Presentation: Improving the Student Experience By Gavin Henrick

By
Ladek
-
2221
Improving the user experience

Gavin Henrick’s keynote presentation at MoodleMoot Spain 2015 was on ways we can “Improve the Student Experience.”

WIRIS

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!