Lessons Enhancement Project Background

Owned by Former user (Deleted)
Feb 17, 2022
3 min read

LESSONS ENHANCEMENT PROJECT

NOTE: The information below was lasted updated in late spring 2014, the project has now been funded and is moving forward (July 29, 2014).

Following the 2013 Open Apereo conference, the Sakai Teaching and Learning group engaged in a range of initial activities to explore how we might engage with the larger community to enhance current Sakai tools and capabilities.  In Fall 2013 we developed an initial draft plan for a Teaching and Learning Capability Review Process which would identify both new capabilities and user interface (UI) improvements and began an initial "proof-of-concept" projects to explore applying this process to the Lessons or Lesson Builder tool.  This resulted in a set of Preliminary Capability Enhancement Ideas as well as some important lessons learned about both the process and the priorities for this work. 

In March 2014 the group called a Special Meeting to brief a larger portion of the community and based on discussions at that meeting decided to focus on a major UI redesign of Lessons which we are referring to as the Lessons Enhancement Project (see below for high-level proposal). 

Update as of May 31, 2014:  The T&L Group has engaged with Former user (Deleted), an User Experience (UX) designer who has worked on Sakai and OAE, to develop a time and effort estimate for this project.  The Estimation for Design report has determined that the ballpark cost, which includes Sam's time and that of a UI Developer, is around $25,000.  Given that we may also need some project management assistance and to account of unexpected costs, we are targeting $35,000 as the budget goal for the project.  One institution has committed to contribute between $5k and $10k and we are currently engaged with several other institutions seeking funding contributions.

If you are interested in contributing, either funding or other resources, to this project please contact Former user (Deleted).

HIGH LEVEL PROPOSAL: Lessons Enhancement Project
The Lessons tool (previously referred to as Lesson Builder) has garnished a significant amount of attention over the past two years as it provides new and innovative capabilities for authoring sequenced instructional content that includes rich media and other interactive elements.  Although broadly applicable in a range of instructional context, these capabilities are particularly powerful when developing online courses, flipped classrooms and MOOCs, all of which are important trends which are gaining increased attention within higher education.

Over the past year the Sakai Teaching and Learning group has been engaged in a pilot "T&L Capability Review Process" [1] focused assessing how Lessons could be enhanced.  Based on this work and discussions with Charles Hedrick, CTO at Rutgers University and the current lead developer for Lessons, there is significant interest in engaging in a major user interface redesign effort with the goal of vastly improving "easy of use" by instructors and students.  The rationale here is that although there are likely additional capabilities that could enhance Lessons, doing so without first improving the user experience could create a tool that was simply too complex for most to use effectively.

Members of the Sakai Teaching and Learning Group have indicated they are prepared to dedicate effort to this project by conducting and sharing results of usability studies, helping to develop user stories/use cases, reviewing wireframes, etc. and Charles Hedrick has indicated his support for the effort and willingness to engage on the project as well.  We are now in the process of engaging with UX researchers/designers to scope the effort required for such a redesign with the goal of beginning the project following the Open Apereo conference and having enhancements part of the Sakai 11 release. We are looking for institutions to contribute funding but will considering developer resource contributions for both assisting Charles Hedrick with implementation as well as for future maintenance work.  We plan further discussion of the project at the Open Apereo conference.


[1] https://confluence.sakaiproject.org/x/QwzzB