{"id":172,"date":"2016-12-21T18:38:31","date_gmt":"2016-12-21T18:38:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/jenniferweening\/?p=172"},"modified":"2016-12-21T18:38:31","modified_gmt":"2016-12-21T18:38:31","slug":"learning-management-and-the-student-ux-my-2016-17-action-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/jenniferweening\/2016\/12\/21\/learning-management-and-the-student-ux-my-2016-17-action-plan\/","title":{"rendered":"Learning Management and the Student UX: My 2016-17 Action Plan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last year, my action plan centred upon restructuring my Communications Technology class<\/a> in order to allow students to spend more time focusing on their own areas of interest. While this is still a work in progress\u2014so far, I\u2019ve revamped my first two units to try to cover a broader base of basic skills\u2014my hope is that in January we will be able to begin independent exploration of our areas of interest. This is a big project for me and is likely to take up most of my attention this year, as I figure out along with the students how to best track and monitor their progress, support them by providing resources and small group instruction, and manage the logistics of 19 students each doing their own thing. <\/span><\/p>\n

In the meantime, however, I\u2019ve begun to think about how I could begin work on a second action plan\u2014one on a slightly smaller scope, to give me a new area to focus on as well. Although I was saddened to miss the second F2F session at the York School and the design thinking process that everyone else had the chance to engage in, I have been giving a lot of thought to another problem that I could tackle in my practice. I keep coming back to the idea of the user experience (UX) in my course management software. At The Country Day School, a few years ago we moved from (the very expensive!) Blackboard LMS to (the very free!) Google Sites as a learning management platform. <\/span><\/p>\n

The shift created quite the bumpy ride for both teachers and students. Some of the challenges included the following: <\/span><\/p>\n