The Problem:

Due to COVID-19, many schools are transitioning to remote learning. Preschool and Kindergarten- age children are struggling to stay engaged in their coursework while learning from home.

Currently, teachers are conducting synchronous class with students over video conferencing tools, such as Zoom, and young students struggle to stay engaged in a virtual setting. It is then often up to the parents to teach their kids at home, but many parents are involved in remote work and don’t have the time or expertise to plan lessons for their children.

Our users

Our users are primarily children attending preschool and kindergarten (3-5 years old) that have access to devices and wifi at home. However, the teachers and parents of these students are also highly involved in their youngster’s education, and are also critical users of our solution.

User Research

We sent the parents of young children an online survey, and conducted interviews with preK and Kindergarten teachers to better understand our user’s current experiences and difficulties with remote learning. By gathering data from both groups, we were able to get a better understanding of what issues the teachers, parents, and students are having cohesively when young students are forced to learn from home.

However, we faced some limitations: most of the parents and teachers we reached out to teach or send their children to private schools. This may have caused some bias in regards to resources and technologies available for preK and Kindergarten students, and the amount of parent involvement in their children’s education. Additionally, we received fewer than our desired number of responses on our parent survey (target: 16 responses, actual: 14), which could have led to our results not accurately representing the population of families with access to technology and reliable internet.

Interviews

Five preK and kindergarten teachers were interviewed, and we asked about:

  • The traditional learning experience for students and teachers
  • The remote learning experience for students and teachers
  • Typical curriculum preK / Kindergarten curriculum content
  • Tools and technologies that teachers are already using
  • Teacher expectations of parent involvement

Surveys

We wanted to hear about the parent’s experience teaching their children at home, and we sent the parents an anonymous survey to ask about:

  • Expectations of digital learning
  • Parent involvement in their children’s education
  • Child engagement with current remote learning strategies
  • Their child’s home life
  • Parent/guardian capabilities and availability to teach their children at home

Data Analysis

Interviews

We met as a group and discussed the responses from our teacher interviewees. We then drew similarities between the frustrations and issues that the teachers were facing.

The main pain points that the teachers communicated were:

  • Lack of interactivity in remote learning settings
  • Lack of usability and flexibility of existing solutions for intended purposes
  • Lack of Efficacy of existing remote learning management software

Surveys

The parents communicated through the surveys that:

  • PreK and Kindergarten students struggle to concentrate during zoom calls
  • Child engagement and excitement in school has decreased
  • Parents are expected to be moderately involved in their child’s education, and spend an average of 8 hours a week teaching their children at home
  • Children spend a lot of time throughout the day on learning activities
  • Most parents are working from home due to COVID-19

We received particularly interesting responses to the question:

What strategies would you recommend to increase your child's engagement in class?

“More hands on learning such as experiments and role play learning”
“Have digital learning be reinforcing something she can physically touch or see.”

Findings

We reviewed all quantitative and qualitative data as a team and participated in an affinity diagramming exercise, which revealed trends among the teachers, parents, and students. This diagram provided us a better understanding of the core design elements we needed to incorporate into our solution.

Excessive Interactivity

  • Teachers intensely rely on parent involvement & interaction with their children to reach learning objectives
  • A para-pro (teaching assistant) is needed to monitor the student’s behavior during synchronous class

Low Usability

  • Assignment distribution is disorganized & ineffective
  • Teachers are using up to 10 different online education platforms
  • There is no unified solution to teach multiple subjects and concepts

Lack of Efficacy

  • Teachers are struggling to communicate expectations and tasks to parents
  • Handwriting is difficult to teach in a distanced setting
  • Kids struggle to stay engaged in large video-conference classes

Prototypes

Kids Kit

Kids Kit Prototype

Description: Kids Kit is meant to make remote learning more engaging for young students! The kit includes craft/learning materials with parent instructions for guided educational activities. The materials in the kit can either be used with parents as an at-home activity, or during live classes over Zoom.

Rationale:

  • Is an affordable and feasible prototype
  • Encourages student engagement
  • Helps students develop motor skills
  • Shallow learning curve for students, teachers, and parents
  • Can be developed & finalized quickly and easily

Issue Targeted: Lack of hands-on learning in remote teaching

InteGREAT

InteGREAT Prototype

Description: InteGREAT is a central learning portal that allows teachers to integrate web services for the classroom. It also allows teachers to seamlessly contact parents, track students’ attendance, and share course material with students as well as with other teachers. Another feature of the app is that once the app is open on every student's device, the teacher has the ability to switch the entire class from one tool to another.

Rationale:

  • Teachers can easily incorporate multiple tools in remote learning
  • Increases organization among both teachers and students
  • Provides a centralized platform

Issue Targeted: Difficulties managing various learning softwares & teacher-parent communication issues

Immersive EDU

Immersive EDU Prototype

Description: Immersive EDU will provide a fully-immersive, virtual reality learning environment for Pre-k and Kindergarten children. It will allow students to be placed into a virtual classroom with their teachers and give them the ability to interact with other students. Teachers can also assign interactive learning “missions” through this system as homework assignments.

Rationale:

  • Prevents child distraction with an immersive experience
  • Takes advantage of new technologies

Issue Targeted: Student engagement issues during virtual class time

Solution

Of the three prototypes, we chose to move forward with Kids Kit!

Why

We chose Kids Kit because it tackles issues with student engagement in materials, will increase parent involvement, and make the distribution of tasks and learning assignments smoother. We hope that with Kids Kit, students will be more involved in course materials, and parents will have clearer guidance on how to support their children’s learning at home with the included instruction sheets. This hands-on solution is also conducive to reaching essential learning milestones for pre-K and Kindergarten students, such as handwriting, fine motor skills, and creative expression!

How

Teachers would assemble the kits and include:

  • Items provided by the school
  • A welcome letter to the students
  • Some preliminary instruction sheets, marked in the order that they should be completed
  • A list of items that parents should purchase to complete the kit i.e. school supplies

The parents would then pick up the kits from their local school in a socially distanced manner, and purchase the remaining items. They would then complete the activities with their children at home when they would normally teach or play with their children. Teachers would email out additional instruction sheets as they develop lesson plans, and parents will be expected to replenish the kit whenever an item gets broken or used.

Usability Study

In order to test the product, parent / child pairs will be recruited to walk through various learning tasks with the kit. First, the parent and child will be asked to find relevant activities relating to a certain course. This will test the kit’s top-level organization. Next, the parent and child will be asked to complete a solo activity and a supervised activity.

About the team

Hello! We’re a team of undergraduate students from Georgia Tech, and we investigated this problem space for the course CS 3750 taught by Amber Solomon. Our group name? Phish Foodies!

Picture of Ebba

Ebba Eriksson

Picture of Jenny

Jenny Wang

Picture of Paulina

Paulina Schuler

Picture of Jake

Jake Haygood