms provide for students to enhance their engagement while learning online
Key Insights
Supportive communities
Building communities that make learners feel more engaged in online learning. It also provides opportunities for learners-to-learners and learners-to-instructors interactions.
Instant feedback
Providing instant feedback is one of the keys to helping learners keep learning. Students are eager to get responses as face-to-face talking, not sending out an email then waiting for a reply a few hours later.
Motivation-driven
E-learning was hard to stay focused and motivated to show up for class mentally. Their motivational challenges highlighted a sense of loss of competing priorities and simply feeling far away from their instructors and fellow students.
Ideation
How to trigger internal interests to engage with others
How might we HOOK online college students to connect with their peers in the same way as on-campus students?
I found that the key to helping students establish relationships with others is to spark their interest and motivate them to take action. To achieve this, I have decided to utilize The Hooked Model  to generate ideas.
Source: The Hooked Model
My teammate and I started generating ideas as much as we can on Miro, then, grouped ideas and formed three sections:
- The first section is about the user interface for triggering interest to provide casual interactions,
- The Second section is about the activity for increasing the occasions to offer the opportunity,
- The third section is the community for social cohesion to give the users a social community.
All the ideas are aimed in one direction, which is to allow students to express their personalities.
But, what solutions are the most important regarding the cost, urgency, or effective?
Prioritize solutions by feasibility and importance
We found it challenging to prioritize our solutions. To make an informed decision, we researched each idea to determine how much effort they would require. We also looked into existing concepts and features in the market and how they were integrated into the platform. After several discussions and consultations with instructors and professionals, we finally decided on the most worthy features to take action on. This process took us some time, but it was necessary to ensure we made the right choice.
Building a social community feature that allows students to have casual interactions like chatting, liking, and sending emojis would enhance the online learning experience by providing a sense of social cohesion among users.
Conceptualization
How exactly the idea work?
Conceptualize the idea by sketching the usage scenario
I put myself into online students’ shoes to imagine if am in a classroom, what scenarios I can see, and how would I interact with my peers or teachers. I discovered the key is I can sense others’ statuses, such as someone raising their hand, or someone handing out an assignment, etc.
I craft a storyboard describing an online student can see other classmates’ school-related statuses which can help them to trigger their interest for making interactions with each other
Sharing the current status provides the emotional feeling of observing other people’s activities
And, how exactly the user flows work?
Define the structure of the system and task flows
I analyzed each step involved in the process and refined them to determine the minimum number of steps required for a user to contact their peers and become a part of the community.
Information architecture
User flows
In the meantime, the screen, the layout, and every visual deliverable were evolving constantly
Design prototype to conceptualize the interactions
Iteration
Let's test it out!
Gather user satisfaction and feedback to evaluate the design
The initial evaluation involved interviewing 5 online learning students, aged between 23 to 29, consisting of 2 females and 3 males. Participants were given 2 scenarios and asked to perform 2 tasks
Firstly, I presented them with 2 scenarios and corresponding tasks on the 2 main features I designed. During this process, I observed their performance and asked them to use the think-aloud method, which allowed us to understand what was going through their minds while performing the tasks.
Secondly, upon completion of each task, the users rated the intuitiveness and helpfulness of the task flow on a scale of 1 to 5. 1 indicated that the task was unintuitive and unhelpful, while 5 indicated that the task was highly intuitive and helpful.
Lastly, I followed up with questions, such as asking for an explanation of their rating consideration or whether they had any suggestions for changes. This helped me to gain a better understanding of their perspective and any potential areas for improvement.
Final Design
After tons of tweaks...
Easy to connect with peers and increase engagement while learning online
Chat Feature
Seamlessly chat with classmates as you are in the same classroom with others
Reach out to others more effectively and by the school-related status showing below the name, users can easily open up a conversation as you and they are in a physical classroom.
Community Feature
Connect with students through supportive and interactive live community
Connect with others in the university by joining communities, participating in live workshops, and meeting other students who are in different programs as you.
Evaluation
When your efforts get paid
92% satisfaction was rated and users agreed that the design can facilitate better connections with their peers
For the final usability testing, participants gave these two features 4.4 and 4.6 for the chat feature, and 4.6 and 4.8 for the community feature. It was mutually agreed upon that these two features not only provide opportunities for students to connect and communicate with one another but also make it effortless to contact individuals they find intriguing.
Reflection
What I learnt
User research is the key 🔑
Through one of the user interviews, one interviewee mentioned that facial expressions helped her evoke emotional feelings when the video was on. This led me to realize the importance of allowing people to express themselves and form further connections. Hence, in this project, I was inspired to focus on how to let students naturally leak out some message, then trigger other peers’ interest to open up a conversation. In my opinion, user research is crucial for developing empathy towards the users. Adopting their viewpoint helps in addressing issues and gaining insights from them.
Dealing with uncertainty đź’
OneCommue is a concept project that tested my limits and self-confidence. Working on a project that had to dig deep to explore the uncertainty without a clear path forced me to learn to move forward with everything more effectively. By self-driven motivation, constantly asking driven questions to collect useful user feedback, and considering various scenarios to affect the design process. It’s given me the opportunity to learn more about myself and how design thinking trickles down into every aspect of life.
If I could do it again
Limitations could be beneficial đźš«
Looking back, I regret not testing out various layouts to determine the most efficient and effective flow for my project. Due to time constraints, I was only able to create two versions to validate. Fortunately, users found the structure I designed to be satisfactory and had no trouble completing tasks. However, additional constraints or requirements, like specific types of page layout, structure, or technical limitations that a business might have, could help move the project along more quickly. As a result, I believe that limitations can be advantageous for a project.