Mission Graduate
Design solutions
Early design ideas
Design rationales | Learning theories and strategies | Analysis
IDEA 1
Synchronous/live new student meet-ups
Online or in-person new student meet-up sessions with new students and current students can build connections with the ECT community. Those sessions can be done either before or after the program orientation.
Potential activities
New students will be able to share their concerns and problems with the previous cohort and current students and get insights from peers who are more experienced and knowledgeable than them to better plan their graduate journey from various aspects. Topics are flexible according to individual student's needs, which can be:
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Life as an ECT student
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Course registration
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Industry insights
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Semester planning
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Foundational course insights and suggestions
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...
Design rationales
According to our survey, a great number of students showed the need for opportunities to connect with peers upon the new semester starts. Small meet-up groups can help to meet that need in a more intimate environment for building relationships and conversations.
Learning theories and strategies
Social constructivism/ Social Development Theory: Defining Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) can be important for ECT new students in terms of being able to identify useful resources that align with their core values and goals, as we stated in our objectives. Providing students with opportunities to know their More Knowledgeable Others/Peers can be a way to understand their ZPD and what kind of extra help they will need in order to reach the next level goals.
Technology and media affordance
Synchronous or live sessions fit the students' need for more opportunities to connect with their peers and learn together from a professional and personal level, which synchronous or live sessions will be a great adoption for personal connection and relationship building. After all, one huge takeaway besides knowledge from school is the connections and interpersonal skills.
Analysis of the design
Pros:
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Identifying opportunities to build personal bonds with students in the ECT community
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Create an environment to comfortability ask questions, concerns and advice before the semester starts within the peers
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Curating mediums to enable small groups to have more intimate conversations and discussions
Cons:
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Students might be shy of speaking with a group of strangers
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In need of facilitators who can facilitate the small meet-up groups
Problems and concerns
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How to provide this opportunity for all the students (part-time and full-time)?
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How can we recruit or gather current students for this meet-up?
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Should this session be required for new students to sign up? If not, how should we encourage participation?
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What is a reasonable size of the meet-up sessions?
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How do we measure whether the meet-up sessions are productive and useful for new students?
IDEA 2
ECT Slack Channel revamping project
Revamping ECT's current Slack channel to a more student-centered, topic-based virtual community that serves as a safe place for new students to ask questions and express feelings.
Potential activities
The new Slack community can help students find where they can go to ask questions throughout their first year, and build a bond between the new students and the ECT community by participating in more community events, activities and familiarizing with the resources as well. The Slack channels can also be used to pin documents and videos that can be useful for all students.
These channels can be themed such as:
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New Student Questions
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ECT Career Development
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Knowledge Sharing
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"Class of 2022" cohort
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Content calendar of recent events and updates
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...
We will also be leveraging a Slackbot called Donut to help faculty schedule key tasks and activities for new students. Donut will help faculty keep track of all the updates that new students need to engage with in order to have a successful first semester. Donut will curate items to new students such as:
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Links to helpful new student resources
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Reminders when to register for classes
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Send out signup forms for live new student sessions or mixers
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Poll new students to gather feedback on experiences
Design rationales
Our survey shows that students are in need of advice to help them to plan out their graduate study, which indicates that the participants didn't find enough impactful resources that helped them on this. New Slack channels can be dedicated to new students can help create a sense of community and psychological safety to ask questions. The Slack channels can also be used to curate the most updated ECT resources and information to students. ECT can also monitor the chat to see what types of questions and conversations to help current students and future students.
Slack is the main medium that student will use to communicate with their classmates and faculty members throughout their graduate career. We plan to add onto the Slack experience by creating additional space for faculty to engage with new students on Slack in more streamlined way by introducing the Slackbot (Donut). Donut is designed for admins to send out notifications to new groups of people joining an organization. These notifications can be customized and automated to make it easier for faculty members to get the right messages out to the right audiences. Donut can become the virtual guide that will help new students get started in their first semester in grad school by curating relevant information to them in a timely manner.
Learning theories and strategies
Learning community: effective learning community helps students to establish academic and social support networks and also helps to build a setting for community-based delivery of academic support programs.
Show, Don’t Tell: By asking questions to the previous cohort or peers in ECT, students learn from others' journey of accomplishing one task, which engages students and makes them an active participant, which is important in the early days of this program.
