The following are a series of interactions between myself and my fellow MIT colleagues, who I'm grateful to have received extensive feedback from in terms of my current conceptual design of the VTaL site for teachers. The feedback has been clustered into various sections which covers a range of design elements relating to both the aesthetics and functionality of the resource. The feedback is intended to maximise the effectiveness of the VTaL site as a useful resource for teachers.
Introduction to VTaL Site Feedback Session
What I've intended for the tool, is for it to be a responsive tool; so responsive in that it can be used on a desktop, and also on mobile devices. Currently, at the top of the site, it has a range of options in the navigation bar. It's got the drop-down tools, under the VTaL tools. The homepage currently has a little blurb about VTaL, a presentation with links, and each of the tool pages has got a description of the tool, an example of the tool and then different connections back to relevant aspects of effective teaching. In addition, there are also some reflective questions.
In terms of feedback that I'm interested in, it's "What would you prefer to see on my homepage?" "Is the navigation bar useful?" "What recommendations do you have around that?" "What would you prefer to see on each of the tool pages that would make it a useful resource?"
VTaL Tools
"What are each of the tools?"
Each of the tools is what makes up the entire VTaL framework. The different tools all work around the idea of Learn, Create and Share; different tools that can be used to promote Learn, Create and Share.
"So looking at Tool 1. Tool 1 is having a Google Site with resources that link to work, correct?" Yep. "So the VTaL framework is essentially the different things that a classroom teacher needs in a digital age to deliver Learn, Create and Share". That could.
Setup of VTaL Site Pages
"You could have a banner for each of the tools, because there is no break" "You could have a banner that says what each tool is, and then a different banner for each part" "So for reflective questions there could be a separate banner so that it breaks up each section for each tool"
"Are the reflective questions even useful?" The reflective questions are at the bottom of each tool page. "Yes"
VTaL Tool Drop-down in the Navigation Bar
"One thing that I'm finding not having gone to the site before, is that when I go to each tool, I don't actually know what each tool is until I go into the individual pages". "When I click on the drop down, I'd quite like to see what it actually is". "And even on the actual page, it comes up with Tool 01, but it would be really helpful there too".
"Or even if you ..., because you don't want it alphabetically ordered, you want it to be numerically ordered ... so if it was Tool 01 : Google Sites, Tool 01 : blah blah" "So then if people just wanted to know about Google sites then they could just go there" "cause that's a real barrier, everybody has got to know your mind" "it also means that if you're trying to skim, and you want to find something quickly, you're going to skim through those headings more quickly, then if it just says tool".
"Why does it have to say tool? Is tool an off putting word or an embracing word? Would 01 do it?" That evolved out of the previous site, and only wanting to have one row on the navigation bar, and so instead of having all of the tool names, I just called it Tool 01, Tool 02 blah blah blah. When I went into the new sites, I just transferred that across, and well, it's not useful. "I'm just wondering about all of the teachers, locally, and all around the place, and 'oh no, not another tool that I've got to use'". "It's like 'oh no, we've dropped ... and now we're moving to ... " "Is 'tool' a barrier word?" "I feel like if you have what each tool is, then you may not need the word tool"
"Is there a certain order that you want the tools to be in?" No. "Although I do think though that prioritising them, like Sites would be number one". "Does it alphabetically order them? because otherwise you could just put them however you want?"
"I think the numbers are quite good, if I was someone who was going to the site for the first time, and didn't have a preference for what I looked at, I would probably go through them in numerical order, if you ordered them in such a way that for a new teacher, would be logical and it would work really well for me"
"I like how the site has a really good structure, every page follows the same format".
"Thank you. I don't feel like the site is user friendly, I'm so entrenched in the content myself, that I'm not making it ..."
VTaL Site Homepage
"Do you think that on the home page that you could make VTaL really really explicit?" "It is a series ... this is how ... it is a series of tools that will allow you to make Learn, Create, Share happen". "That supports Learn, Create and Share in the secondary school environment - and then those kaupapa words of Empowerment, Visible, Connected, Ubiquitous - you're welcome to use our little graphics, all of our graphics ... This collection of tools has been proven to support the implementation of Learn, Create, Share in a secondary school".
"I feel the users need a little bit more hand holding". "When you go onto the front page, it feels as though you already have to know, in order to understand what you're looking at. Whereas, because there is so much stuff that is going to help a new beginning teacher, or even an experienced teacher, who is new to Learn, Create, Share in a high school context, you kind of just want it to tell you that's exactly what it is - and at the moment, it doesn't quite do that".
"I almost feel as though I want you to hand hold me through how each of your tools, how I'm going to use it. I even that when you change the words to Google Sites etc, that will make it more clear of what I'm looking at."
"You've got your purpose really clear for each of the tools, but it's not until I go through them all ... so if you have that same sort of purpose at the beginning, that will make people think 'I just want to look at SOLO' for example".
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"You've got some powerful components there (links to OECD learning, reflective questions)"
"I was going to ditch some of those components because I thought they made the resource really boring ... when I saw some of the other sites and we went into their resources, it was 'boom' straight into it" "But the purpose of our resources is different. The purpose of our resources is for kids to link to content that will support them, and for teachers to use that with their classes ... whereas the purpose of your content is for teachers to teach effectively".
VTaL Starter Kit
"I did wander about your starter kit, and I wondered that when you're looking at ordering your pages, if perhaps the orders matched up, or could match up? I don't know if that's the purpose of it?" "You know how you've got your tool numbers, they don't match the starter numbers, so I went to the starter kit I'd go to one, and then go to". Great feedback as I hadn't looked at that starter kit for possibly 18 months. "Perhaps you should hide it until you're sure that you need it as a part of this resource". "I quite like having the visible image of start here, but it doesn't quite match with the site".
VTaL Site Page Components
"I'm also wondering whether you've got the possibility of strengthening this, because by always having students follow through from Year 9 to Year 13, if you go to a resource, say Project Title, it must also be in the Class Site". "Everything from below Tool 01, should all be in the Class Site, so a link for your teacher to see, this is what it looks like in the class site". "Keep each page in the VTaL site the same, but just click to a link that takes you to a place on your site, so that people can always see what it looks like". "That would be really helpful. And it means that if I'm a new teacher setting up a site for the first time, and I don't know where to put my class blog, I can look at the Class Site version, and go 'oh' that's a good place to put it".
When I was looking at the first couple of examples that include links straight to videos, it made me think of the extensive amount of videos that I also have. "She needs the multi-modal lesson. All of the stuff that's below [here] could potentially be laid out so much differently". "If you had one section, and it was laid out - that one for a description, that one for teacher criteria, that one for reflective questioning ... I know that this is still a work in progress, but even up here, there is a lot of very uninviting blank space, even teachers need to be engaged, so how do we smush this?" "It's like the other example where you have to scroll to get your head around, well this is your key thing, and it's just kind of annoyingly sitting there, so maybe even it should fit with the writing, and split the screen in half so that it's smaller". "When you hit your landing page, you want a section that includes ... and then cool little buttony things, three buttons to your Gold".
Changes and Adaptations
"It might be cool for you to give some of this a go, and then share it out to us, and then we can give you some feedback on it".
