Agile user-centred design for CALL – A practical workshop

Half-day workshop, 20 August, 10-13 hrs

Presenters:
David Bish, EF Education First
Marc Holgate, EF Education First
Ravi Chopra, EF Education First

Description:

One of the challenges in CALL design is that it can be ignorant of the social classroom dynamic following an often outmoded cognitive model. Teachers and students need to be considered in designing a CALL system that can be successfully implemented in a supervised classroom setting to enrich TBLT.

This workshop will suit any EUROCALL member involved in building educational software applications by introducing them to industry standard software design and implementation techniques 

Designing a CALL system is not simply about encapsulating a learning model in software. If it doesn’t feel right in the hands of learners and teachers the most innovative learning system will fail. There is a lot more to good usable software design than a linguist or educator might realise. By employing a design thinking mindset, we can apply user-centred design principles to make innovative systems that remain easy to use for teacher and student. 

In this hands-on workshop with a provided set of iPads we will demonstrate and facilitate as you try out some of the processes of agile design. Participants will consider first the top-down principles of designing software for the classroom setting from garnering insights with field observation to functional specification, through to user acceptance testing. Then we will move to hands-on experimentation of best practice techniques, considering the full user-centred design lifecycle. 

This workshop will include the following segments:

* Theoretical underpinnings of our approach.
* Demonstration of agile design and the sprint software development approach focussed on ‘user stories’ in a scrum meeting.
* How to model and application and run user trials. Hands-on practice with dummy applications created for the workshop.
* The typical phases of testing required before launching a piece of software.
* How to run and report focus group findings.
* Managing post-launch feedback and issues (including tracking uptake)

For the workshop we will provide sets of ipads to be shared by participants containing wireframe models of dummy software for a full simulation of the design process.

Registration:

You may register for this workshop during conference registration. If you have already registered for the conference and would like to add or change your workshop registration, please send an email to info@eurocall2014.nl.

Please note that the number of places for the workshops is limited. If you cannot register for a workshop anymore, please indicate your preference in the comment field at registration. We will then put you on a waiting list.