Engage students from the start via a screening questionnaire followed by card-sorting and mock-up focus groups¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · no claims cited

Description¶

A concrete participatory design recipe: first run a screening questionnaire asking what information students want and what their main learning needs are; then convene small online focus groups in which students sort data-point cards by usefulness and react to dashboard mock-ups using multiple visual metaphors. This surfaces needs and preferred data points before any dashboard is built.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Recruited students with prior online study experience
• Facilitators from the research team
• Ethical approval from a student panel

Constraints¶

• Small, self-selected samples limit generalizability of frequency-based decisions

Target Learners¶

• online and distance learning undergraduate students
• students from disadvantaged or less represented backgrounds

Target Learning Goals¶

• identifying student learning needs
• selecting useful dashboard data points

Related Strategies¶

• Run a strengths-based student focus group using open-ended, neutrally framed questions about learning from home

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Herodotou, C., Shrestha, S., Comfort, C., Andrews, H., Mulholland, P., Bayer, V., Maguire, C., Lee, J. & Fernandez, M. (2025). A Participatory Approach to Designing a Student-Facing Dashboard for Online and Distance Education. Journal of Learning Analytics, 12(2). https://doi.org/10.18608/jla.2025.8481