Sketch |
Explanation |
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The sign in screen. Ms. Frizzle enters her username and password and clicks the sign in button. |
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Ms. Frizzle’s homepage. She can now select a class from the dropdown at the top left of the screen. In addition, in the top right, she can see how many new messages she has received from parents and how many notifications/announcements she has (for example, when a parent signed a form). Ms. Frizzle selects the 3A science class. |
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Ms. Frizzle’s 3A science class page. On the left side of the screen, there is a list of pages that she can view for this class. In the main section of the screen, she can see a list of the students in the class, together with their pictures. She can click on a student to view the individual student's page and then send a message to that student's parents, enter the student's grades, etc. |
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Ms. Frizzle hovers over the "Forms" button, and a menu appears to give her the options of creating a new form or viewing existing form. Ms. Frizzle clicks on "create a new form." |
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The create a form page. There is a textbox in which Ms. Frizzle can type the permission slip. Alternatively, she can choose a template which she can then edit, or she can click the "upload" button to upload a document from her computer. She can then send the form to all the parents in the class, save a draft of the form to return to later, or click cancel. |
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Arnold's mother goes to the ConnectEd website and logs in. |
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Arnold's mom is able to choose one of her children from the dropdown menu at the top left. She can also see, in the top right, how many new messages she has received from her children's teachers and how many notifications/announcements she has (for example, she can see that there is a new form for her to sign). Arnold's mom sees that she has 2 notifications, so she clicks on the notification button. This brings up a menu listing the notifications: there is one new form and there are new grades available for one of her children. (She can also see this same information in the sidebar.) Arnold's mom clicks on "Forms." |
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The form comes up for Arnold's mom to view. She can click "approve" to give her consent for Arnold to go ice skating, or she can click "deny" if she does not want Arnold to go. She also has the option of clicking "remind me later." |
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Ms. Frizzle later signs in to ConnectEd again and goes to the 3A science page, as shown above. She sees from the notification button and the sidebar that one parent has signed the form. She clicks on the notification button, sees forms listed, and clicks on "Forms." |
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Ms. Frizzle can now see which parents have approved for their children to go ice skating, which parents are not allowing their children to go, and which parents have not yet signed the form. |
Analysis
* Learnability:
Pros:
- Seeing pictures of the students makes it clear how to access each individual student's page.
- Notifications (in the top right of the screen) help users to learn about different features of the website.
- The sidebar is a standard layout that users are accustomed to.
Cons:
- The "create form" page is confusing. It is not clear whether one has to add text in order to upload a PDF, and what the templates are for. (It is not evident that the user can use any one of these three methods to create a form.)
- It is not clear to the user what will happen if he/she chooses a template after writing a permission slip.
* Efficiency:
Pros:
- Having students' pictures is efficient because it gives the teacher a larger target on which to click.
- Notifications save time.
- Similarly, new items can be accessed easily in two different ways: through the notification buttons and from the sidebar.
- The teacher can upload a PDF of the permission slip if she already has one saved on her computer.
- The teacher is provided with templates that she can use to create her permission slip. This means that she only needs to edit a few fields (such as the activity and the date) to create a permission slip quickly.
Cons:
- Nested menus require steering of mouse.
- The attendance table is just plain text; the teacher cannot send a reminder to parents who have not yet signed the permission slip.
- If the teacher selects a template after typing in the text box, she might lose what she wrote.
- Too many clicks are required: the teacher clicks on the class, then clicks Forms, then clicks Create New Form.
* Safety:
Pros:
- parents need password, so the kid won't be able to go in and approve
- The teacher is able to save a draft of the form in case she needs to stop in the middle and return to it later.
Cons:
- Parents cannot change their mind after they approved or denied the permission slip.
Please note: After the comments we received regarding our GR2 presentation, we decided that it may be a good idea to try to add capability for parents to write a note/comment to the teacher when they sign the permission slip (or deny their child permission). We would accomplish this by simply adding an optional text field for comments in the parents' interface and including a link to see parent comments in the teacher's view.