Time-saving tool to review students’ work in real-time.
With each product Newsela releases it aims to solve 2 core problems:
(1) Addressing the comprehension gap that exists in classrooms. Teachers have to teach to grade level curriculum; however, students read at varying grade levels. If a student is struggling to understand the text, they’ll also have trouble pulling insights and making connections on assessments.
(2) With everything a teacher needs to manage during class, it’s nearly impossible to keep a pulse on performance and take action in real time.
This project aims to solve both problems, but largely focuses on #2.
Context
At the core of our paid product is the data-driven teacher “Binder,” or virtual grade book. As students read and take assessments on the platform our software strings together a narrative of comprehension, which enables us to diagnose a just-right reading level for that student. Part of monitoring students’ activity is to track the level at which they are interacting with the content, as well as how they demonstrate understanding of the text via the quiz and write prompts. We were eager to find a way to have this crucial information extend beyond the realm of the binder and coexist with the articles to truly power and inform real-time instruction.
Project Goal
How might we bring speed, ease, and delight to a teacher’s grading workflow?
My role
UX, UI, and user feedback
Measures of Success
Workflow efficiencies: are teachers now spending more time on the article page reviewing work?
Engagement: is this tool resulting in teachers assigning more articles on the platform?
Process
During the research and ideation phase I worked closely with our Community Team of former teachers to identify pain points and brainstorm useful ways to track student activity in real time. The concept and design went through numerous rounds of user testing with our NYC-based teachers, as well as other Newsela Certified Educators around the country. I also worked closely with a PM and various engineers through implementation, testing, and eventual release to our use base of 2 million teachers.
Results
Workflow efficiencies
Review Mode streamlines navigation and reduces the amount of time teachers spend reviewing student work on Newsela by 5 minutes for a class of 30, or 10 sec per student.
Engagement
Post-release teachers created 1.5 more assignments a week on Newsela. Within those classrooms, student engagement with articles via annotations, quizzes, and write responses increased by 10%, 3%, and 5%, respectively.