Gavin Henrick’s keynote presentation at MoodleMoot Spain 2015 was on ways we can “Improve the Student Experience.”
Gavin defines the student experience across four factors: social, collaborative, organizational processes, and organizational systems, but the presentation is specifically focused on organizational systems, and in this case, the system is Moodle. One note to get started: while his presentation is focused on the student, I think the themes presented could be extrapolated to teachers, admins and essentially anyone who accesses the LMS on a regular basis – as such, below I’ve substituted “user” for “student”.
I appreciated Gavin’s breakdown of the user experience within Moodle across:
- Recognition (How does the LMS help the user to instantly know what they are looking at, where they are, and what actions they can take – think: theme, process, content?)
- Access (How does the user access the LMS – think: mobile vs. desktop, security, continuity?)
- Navigation (How does the user get around the LMS – think: finding what they want, connections between tasks, general easy and intuitiveness of getting around without getting lost, consistency)
- Consumption (think: When, where, how and why users access and use content?)
- Extraction (think: How do users take the information in the LMS and use it elsewhere – notes, presentations, printouts, etc.?)
- Communication (think: How does the user get notified, collaborate with others, provide and receive feedback)? and
- Reporting (think: How does the user know how they are doing, their progress?)
I especially liked two points:
- Gavin’s breakdown about how consistency of presentation impacts a course, or the overall LMS experience.
- His wrap up regarding whether or not your proposed improvement to the user experience is measurable and within your control is spot on.
You can vide the entire presentation here: http://www.slideshare.net/ghenrick/improving-the-student-experience-gavin-henrick
How does your institution ensure the highest quality user experience? Let us know in the comments below!
