Prototyping a teaching record for university staff

Monash wanted to improve the culture and strategy of teaching and to offer its staff better internal opportunities for growth, but did not know where to begin this process.

They knew part of it involves encouraging and motivating its staff to develop their skills. They came to the conclusion that a teaching record, a centralised place to log and document their experiences in learning and teaching,  could be used as a motivator in pursuing opportunities for development.

Our research into leading teaching record tools within the higher education and startup space assisted with identifying key features. Portable worked with existing Monash materials and content to centralise information for the benefit of its staff. Portable researched and developed user personas with the intent of addressing key functional needs. Some of these needs were akin to a logbook: a place to document, to reflect and to plan for the future. This process included talking to Monash teachers about their learning and teaching process and how they originally went about documenting this. Portable worked with existing Monash resources and content to centralise this information for the benefit of its staff.

Using this insight, Portable designed low-fidelity wireframes to help visualise the platform. Then using those wireframes, our design approach focused heavily on user needs, wanting to addressing staff’s desires for activity and goal tracking. Portable focused on guiding their learning journey through documenting, tracking and reflection.The portal would generate a visual chronology of their career developments and use it to address problems and help teachers become more self-aware.

The design process was iterative and completely user centred. We provided the interface design of the key pages for desktop and mobile, including the timeline of progress, the user’s goals and activities. The first iteration of Teaching Record was developed using the wireframes with the intent to provide Monash with an interactive roadmap on how to improve the culture of teaching at Monash.

The first iteration of Teaching Record was developed using the wireframes developed in the Design Phase and presented to Professor Darrell Evans, Vice-Provost (Learning and Teaching). We delivered an interactive and live prototype of the Teaching Record for user acceptance testing, including interface designs of the key pages across desktop and mobile and across browsers. It was designed in a chronological format allowing users to enter and record their experiences, with data entry visible through a timeline.