Working as an Instructional Support Assistant in 2013 one of my duties was to update the course website information. Students use the website as a place to go and gather information about the course such as assignments, important updates and exams. During my time with the Instructional Support team I took it upon myself to do some website manipulation out of interest in User Interfaces and User Experiance. Before changing anything I first approached students to ask what links they use most for the website, in addition to what information do they go to the website for.
It came to my attention that the students mostly check the website in order to find out if an assignment has been posted, get the assignment, find office hours, and exam information.
In order to address these issues I first started by creating a Calendar that displays a weekly view of tutorial times, office hours and class times. I think further enhanced the user experience by indenting important links that students may use to get direct access to desired information instead of having to read all the guidelines each time they access an assignment or piazza. It may seem subtle but I also changed certain headings to bold and key items such as rules to pass the course into a bold red shade. This helps the student easily see important facts that should not be missed. In addition, a small cosmetic change to how assignments are posted by placing them in tabular format quickly displaying when the assignment was released and when the assignment is due before the students download the document. Lastly, I updated the display of tutorials to a more clearly look with a clear flow allowing students to be able to distinguish between the start of one weeks tutorial files from another.
In the future when updating a website I would use more iterations and feedback from the students. Collecting more data about if the changes were helpful and also do demos with students to ensure the user experience is maximized.