Technology and media affordance
Diffusion of Innovation (Rogers):
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Relative advantage: The current slack channels are updated sporadically by faculty weekly. The revamped version will provide channels of different topics that are more student-centered, thus provide a safe place for students to get connected with each other, in particular new students.
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Compatibility: Still serves as the primary communication tool within ECT community. The Slackbot (Donut) is also an integration that is already available at NYU. This integration can be easily adapted by the faculty members running orientation.
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Complexity: Should be considered as easy once students familiarize with Slack and Donut
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Observability: Available for everyone in ECT community
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Trialability: Pilot with all the incoming cohort and have them joined in a this "new-students-ask-questions" and see the participation and engagement.
Analysis of the design
Pros:
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Help to create a sense of community upon arrival for the program
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Build up an academic support system that is more dedicated to the new students
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Give ECT Administrators a more direct way to connect and provide updates to new students
Cons:
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Students might neglect the email asking them to join Slack
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Students might turnoff or ignore notifications from the Slackbot (Donut)
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The mission of this channel might change as the first semester passes
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Students may decide to create their own group slack channels that Faculty may be excluded from
Problems and concerns
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Who should be the facilitator: current students, faculty?
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Will faculty have to create guidelines on how on to interact in the slack channels?
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If current students should be the facilitator, how can we recruit them and make sure they are facilitating the channel well?
IDEA 3
"ECTube"
Create an interactive new student hub with short "Tik Tok" like videos that enhance current "ECT orientation guide". Short videos would be complimented with appropriate links attached for additional learning and activities that will further prepare new students. The videos will be created by current students, alumni and faculty and will include a google form that gives new student the opportunity to reach out to the video creator and ask questions. The web page will also include a headline of upcoming events for new students to participate in.
Potential activities
The topcis for "ECTube" could be introduced prior to orientation and include the following three sections:
Welcome
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Current student video introduces a “day in the life” with an attached form to ask them questions about time at ECT
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Faculty member giving a tour of the ECT space and where to find important certain things in that space
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Section for upcoming informal meet-ups with other new students facilitated by current students not faculty
Classes
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Video about how to prepare for your first advisor conversation
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Current student video showing where to register for classes with an attached form to ask them questions about the process
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Videos of faculty members talking about foundation courses with an attached form to ask them questions about the process
Skills
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Video about how to do APA citations with links to connect them to library resources
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Video about how to read an academic journal
Design rationales
In our survey, we learned that the two key areas students would have liked to have more support in were semester arrangement and planning and student communication. Through this hub, new students are able to build community through advertised student led events. They are also able to learn about semester arrangement and planning by getting to visually see what key information is necessary for a new student. When we spoke to Maaike and Jeneva, we learned about this challenge that students have a hard time shifting from undergraduate to graduate experience. By providing links to each brief video, it encourages students to explore further, direct their own learning and dive deeper into key components. It also encourages students to build relationships and learn from their peers.
Learning theories and strategies
Show, Don’t Tell: Videos allow new students to see and hear what happens as a result of doing this activity (i.e. taking this foundation class, registering for classes, reading an academic journal effectively etc.). These videos are a guidance that gives students the confidence to draw their own conclusions and drive their own learning.
Tell Story: People like stories. Stories are easily told through videos. Through the videos shared, new students are able to learn from current students and hear how they take on certain tasks important for a new student. It puts a voice to the activities that need to be performed and an opportunity to interact with them. In these videos, students and faculty can make these engaging by sharing funny anecdotes that humanizes the whole orientation experience.
Social & Informal Learning: Students get to learn from peers and faculty outside a formal setting or orientation session. The videos and relevant links are resources that are more flexible to reach. It’s hard for one person, like the program director or professor to answer all questions. This allows a more learning to happen in a more curated and focused way that is still social.
Technology and media affordance
Short “TikTok” style videos: Videos help new students learn about processes that may seem abstract when written. It can help demonstrate practical activities that are eventually to be carried out by the student themselves (i.e register for classes).
Google form/Chat function for each video: This allows students to interact with others about the video. It also enables students to ask questions with the person who is talking in the video.
Analysis of the design
Pros:
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Helps start to build a sense of community for students before they even join
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Resources and context around all resources are on one page
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Information is displayed in a relatable way (i.e. TikTok style/Instagram story style)
Cons:
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How will we translate or transcribe the videos for more inclusion?
