Everett Community College Advisor Portal · 2017. 1. 17. · Everett Community College Advisor...
15
Everett Community College Advisor Portal Thomas Dye CSS ‘17 Advisor: Dr. Erika Parsons
Transcript of Everett Community College Advisor Portal · 2017. 1. 17. · Everett Community College Advisor...
Everett Community College Advisor PortalThomas Dye
CSS ‘17
Advisor: Dr. Erika Parsons
Presenter
Presentation Notes
Hi, my name is Thomas Dye. Last summer, I worked on a research-based capstone project with advisors at Everett Community College, called the Advisor Services Portal.
Presenter
Presentation Notes
Prior to coming to UW, I was an engineering transfer student at Bellevue College. While there, I had to figure out how to sequence my coursework to meet the transfer requirements for this school. I recall spending a large amount of time searching through degree pages and figuring out how UW courses mapped to Bellevue College courses.
GoalHow can we make academic advisors and students more efficient at determining degree paths and educational goals?
Presenter
Presentation Notes
Having experienced that, I was enthusiastic about creating an end-to-end solution for the problem that my advisor, Dr. Parsons, posed to me: How can we make academic advisors and students more efficient at determining degree paths and educational goals?
Presenter
Presentation Notes
Since all I had was the question, I planned my project so it would be broken down into three phases: research, ideation, and solution. I felt the success of this project relied on fitting in with EvCC’s existing infrastructure. To that end, I chose to build a website using ColdFusion and SQL server as an application framework, both of which are widely used by the school’s web team.
Talked to EvCC advisors Observed advising sessions Researched current tools
Research
Presenter
Presentation Notes
I spent my first month interviewing EvCC academic advisors and sitting in on their sessions. I also gathered as much information as I could about the current tools they use.
UserProblems
Faculty spend a lot of time talking with students
Identifying how to get them from point A to point B is not easy
Not all of the time spent is productive
Presenter
Presentation Notes
From that, I identified: Faculty spend a lot of time talking with students Identifying how to get them from point A to point B Not all of the time spent is productive For example: They might spend a lot of time looking for transfer requirements Or starting over because a plan does not work Or weeding out inaccuracies and old data from existing forms and tools
DesignRequirements
Quickly evaluate potential college degrees
Create plans that map admission requirements to EvCC courses
Have easy access to course, college, and degree information
Presenter
Presentation Notes
From that, I distilled the following design requirements for my solution: Advisors and students need to: Quickly evaluate potential college degrees Create plans that map admission requirements to EvCC courses And have easy access to course, college, and degree information
Sketches Balsamiq wireframes HTML
Ideation
Presenter
Presentation Notes
Knowing the requirements, I started sketching ideas to figure out solutions that would fit in with existing processes. Gradually, these sketches increased in fidelity, from Balsamiq wireframes to HTML, as I narrowed in on the content and elements that were needed.
Presenter
Presentation Notes
Going through that process, it made it so when I was ready to begin implementation of the prototype, I had a plan that was highly likely to satisfy my target audience. This prototype website is called the Advisor Services Portal.
Rich information on courses, including placement scores, instructor authorization, and other course prerequisites.
Create a new Degree Plan, a student roadmap, by searching by school, department, or name.
Add new courses, degrees, and schools which map back to EvCC courses.
View a student’s progress and update their coursework.
Presenter
Presentation Notes
This site was designed to be a single place to pull together a plan to earn a degree. This includes: Viewing a student’s progress toward a degree Creating new degree plans and course roadmaps Also included is rich information on courses And admins are able to add new courses, degrees, and universities which map back to EvCC courses
Challenges ColdFusion, HTML and CSS - newbie
Web security - writing a hashing function and salting passwords
Design language – rationalizing what page elements do
Presenter
Presentation Notes
Coming into this, I was comfortable with databases but knew very little about web development. ColdFusion was also very different than anything I’d worked with in the past. There was also a steep learning curve when it came to web securities around session management and database interaction. Finally, a non-technical challenge was establishing design patterns to promote predictable behavior across the site. Fortunately, by the conclusion of the project, I was able to overcome these challenges and deliver a functional prototype to Everett Community College.
Updating how prerequisites are shown in course catalog
Uptick in interest from graduate students to extend
Interest among other community colleges
Impact
Presenter
Presentation Notes
Since handing off the prototype, my work has made an impact in the following ways: Everett Community College faculty are considering adoption of my format for how prerequisites are displayed. There’s been a significant uptick in interest from graduate students in this project. Other community colleges have expressed interest in adopting this system as it becomes better known.
Reflection
Presenter
Presentation Notes
This was an interesting project, but I think the biggest success for me was how I tackled the problem space: Instead of starting off by thinking about the features and technology, I instead began my focus on the people who needed a solution. I used my research to design an experience based off of the needs of the target audience before I thought about any implementation details. This meant I did not need to compromise the user experience because I wasn’t limited by the technology. Example: the database schema was constructed by analyzing the wireframes I made, and that determined the entities and relationships that would be required to support the page content, but not the other way around.
Next Steps
Next Steps
Usability improvements Recommendation engine
Presenter
Presentation Notes
As I mentioned, work is already continuing on the website by graduate students at this school. Where they’re: Addressing usability issues found by EvCC faculty Using machine learning to fully automate the creation of degree plans
Thank YouThomas Dye
CSS ‘17
Advisor: Dr. Erika Parsons
Presenter
Presentation Notes
I want to thank my advisor, Dr. Erika Parsons, for allowing me to run with this project as an end-to-end experience. I also want to thank Matthew Fuentes who was instrumental at helping me understand the problem space and connecting me to staff at Everett Community College. Thank you for your time. http://advisorportal.westus.cloudapp.azure.com/
