Using contextualist inquiry to produce college texts/ancillaries
Interesting email came across the tubes from McGraw-Hill today.
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Do you ever wonder if your students really get what you are teaching them? Do you use external resources (newspapers, YouTube videos, etc.) to supplement your core materials? Would you be interested in a way to engage your students in the course material when outside of the class? Do you believe that your students are often ill prepared for learning the material or taking the exams?
If you answered yes to any of the above questions, you are not alone. McGraw-Hill recently embarked on a singular research project, to help us uncover trends among faculty and students in terms of how they approach teaching and learning. This research was unusual in its scope and remarkable for its commitment to put first what often comes second in the creation of ahead-of-the-curve instructional technology: the needs of instructors and students. To achieve this goal, we knew that we had to go beyond traditional class tests, student surveys, and focus groups to better understand you, your students, and your teaching and learning goals. We wanted to develop tools that were user-defined, and user-centered. And this commitment led us to one particular research methodology that seemed tailor made for this effort: Contextual Inquiry.
Contextual Inquiry is a user-centered design process whereby data is gathered through observational interviews that build a rich understanding of users' needs, tasks, and processes. Design teams who don’t understand their users frequently develop products that are difficult to use and understand; do not meet real-world requirements or provide irrelevant functionality. The intelligence gathered during this process empowers product designers to create products that fit actual user needs. Our dedicated Contextual Inquiry team members — researchers, editors, product managers, instructional designers — collected detailed information about instructor and student work practices by talking with them about what they were doing while they were working. In these field studies at two- and four-year campuses around the country, our teams formed partnerships with instructors, TAs, and students to produce abundant new research data that honed their thinking about the ideal next generation product.
We invite you now to join a online presentation/discussion led by one of our core Contextual Inquiry team members—Sarah Hegarty—as she provides an overview of the key findings from this observational research, and demonstrates how those findings have been addressed as specific features in our innovative new product: Connect.
Register for a session by clicking on the formdesk link below and selecting a session time. The session times are listed in EST.
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Session information will be sent to you upon registration.
We look forward to hearing from you.
(emphasis mine)
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