IVHQ Teaching Program
Smoothing teaching experience for IVHQ volunteer program
OVERVIEW
I redesigned the IVHQ teaching program after I volunteered as a teacher through this program on Bali Island. Volunteers can be well prepared for teaching and both volunteers and students will enjoy the program better when bridging the communication gap between them. I designed a new blueprint and all of those services aimed to help students and volunteers enjoy the classes and benefit more.
WHAT I DID
Contextual Inquiry
User Interview
Desktop Research
Service Blueprint Design
UI Design
DATE
Jun 2016 - Sep 2016
Background
I participated in the program as a volunteer to teach local primary students about environmental protection in Ubud, Bali Island, Indonesia.
With Bali’s rapidly expanding tourism industry, the demand for local English speakers has never been greater. However, the children never really had the opportunity to practice their conversational skills or hear native English being spoken. Therefore, the volunteers strive to here to help them.
Also, some of the volunteers came to educate the children about environmental protection and pollution due to rapid development and the rise in tourism.
Challenge
According to my observation and personal experiences...
Lots of volunteer teachers stay for about two weeks, so students have to meet new teachers, again and again, adapting themselves to different teaching methods. Also, some knowledge taught by the previous teachers may not be reviewed.
Though there are teaching records used to record the content of courses, without records about the used teaching modes or students abilities. The next new teacher cannot refer to the teaching records to get enough information about the classes they will teach, have no opportunity of learning from the successful methods used by other volunteers.
The language barriers between local students and volunteers cause the difficulty of communication, volunteers found it hard to attract students' attention through language.
The traditional teaching methods like copying, listening and repeating are boring and dull, so it was easier for students to be distracted. It took time and energy for volunteers to keep ordering in class.
Rewards and punishments are helpful to maintain classroom discipline, but they cannot stimulate interest in learning.
I decided to optimise students' and volunteers' experiences by redesigning the program to make improvements.
Research
In order to get to know the experiences of different participants in the program as well as more information that could be useful, I conducted the research.
Contextual Inquiry
As the volunteer of the teaching program who experiences the events and noticed some problems, I recorded all related events based on my teaching experience.
Interview
I also communicated with the staff about the problems I noticed, and interviewed other volunteers to know their experience.
Desktop Research
In order to understand how do students acquire a second language to improve the teaching results, I conducted the desk research.
The pain points are...
Service Blueprint
I proposed the preliminary blueprint and refined it by asking for advice from volunteers and the staff.
How did I get the blueprint?
Based on my interview and observation, I created the user journey map according to the experience of the participants of the program for analysis.
Through the analysis, I brainstormed and listed the potential useful solutions, evaluated and organized them.
UI Design
I designed the mobile App for Volunteers.
Reflection
This was my first independent design project: it was a fun problem-solving process, but also an inspiring learning journey. Throughout the project, I wrote down the challenges and also the "Aha" moments:
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Pinpointing the problem to solve is important.
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Research on related details is helpful.
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There were a lot of potential improvements that could be made in the program if I had more time to spend on it. I should practice more to get design skills and improve efficiency.