Development of the Proposal

Below is my updated proposal featuring the changes I have made in Red. The main outline of my changes were that i needed to add in more detail regarding my audience and then break down the phases of my research

What is the intended idea / concept behind the proposed project?

Design new ways of students to learn during tutored time and individual study, to encourage students to carry out the extended reading and also to take an active part in seminars, whilst keeping studying efficient and rewarding.

Justify the idea / concept in terms of the needs for its existence (if purely for entertainment, state this and how the output will be innovative/original and creative):

The project’s main goal is to support education whilst incorporating the idea of gamification and playbour in learning at a university level standard.

It is needed as majority of lectures are delivered verbally with little visual cues. Studied carried out found that only 10% of students find this method effective. So creating the obvious need for a service that caters to the other 90% (Tyne, J, 2015) of students who may learn from visual cues or active participation.

  • Tyne, J. (2015) Fifty percent of students fall into kinaesthetic learning category. Suffolk: Wizelearning. Available from  http://www.wizelearning.org/2014/05/kinaesthetic-auditory-visual-learning-styles-for-children/ [accessed 13 December] 

The intended final project will be innovative as it is building upon the currently existing university service that is in place called ‘Blackboard’ it develops on this by making the experience much more user friendly and personal to the individual. This will be done by including Required Reading, Assessments deadlines / Grades, Weekly Timetable, Email, progress graphs, Modules information, colour customization options, easy to use home page with all aspects of university life such as.

Describe the intended audience:

The intended target audience for this project is University students across the United Kingdom of either gender ranging from their first year to the last (including students undertaking; Masters and PhD). The project is also aimed at the majority of courses catered at university. Most of the target audience will be technology literate as the audience have grown up with the Internet and are accustomed to technology.

How will this project extend your or your team’s creative and technical skills?

This project will extend my skills, as I will experiment with new ways to showcase my project using new techniques I have learnt in workshops and lectures such as 3D illustration and in situational presentation. It will also push my creativity as I am tasked with designing a new and exciting project that is heavily influenced by modern culture. The design will be centered on the target audience through the use of detailed user interface (UI). In addition to this User Experience will also be considered (UX).

Outline how the practical work will be carried out by you / the team (division of labour) and the time-scales involved for each task:

I will create all practical work. This will be accomplished by using software included in the Adobe Creative Cloud package such as Photoshop, After Effects and potentially the use of Dreamweaver. The use of these software is so that I can achieve a professional and other people can get a clear understanding of the project.

Phase 1 –Research

  • Research into topic,
  • Research around existing products

Phase 2 – Development

  • Concepts development
  • Colour scheme
  • Progressive variations

Phase 3 – Design/ Presentation

  • Utilizing existing Photoshop templates of phones and computers
  • Presentation versions.

What other work (by animators, designers, film-makers, writers, digital media producers, etc.) is relevant to your project? (This work may either be relevant for its conceptual or technical similarity):

Example of existing that either inspired or helped me develop my idea further include, Blackboard as it enabled me to build upon some of the existing features it offers. In addition to this Adobe generations also appealed to me in how they use the online lectures and live chat functionality to which creates the lectures environment from the space of someone’s own bedroom. Finally I found the design style of Tweet Deck to be appealing in it very simplistic and easy to use design style with consistent live updates.

List any critical texts that are relevant to your conceptual intentions:

The European Youth Award was a key text in helping me choose the category smart learning, which started off the basis of my research.

The manual of Learning style by Honey. B and Mumford. A allowed me to get a greater understanding of the different learning styles critical to my research.

Hollingworth S, Allen K, Kuyok K A, Williams K (2009) The influence of new media technologies used in learning on young people’s career aspirations

Was vital in the research of new media technologies used in education.

Gamification

For my project  I would like to incorporate the idea of gamification into my design as this will encourage friendly competition between students. In-addition to this it will also promote individual development and motivation.

I plan on using it in my own work as way of after each seminar or required reading, a small multiple choice quiz will need to be carried out to count towards completion. The results of these quiz’s will be available to the individual and the subject tutor. The class results will also be combined into an average so that then even further competition between seminar groups can occur.

An infographic regarding Gamification in education which shows a timeline of the develop of technology and how it has had an effect on learning.

gamification-education

I found a TED talk that summarises gamification really well it features american game designer Jane McGonigal talking about how games can be used in education.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-mc9Rrfs00

Sources

http://ed.ted.com/on/uk36wtoi

https://www.knewton.com/infographics/gamification-education/

 

 

Budgeting for my Project

One of the Aspects i had to look at was how much this project would cost if i was to make it as a real product. Before university i had never really needed to use budgeting to this extent. I do feel that I have learnt a considerable amount on the value of money and how the exchange of labour costs in a business mentality.

