Improving Attendance for Virtual Learning
CLIENT
Sora Schools
SERVICES
UX Research & Design, UI Design
MY ROLE
UX/UI Designer
HIGHLIGHTS
A virtual, private middle and high school offering exceptionally high quality and unique learning experiences for students around the USA.
CHALLENGE
Sora Schools, a virtual middle and high school, was struggling to provide a frictionless experience regarding the reporting and tracking of student attendances. Using an external tool for parents to submit absences, Typeform, had proven to be causing a plethora of issues, including discrepancies with data syncing and usability errors. Faculty also had to spend extra time doing manual work to properly track absences and correct errors in the system.
APPROACH
In order to holistically address this problem, all relevant stakeholders needed to be considered and design for, this included: advisors, the registrar, and parents. To better understand the needs and challenges of each user group, interviews were conducted with 1 - 3 participants from each user group. The interview data was then analyzed using thematic analysis, coding out the pain points and translating those into user stories, UX maps, business requirements, and core functions of this new feature to be built. The UI design was then subsequently created based on the UX design that resulted from this research.
User Stories
Primary Pain Points
After the interviews were conducted with all 3 user types, a thematic analysis was carried out to uncover the core pain points from their current experiences with the attendance process. These insights would later inform the design direction for this new feature and it’s core functions.
Creating efficient attendances
SOLUTION
Out of the UX research process emerged a brand new feature on the Sora Schools LMS platform for both faculty and parent accounts; Attendances. This feature enables all users to submit and edit student absences directly through the platform, reducing the pain points around data discrepancies and data input. Additionally, it supports the Advisors and Registrar in efficiently completing their workflows for tracking and communicating absences and excuses, saving them precious time from previous manual work.
Embedded Absence Forms
Moving away from the external form tool, Typeform, and towards a custom-designed, embedded absence form, this design enables all users to intuitively submit and edit students absences.
Faculty view of the embedded absence form (Advisors & Registrar)
Parent view of embedded absence form
Daily Digest
The Daily Digest is a faculty-only function for attendances. This allows the Registrar to get a quick and easy view of student excuses and absences each day, while easily accessing the details for each of those students. The addition of this function saved around 1 hour of time per day as compared to the Registrar’s previous workflow.
Default view of Faculty account, with Daily Digest feature on the right-hand side panel.
Expanded view of an absent student for the Registrar to easily view details.
Attendance Record
The attendance record function was created specifically for the parent users. This allows them to get a big picture view of their child’s attendances overall, while also providing specific statistics that will support them in planning out family vacations or submitting other types of absences without compromising their child’s presence requirements
at school.
Desktop view of Parents’ account attendance record.
Mobile view on Parents’ account of record.
See it in action.
The videos below display the various functions of the Attendances feature. The first video showcases the Faculty account on desktop, and the second video showcases the parent account on mobile.