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This can hard to change overtime as program and processes change
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This can be time consuming to make and put together
Problems and concerns
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Does the technology in our program allow us to use the functions mentioned?
IDEA 4
ECT New Student Coffee Chat
ECT administrators can design check-ins with new students in the middle and end of their first year. The main objective of check-ins is to give faculty an opportunity to get a pulse check on how students have been adapting to graduate life and raise their awareness of opportunities and courses that align with their career objectives. The check-ins can be held virtually with a survey sent out soon after.
Defined purposes
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ECT New Student Coffee Chat's will be used as a platform for faculty to talk through new or interesting courses that students can take advantage of through ECT
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A point of celebration of achievements for high performing new students (such as portfolio contest winners, class projects that are actually being developed, etc. )
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Create an environment where students can ask questions to faculty solely on what they are interested in for their 2nd and 3rd semester.
Design rationales
According to our stakeholders’ Maiike and Jeneva, new students have a major challenge of figuring out what courses will align with their career objectives after taking the foundational courses. Part of this challenge is the inability of faculty to have an open conversation with new students focused on career resources and opportunities. Currently, the only touch point for faculty is during new student orientation, which is extremely linear and inundated with ECT program information. Coffee Chats will provide a safe space for students to ask questions about courses they are interested in and how it may impact their career trajectory. This can also be used as a forum for faculty to acknowledge first-year students who have truly done amazing work and contributions to the ECT community.
Learning theories and strategies
Elaboration Theory: The check-ins are meant to give faculty the opportunity to expand on the courses being offered and celebrate the great work that they’ve identified from a few students. This can be done by providing an explanation of what the course entails, examples of projects from past students and soft and technical skills needed to perform well in certain courses.
Tell Story: Faculty will tell their own personal experiences with different topics and courses. This will help students understand if the course is truly aligned with their career goals and understand different faculty members instructing styles.
Technology and media affordance
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Virtual settings will allow for more students and faculty members to join since there is a sense of uncertainty with how classes will commence next year.
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The online setting will allow for students to be more focused on the faculty members and use technology to translate conversations if needed.
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The faculty members can also field questions prior to the check-in to create a starting point for conversations.
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The only limitations would be the time constraints to go through content and have open Q&A in a virtual environment.
Analysis of the design
Pros:
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Take the pressure off students to read through solely descriptions of courses to understand its outcomes
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Gives faculty a streamlined way to connect with students solely for the purpose of providing information to help students make the best decisions for their career goals
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Provides students a timeline and space to do their own research and produce questions about next steps within the program
Cons:
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There will be a time constraint with 30+ students trying to ask questions to faculty
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Time commitment for faculty may be unclear in this type of open forum
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ECT faculty may not have insights on other courses being taught in other schools of NYU that may be beneficial for students as well
Problems and concerns
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Who will be responsible for organizing and facilitating these check-in events?
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How do the administrators of the check-ins prepare faculty members for this event?
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When can we host these check-ins so it does not cause additional stress during the end of the semesters for students and faculty?
Potential activities/list items
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First Coffee Chat organized and facilitated by ECT Faculty with 3 segments.
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1. Overview of Foundational Course
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2. Course Descriptions and Q&A for New Courses & Internships
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3. Overview of signing up for Spring and Summer Semester
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Second Coffee Chat organized by ECT and student volunteers with 3 segments.
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1. Faculty announcements & reminders
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2. Student recognition ceremony and showcase
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3. Celebration Activity
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Reference
Bates, T. (2019). Teaching in a Digital Age: Guidelines for Teaching and Learning (2nd ed.) [E-book]. https://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/
Dirksen, J. (2015). Design for How People Learn (Voices That Matter) (2nd ed.) [E-book]. New Riders. https://learning-oreilly-com.proxy.library.nyu.edu/library/view/design-for-how/9780134211510/
Interview with Maaike Bouwmeester, ECT Program Director [Online interview]. (2021, March 4)
Mayer, R. E. (2009). Multimedia learning (2nd ed.). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Reigeluth, C. M. (1999). The elaboration theory: Guidance for scope and sequence decisions. Instructional design theories and models: A new paradigm of instructional theory, 2, 425-453.
Social Development Theory (Lev Vygotsky). (2018, November 30). InstructionalDesign.Org. http://www.instructionaldesign.org/theories/social-development/
Vygotsky, L. S. (2012). Thought and language. MIT press.