Less Searching, More Studying: Building Consistent Course Interfaces within a Degree Program

Imagine that you are a student taking five different online courses. In Course A, assignment directions are neatly organized in a section of the syllabus. In Course B, they’re scattered across individual PDFs uploaded to the Content section. And in Course C, instructions are posted in the assignment dropbox. For each course, you must remember where to find the information you need to complete the assignment. As a busy student, you end up losing valuable time just searching for course information – time that you could have used to study!

To prevent students in the Online BBA Completion Program at the Robinson School of Business from facing this very dilemma, RCB faculty and leadership partnered with the CETLOE UX Team to identify consistent design patterns across the courses in the program, validate these patterns with GSU students, and build a design guide for faculty and learning experience designers. Here’s a more detailed overview of how the process unfolded.

1. Compare the layouts of existing courses

First, our team identified a sample of 16 Online BBA building sections to include in the comparative analysis. After generating the sample, each team member reviewed 24 elements across 3-5 courses. We then met to discuss our findings from the comparative analysis. Our discussion focused on two questions:

Which elements were consistent across most Online BBA building sections?
Which elements were presented in various formats, requiring more user research to determine the best design pattern?

Elements that fell under question #1 were identified as Online BBA standards and did not require additional follow-up. Elements identified in question #2 formed the basis for the next phase of user research.

2. Talk to students and learn how they use iCollege

Next, we gathered qualitative data from students. We set up video interviews with two Online BBA students and four GSU undergraduates. In the first half of these interviews, our researchers asked about the students’ general experience with online learning. Then, the researchers asked the students to navigate through a prototype iCollege course that featured a homepage design, a Welcome module design, and two content module designs that we generated from the comparative analysis findings.

These research questions guided our work during this phase:

What is the optimal design for a content module? Is it better to use submodules to organize course items or to link to various content items and assessments through HTML pages?
How do students use the course homepage, and what kind of widgets are most appropriate in this space?
What kind of information do students expect to see in the Welcome module, and how can we organize this module to best serve our students?

Notes from a participant observation session

POST BY:

Victoria Patterson and Si Zhang

[email protected] and [email protected]

3. Validate our new designs with more students

After our initial qualitative data analysis, we distributed a survey to Online BBA students to validate the findings from the interviews phase. The survey asked participants to answer questions about how they use and navigate courses in iCollege. The survey also displayed screenshots of a sample iCollege course and asked the participants what they thought of the page and how they would interact with it.

These research questions guided our work during this phase:

How do students prefer to receive announcements?
Do students use the Course Navigator widget or the Content tool to access course content?
How do students find instructor contact information?
How do students find upcoming assessments?
Where do students expect to find assistance with external learning tools?
Where do students expect to find a to-do list for each module?
Do students prefer the checklist tool or an HTML page to list deliverables?

Overview of user research and design process

Our Results

Based on the results from the research project, we built a Design Insights Guide tailored for the Online BBA program. This guide includes examples and recommendations supported by participant data to inform learning experience designers on the preferred way to build courses in this specific program. By prioritizing student feedback, we created course design guidance that aligns with students’ actual behavior in online courses. This work ensures that students can spend their time learning rather than searching.

Feeling inspired? If so, we invite you to learn more about CETLOE's user experience research services or start a conversation today. We’d be excited to partner with you!