When producing my budget plan I discovered that i need to make sure my programer is paid more than the developer as programmers tend to be more in demand as they have a much higher skill level. I also made sure to maintain a flat percentage of 5-10% to ensure profit and also a percentage to ensure that developers and programmers are paid ontime and in full

[click image to enlarge image]

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Schedule

Marketing & Audience

After some careful research i have found that the best way to market Uni-Verse would be to take it to an education expoistion  such as ‘The Education Show’ a stand at a fair like this would be vital to marketing as it would put the name out to relevant audiences on a   large scale. In addition to this magazine advertising such as ‘Education Today’ would also be a beneficial as once again it is an easy way to engage with the relevant target audience all at once.

http://www.education-show.com/?utm_source=Google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=EdShow_16_Visprom_Product&utm_term=education%20expo&gclid=CjwKEAiA04S3BRCYteOr6b-roSUSJABE1-6BG6FC2DI7D5KwT9vC8Izu2VOupCHIuRtYqNxaZUu0khoCCLLw_wcB

http://www.education-today.co.uk/

Critical Review – Blackboard

Blackboard is a students portal used by many universities, It is a central dashboard where students can access area of relevance such as module information, their timetable  and submit and receive feedback on assessments.

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I found an Article that critically reviews the Pros and Cons of blackboard in a high level of detail.  These were quoted from “Trust Radius’s” website which is a well known service provider designed for reviewing business software.

Blackboard Pros

  • Gradebook management. Although it seems many instructors do not use the advanced features of the grade book, it does a good job of organising and tracking assignments created within the LMS and those that exist outside (but must be accounted for in the grading scheme).
  • Document management. Covers all the basics of making resources available for students to access. Submitting documents tends to work well, although sometimes the interface experiences difficulty with larger files.
  • Student communications. Email especially (of course), but the Announcements feature is also used quite often to good effect. The scheduling of announcements is a handy feature.
  • Course modules. Not a particularly popular feature, but the ability to setup modules within a course helps to keep things better organised for students to experience. Rather than dumping materials into many folders, the modules system helps guide students through the content as the instructor intends for them to do.

Blackboard Cons

  • Overall interface design and layout. Other LMSs (such as Canvas) have a much more modern, evolved, and intuitive interface. The UI of Blackboard seems to be a patchwork of feature areas without a consistent experience throughout. In particular, instructors have a different view of many areas (e.g., the grade book and assignment uploads) than do the students, which causes some confusion.
  • Feature creep. Granted, a value point of Blackboard are the plethora of features available, but most instructors in my experience (including myself) seldom go beyond the basics. There seems to be just too many “buttons and levers” presented to the users all at once — like a power plant control room.
  • Feature latency with other providers. Again, it seems Blackboard is slow to evolve in keeping up with the refinements of other LMSs. This doesn’t mean more features, but improving the core competencies that make for an LMS that should be a pleasure to use. Colleagues at other institutions talk about features in their LMSs that Blackboard either does not yet have or did a hurried job of implementing.
  • Learning curve. Beyond the basics, the learning curve of Blackboard can be quite steep, especially for users who have some hesitancy with learning new technologies. Even for savvy users, the curve can be daunting when digging into some of the advanced features.
What can be improved

Aspects that i personally think could be improved start with an easier to use user interface as this would make students more likely to use the website and App.  The use of a collaborative shared space system similar to google drive as blackboard has tried to accomplish this but to limited effect. Google drive online storage space is extremely useful for students carrying out creative courses as a-lot of files that have large file sizes so online cloud storage becomes useful, Google drives other feature which is its option to share work with other people in real time is a feature that comes in handy for group work.  Finally the option to tweak colour themes to suit the user personal preference similar to a better Ui, having the option to tweak colour schemes will persuade students to use the service more if they feel that its personal to themselves.

How i’m going to use the data to further research and design (inform my own work)

The use of Dashboard is important to me as a i find the idea of having  a page where all information can be accessed is a useful feature in relation to Ui design. Ui design is very important as one of the main selling points that my project prides itself on is its intuitive and simplistic design.

 

Sources:

https://blackboard.lincoln.ac.uk/webapps/portal/execute/tabs/tabAction?tab_tab_group_id=_38_1

https://www.trustradius.com/reviews/blackboard-2014-02-18-10-45-37

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