Gradebook Project
My first project at itslearning was improving the gradebook. Gradebook usage was low in the US and the company was losing out on tenders because the gradebook was not working for teachers.
The first question we faced was, why don't teachers in the US like the gradebook? Just from looking at it we had some assumptions but we wanted to confirm those and figure out better solutions.
An image of the old gradebook with an example of the clunky workflow.
We talked to as many customers as we could. We conducted remote sessions and flew to districts over in Texas and Indiana to talk to teachers in person. We conducted user interviews with teacher, students and admins to get a good perspective of the challenges that each group faces. We made sure they brought their computers with them so they could show us exactly what they were talking about. We were conscious that what users say does not always reflect their behavior so being able to show us how they use the platform was important.
Our main findings were that the gradebook did not allow teachers to edit their grades easily enough, they had a difficult time identifying which students were most in need of intervention and that it was a pain to transfer all of the grades into the student information system, the final destination for grades.
You can get a more detailed look at what we found in our research summary here.
Cover page for our research summary. Take a closer look here.
Design Iteration
Early wireframe of the improved gradebook.
The priorities were to make it easier for teachers to add or edit a grade and to remove the excessive and confusing number of options at the top of the screen. We checked usage tracking and checked feedback to figure out which controls were the least used. Most of the options within the “Action” dropdown were not well used, which may have been due to the vagueness of the label.
It was important to allow teachers to quickly add and edit grades as well as exempt students, label work as late or forgive lateness. Initially, the design also included a way for teachers to leave a comment on work from the gradebook. Although teachers likely would have liked this feature based on our user interviews the team was never able to implement a comment feature. The visuals were also updated to better reflect itslearning’s new UI.
One of the challenges was the amount of options needed at the top of the screen. Legacy features that were still in use by customers made this necessary as well as maintaining consistency with other pages in the platform. We knew teachers wanted to see as much information as possible in one view. I believed it important to allow teachers to scroll down to the bottom of the page and have the top row remain in view so teachers know which assessments they are viewing.
Usability testing
UI for batch grading. This feature ultimately ended up getting heavily modified due to usability testing results.
I visited several schools to conduct user testing sessions with teachers. Teachers found the main workflows like grading, exempting and assigning work as late to be intuitive.
The one area where we kept faltering in our tests was an area called batch grading. One of our goals was to help teachers grade more quickly. The batch grading feature allowed teachers to instantly grade a group of students which they could filter by course group or by assessment status (turned in late, overdue etc.).
The problem we discovered was that teachers were confused because they didn't really need such a robust feature. What they really needed was a way to quickly jolt their students who hadn't done their work. Teachers wanted to give their students zeroes more quickly! Teachers were reporting that up to 40% of their students would not hand in their work on time so a big part of their job was reminding those students to hurry up and turn it in.
Learning this I made the decision that even though the UI for batch grading looked impressive it was too complex and unnecessary for what teachers actually needed to do. Instead, we implemented the option "Ungraded = 0" into the menu for each assessment. This took care of the main use case and was relatively easy to implement.
UI Design
The final design for the gradebook
The design for the standards based version of the gradebook
The new design for the gradebook includes easy editing for grades on the page, a less cluttered toolbar, a way to add comments directly from the gradebook, indicators on which assignments have been turned in/are late, and reporting on how each student has fared throughout the term.
Results
When the new gradebook was released we measured the success through two indicators.
Is it still a roadblock in getting new customers?
How often does it come up as a favorite feature?
Previously, the gradebook had been mentioned as a major roadblock in getting new customers. It consistently came up as a reason why teachers did not like the platform. After the release, it was no longer seen as a roadblock to potential customers and existing customers who had grade passback began listing it as one of their favorite features in itslearning on our annual satisfaction surveys.