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Improving the grading process for Google integrated assignments through Schoology

About Google Integrated Assignments

The Google Drive Assignments App enables instructors to assign Google Docs, Spreadsheets, Slideshows, and Drawings from directly within the Schoology platform. When a student opens the assigned file, an individual student copy is automatically generated so that the student can work on it and submit, and the instructor can then provide feedback and grade the assignment, all without leaving Schoology. This integration has driven a lot of sales during the last 2 years.

The Problem

  • Although users love the ability to use Google through Schoology, they have consistent pain points around how slow and time-consuming the grading of a Google assignments takes.

  • When teachers are grading more than 12 assignments they have to scroll back up to see the student's submission after selecting the student on the left side list, resulting in a lot of unnecessary scrolling.

  • Teachers have pain points around the usability while grading a Google assignment, which adds a lot more time to the overall grading workflow.​

Current Google assignment grading views

My Role

I was the lead product designer responsible for all aspects of the project. I worked collaboratively with the lead product manager to determine product requirements and project scope (MVP). 

Main Responsibilities

  1. Research lead

  2. Interaction design

  3. Testing

  4. Visual design exploration

Research

What we wanted to learn?

  1. Users were frustrated with the grading process being too slow and tedious. What are the specific interactions that are making this process slow?

  2. What are the most important pieces of information teachers need in order to grade a Google assignment?

Methodologies

  • Analysis of the following items: 

    • Help center documentation

    • Support tickets

    • Videos demonstrating grading workflow frustrations 

  • Discovery survey

  • Unmoderated user testing and open questions (click test & task analysis)

What we learned?

  • The major finding was the need to create a consistent grading experience for teachers. We had previously research and tested our "grade by question" feature and now need to leverage this already validated workflow for our Google integrations grading solution.

  • Teachers want to grade in bulk and the current UI is not optimized for providing feedback and grading quickly

  • Unnecessary scrolling and clicking

  • A lot of navigating back and forth to access the next students submission

  • Not enough screen real estate for viewing a students submission

  • No easy way to navigate to the next or previous students submission

  • For submissions without a rubric attached, the steps to entering a grade is complicated

  • No indication for the instructor to know when a student re-submits an assignment

Context Scenario

Ms. Remington is an 8th grade english instructor with 4 total sections, totaling over 100 students. Each section was assigned to write a report summarizing chapters 2-5 of their out of class reading. The assignment deadline has passed, students have submitted their work and Ms. Remington needs to grade and provide feedback to all her students before the start of class tomorrow.

Ms. Remington usually starts grading assignments during her down time at school, which is typically on her off periods, but usually has frequent interruptions from students. She does most of her grading at home, but also has two young kids that require a lot of attention. Because of the constant interruptions from her kids, she has the most time to grade after the kids have gone to bed. While she’s grading, Ms. Remington wants to be able to see which students have submitted their work (who’s on time vs. late) what students are needing to be graded and the total number of submissions. Because she has over 100 students to grade, she wants to be able to grade everything on one screen using her laptop. She needs to easily toggle between attempts and file attachments, fill out the rubric or enter a final score, give students feedback and quickly advance to the next student.

Concepts & Testing

Since identifying the need to build a consistent grading experience for teachers, the bulk of concept exploration and iteration was spent matching the same workflow already establish from the grade by question feature and exploring a new grading view that addressed the bulk of the usability issues uncovered during research findings. 

User Flow

Worked on an updated user flow to match a previously tested and implemented grading experience (grade by question).

Concept Explorations

cept Drawings.png

Concept Testing & Validation

Testing included unmoderated concept testing and open questions via Optimal Workshop (2 rounds of feedback, 300+ responses). Heat map and task analysis.

Round one concept testing research goals

  1. Are we providing the user with the right amount of information in the table before jumping into grading an assignment?

  2. Does the user understand the grading interactions?

  3. Does the user understand how to navigate the interface?

Heat maps and task analysis

Round two concept testing research goals

  1. Do users understand the redesign of the Flow Navigation component?

  2. Do instructors want to see a timestamp (submission time & date) on the grading screen? Or is status (late, on time) enough?

  3. Do users know how to download all submissions?

  4. Can users find where to access a student grade exception?

  5. How do instructors grade? Is defaulting the rubric to open helpful?

Heat maps and task analysis

First Release (Expected Fall 2020)

  • Users found the student data table very easy to understand and quickly knew which students needed to be graded and how to jump directly into begin grading.

  • When a rubric is attached to grading it will be defaulted to open which teachers loved. This will severely increase the grading time and reduce the amount of time teachers have to spend opening and closing the sliding rubric panel.

  • The grading screen no longer includes distracting main navigation or breadcrumbs which maximizes screen real estate (reduced scrolling and usability issues) and only displays the most important tools for grading.

  • Updated top navigation on the grading screen allowing the teacher to quickly advance to the next student needing grading, or go back to the submission table. This new navigation will reduce the amount of switching between grading and then trying to select the next student that needs to be graded.

Submissions grading table concept

Google grading concept

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