Assignment 4: Improving learning experience in LTs
In this "nightmare" assignment, we were asked to go and conduct an emotional probe on users, and seek to improve the learning experiences in lecture theatres (LTs). Why was it a "nightmare"? It was due to the fact that there could be no solution to this problem at all, or infinitely many different solutions, as we had to seek to fulfill improving the learning experiences for each user whom are uniquely different.
My other groupmate, Lim Zhen Qin, and I approached this problem with Technological probing, Laddering, and Ethnography. Our methodology was to find users of different LTs and ask them questions based on the first two approaches. We also conducted enthographical studies on the users, before we derive a conclusion for this assignment.
Our users / test participants were selected randomly from our circle of friends from various faculties within NUS. The LTs involved in this assignment are LT9, 27, 32, 33 and Engineering Auditorium.
Technological Probe
With reference to the Mac PowerBook experience illustrated in the lecture slides, we created a checklist and went through it with our participants just before and after visiting a LT. The purpose is to evaluate their visit of LTs as experience.
With reference to a specific LT of their choice, we asked the participants to describe their impressions and expectations of that LT, and to voice out their interactions with the objects found within the LT. We also asked them to relate it to similar experiences. This allowed us to know more about the participants' experience via the studied sense-making processes.
Laddering Approach
This approach was meant to dwell deep into a problem, so as to clearly identify the root of it, or at least find out a possible cause of the problem. However, it only looked into one of the branch of replies given by the participant, and hence, it may not address the problem fully.
Initially we were stuck at very short terminating answers, and the fault lies in the way we asked our participants. After several tries on different participants, we managed to obtain more relevant replies to the question: "What hampers your learning experience in LTs?"
Ethnographic Study
For this, we went to sit in for a lecture in LT33 and took notes on all that we could observe within the LT. Some of which includes the temperature, the number of students wearing jackets, using laptops, and even the amount of people going to the lecturer for consultation during the lecture break.
Overall findings on factors which affects learning experience
Physical aspects (LT accessibility, comfort, etc)
Human aspects (attitude of lecturers and/or students)
Cultural aspects (lecturers and students)
We felt that upgrading the physical aspects of the LT might not improve the learning experience on the whole, as this problem also deals with the cultural background and previous experiences of the users. Hence we suggest educating both lecturers and students to both take a step back so as to make learning a better experience, instead of blaming on the inadequacy of the LT, as humans will never get satisfied no matter how good a certain thing will be. If students are willing to learn, and lecturers are willing to spend time explaining, then no matter which kind of physical settings, the learning experience will be much better than having the best LT but the worst lecturers and students.
Other Presentations
The other presentations gave me more insights as to which areas were not looked into by our group. We did not consider about the timing of the lecture, the LTs that were not within NUS (some groups conducted a survey on LTs in SMU), and even the geographic location of which the LT was situated. I learnt that although physical and human factors were the most obvious and common ones that designers would look into, there exist other interesting factors like size of class, the shape and size of the LT, its external surroundings, feng shui etc. Those factors could provide a new perspective as to how learning experiences could be improved.