To develop our design concept, we used a variety of techniques, including contextual inquiry, personas, heuristic evaluations, and think alouds.
We began by using contextual inquiry, a type of user study that takes place in the field. This form of user study involves directed interviews with users in their workplace - in the case of teachers and students, the workplace is the classroom, the home, and the office. We conducted 14 Contextual Inquiries and interviews during our preliminary data gathering phase.
We worked closely with teachers to develop and refine Interactive Lessons. After our first few participatory design sessions it became clear that the vast majority of high school teachers were not accustomed to using a slide show-like presentation in class, whether prepackaged or prepared by the teacher. Many teachers preferred to have students learn via discovery, rather than simply feeding students information in a pure lecture style. Virtually all teachers were concerned about using prepackaged materials, because of their prior experience with text books and other instructional materials. Generally, teachers felt dissatisfied with these materials because the format and approach of instruction differed from their own. In our questionnaires we asked teachers to describe their teaching style. Most teachers described their style as "interactive". Teachers in the participatory design sessions explained further their preference for "student-driven" learning methods. Some teachers even have students present new material.
Ultimately, Interactive Lessons has become a suite of tools that takes maximum advantage of the opportunities provided by a network. It also addresses our key educational issues of motivation, participation, and engagement. Interactive Lessons attempts to encourage the use of student work, whether it be individual calculator screens or aggregated student data to make students feel involved and allow teachers to use real-world data throughout the teaching process. Interactive Lessons could be used by students as well as teachers for those teachers who have students present to the class. There are several stages to teaching a concept in math or science, including introducing the topics, explaining the basic concepts, working through examples, and reviewing the concept for a quiz or test. Teachers use different techniques, such as physics labs or review games to accomplish these goals. Interactive Lessons is flexible enough that it could be employed in any or all of these stages and in a variety of ways.
