Assignment module usability refinements

Assignment module usability refinements

由Stuart Lamour發表於
Number of replies: 7
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Hi all,

doing a quick ux/ax and information architecture review.

Focusing is on the assignment activity module in moodle....

As a teacher when viewing the assignment mod moodle displays this table :


This all seems to take up a lot of screen height, uses a table for layout, and is not optimised for accessibility. 

For a teacher the tabular data is:

  •  the number of participants in the assignment
  •  the number who have submitted work to the assignment
  •  the number of submissions that need grading
  •  the due date of the assignment
  • the time remaining


Could we possibly display this information in a more accessible and user friendly way?


From an information perspective there is a lot of data redundancy here which can be improved on, from a usability perspective the information could be optimised, and this seems a completely inappropriate use of tables in terms of accessibility.


Breaking it down :

The due date is currently buried, but is perhaps the most important data for both students and teachers.

Participants and submissions can be a single information point.

Actions the user needs to take now, such as grading that needs to be done, should be obvious.


Implementation concept :




This is just a quick ux design mock up an idea on improving the assignment activity in the Snap theme, so all comment are most welcome.

Does this give the same information in a better format? Feedback very much appreciated. 

Cheers

Stuart Lamour

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In reply to Stuart Lamour

Re: Assignment module usability refinements

由Just H發表於

Nice, makes sense to me. 

One tweak (other than deleting the spaces before the colons 酷) I would prefer, is to keep the indication of time left e.g.


Due: In 1 day, 2 hours and 15 minutes (14 March 2017, 5 pm)

or, if already past due

Due: Closed (12 March 2017, 5 pm)


From your mockup looks like plenty space to accommodate it.

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In reply to Stuart Lamour

Re: Assignment module usability refinements

由Stuart Lamour發表於
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In a similar way, can we improve the assignments page for students?

Currently they see a lot of information, split between 2 sections - Submission Status and Feedback.



Can we apply a similar logic for students and display this data in a less cluttered way?

Extracting the same headline information we display for teachers leads to due date, submitted and status as the first elements.




Details about the student's submission could possibly be separated from Submission Status and Feedback into a their own section.




Feedback information is currently split between the 2 sections - Submission Status and Feedback. Moving all the information related to feedback into the Feedback section feels like a an obvious approach.

Perhaps the most important elements of feedback for a student are the grade and a teacher's comments, so displaying this above any rubric/grading criteria might make more make sense?





For the next stage I'll do user testing to make sure these changes to the page information architecture are helpful for real students, but in the meantime would welcome any comments.

Here is a before/after screenshot of work in progress.




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In reply to Stuart Lamour

Re: Assignment module usability refinements

由Joost Elshoff發表於
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Hi Stuart,

Looks clearer in a lot of ways, the after image. How about splitting the 2 screens into 2 tabs to be displayed under Details?

So:

Details

[detail info block]

[Tab1 - Your submission] [Tab2 - Feedback]

---

And maybe it would be useful to already display a grade (if available) in the detail info block bit.

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In reply to Stuart Lamour

Re: Assignment module usability refinements

由Ed Beck發表於

Hi Stuart,

Thanks for sharing your mockups to the community for comments. I like what you are working on here. I have a few suggestions.

  • I'd suggest that once a teacher has returned feedback to a student, that it should be displayed in the most prominent way. An issue with the current design is that students have to do a lot of scrolling once work has been returned to find feedback. Once work has been returned I think the feedback should be the most important thing.
  • I like how in your mockups student submissions are displayed. This is a features that Blackboard has that Moodle currently does not. It could do a few things for instructors and students. First of all, it would be a benefit for students to see their work as soon as they upload. It could help reduce the "I submitted the wrong file" excuse. There would also be a secondary advantage to showing a converted PDF to the students. For those of us that are using Google Drive integration to create PDFs in Moodle 3.3 or higher, faculty have noticed that they have to wait for PDFs to be created on demand, slowing down their grading workflow. If the PDF was created when students submitted, it would save the instructors a few seconds times the number of students they are gradeing.

I'm curious what you are doing with these mockups. Are you opening a tracker, and offering to create a patch for Clean and Boost, or are you developing this on the theme level for your SNAP theme and future Moodlerooms Themes?

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In reply to Ed Beck

Re: Assignment module usability refinements

由Stuart Lamour發表於
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Hi Ed,

totally agree and we try and do that with the redesign in Snap. If feedback is available it is shown on the page directly under the activity description, along with who the feedback is from and the date it was given.

Not sure we can do much in a theme about the way assignments are processed when converting formats - but lets see what happens in future iterations.

The screenshots are from the latest version of Snap, which is available from the moodle plugins DB with the full release at the end of December.

Best wishes

Stuart Lamour


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In reply to Stuart Lamour

Re: Assignment module usability refinements

由Randy Thornton發表於

Looks much better, and saves a lot of room.

I do have a question about the "View all submissions" and "Grade" - why is one a normal link and one a (flat style) button? I see this all over Moodle and have never understood it.

Why should "Grade" be a button and not a link, and vice versa? If there were a clear dominance of one of those as a choice - if %80 of the usage was to click "Grade" - then why put them side by side at all and not in separate locations on screen? But even then, if one is more commonly used, why not have two buttons here anyway?


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In reply to Randy Thornton

Re: Assignment module usability refinements

由Stuart Lamour發表於
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Further iterations on the student view:

And the teacher view:

All that data that is displayed by Moodle assignments displays, but hopefully in a much more user friendly way

Snap 3.3 with these improvements to the assignments page will be available soon for the Moodle plugins db, and right now on github.

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