Abstract:

Many students find it hard to organize digital learning resources. A common practice is to store data locally on individual computers or in the cloud. It is challenging for students to organize different learning media content (text, photos, movies, audio, links) without storing files in many different places. This makes the students’ workflow unorganized, complicated and there are risks of losing important files. Further on, it is not easy to see connections between different study subjects as well as different learning resources. Content structuring by folder categories has limitations when it comes to interrelations and connections between the content. This work reports on a novel approach to collecting and connecting digital learning resources. The investigations started with asking a sample of students what could be done to make their workflow easier. Students’ answers revealed the need for a multiplatform application which can be used to visually draw lines between learning resources, henceforth showing their interrelations as maps of “Bubbles”. Following a human-centred design approach, an interactive prototype was designed and tested with students. The feedback was tremendously positive as the study participants saw a great potential in using such a tool, especially to organize content belonging to different study subjects in a more connected way. Students could easily keep track of learning resources connected to two or more study subjects. Additionally, there are indications of possibilities to collaboratively use and work on the same content without the necessity for each student to store the same learning resources in different locations.

Keywords:

Information Architecture, Learning Technology, Digital learning resources, Content Connectivity, Visual Maps.