I took another class called that focused on usability testing this semester and I found that SI548 fit in very nicely with the usability course in part because many of the same concepts of design were also covered. The major difference was the emphasis between usability and learning goals. It was interesting to walk that line between the two of them.
Educational theory is nothing new to me. I've been a teacher for a decade next year (how did that happen? where did the time go?) and I'm one of those people that always wants to know more. Yes, I was that kid that always asked "Why?" That said, while I was familiar with behaviorism and constructivism, cognitive science/intelligent tutors was something of a new idea for me. Then again, my impression is that it's still relatively new in the field in general. I think when we first started the project, we did kind of thing of our app, CityTutor, as something that would be like an intelligent tutor, perhaps almost Siri like. That said, we quickly discovered that the logic that would need to go into creating such an app was just too overwhelming so we went with something a little more traditional.
In terms of our app then, we did start off too broad and then we narrowed down a bit, especially when we added the language ideas. Still, the idea behind the app is still a bit feature rich in places and feature poor in others. We just didn't have time to fully flesh out every single thing. That said, I think our basic idea was a good one and with the document that we put together, I think a design team could definitely have a very good start in building the actual app.
I'm not sure that we had huge failures in part because my team consisted of two HCI guys and myself. Since we've all been in the situation that the app was aimed at and we have all taken the usability course (or in my case, in the middle of it), we all had a strong idea of how and what worked and what would not and why. That said, we did go feature overboard there for awhile and had to quickly pare down what we were going to do in terms of things offered.
The overall structure of the app and the features that are offered are pretty positive and do encourage learning of both the new city and the new language and in this way, I feel like we were successful.
For me personally, I feel like I had a lot of these ideas in my head in theory and designing the app up through lofi mockups allowed me to experiment with bringing ideas about learning to the forefront. I feel like I got a lot of practical application out of building the app with my team. I also feel that my past experiences in instructional design and especially teaching online, really helped my group and our app because I was able to form more concrete ideas grounded in learning theory more quickly and with the help of the HCI guys, we were able to push those ideas into an actual usable design.
Overall, the course and the process of designing the app has been a good one and I feel like I got a lot out of the class.
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