Background
The ability to efficiently navigate and comprehend academic readings is crucial for graduate students, who are often faced with dense, complex texts across multiple disciplines. However, many students struggle to manage the volume of readings required, identify key insights, and synthesize information effectively. This project aims to develop an online reading platform specifically designed to assist graduate students in managing their academic readings.
Research the problem
From the start, we identified the challenge: How can we make academic readings more accessible to graduate students? To better understand this issue, we conducted an online survey followed by in-depth interviews with potential users. Using affinity mapping, we organized the data into key categories: users' primary needs, the tools they currently use, and the features they find most helpful. By examining each category in detail, we uncovered several key insights.
1. Key challenges approaching academic readings.
From the survey and interviews, we found students mainly have two key challenges approaching academic readings.
i. The complexity of understanding terms/concepts
Out of all participants responding to the question of "obstacles associated with academic paper reading", 71.4% identified "comprehending complex concepts" as a challenge while 57.1% found "grasping specialized vocabulary" challenging. This was supported by our interviewee who emphasized that interpretations of certain terms and concepts can alter depending on the field of study.
ii. Insufficient background knowledge in the field
An equal percentage of survey participants - 57.1% indicated having "insufficient prior knowledge" as a key hurdle in their academic reading experience. Many interviewees seconded this due to their diverse educational backgrounds and varying degrees of pre-existing knowledge.
2. Pros and cons of Perusall
Since the students in the program are required to use Perusall, an online interactive reading platform, we also researched on the feedback about this tool.
Of all the features that students think are helpful, two of them have drawn our attention. 71.4% students think "reading other students' annotation is very helpful, becasue "other people’s comments and annotations help me construct meaning, especially on some difficult concepts. They usually provide with examples or provide with their previous experience related to the topics". And 42.9% students feel "having discussions with peers are helpful". One interviewer said that "I really like reading discussions from my peers on Perusall because it can prompt me to think deeper". These two options share a common thread—collaborative learning, which requires students to "work in groups and mutually search for understanding, solutions, or meanings" (Smith, B.L., & J. MacGrefor, 1992). From a social constructivism view, students can learn better through this process because they co-construct knowledge by sharing experiences and ideas.
Doing shareable annotations and having conversations based on these annotations are likable and helpful features on Perusall. However, students also mentioned that Perusall highlights all the annotations from the students, so the reading page can be a bit messy and disturbing, they are forced to read all the annotations/discussions while reading, which largely slower their pace for doing readings.
Persona
Design walkthrough
Going off from the persona, we have come up with the following HMW questions to help our ideation.
How Might We: help users better understand concepts and terms in their readings?
How Might We: help users approach others' annotations more effectively and efficiently?
How Might We: create opportunities for users to exchange ideas and learn from each other?
Except for some basic functions like taking/downloading notes, dictionary, annotating, we want to design a reading platform where students can utilize sharable annotations more efficiently and have more opportunities to discuss with their peers. Our design can be divided into 3 main parts: before reading, while reading & after reading.
Before reading:
The main design for this part is how to let students locate their reading. The homepage shows students’ courses within the current semester and when students choose the course, the readings are listed by each week.
While reading:
When students start reading, they can do sharable annotations freely. On the reading page, there is a display mode function that students can use to choose what annotations are highlighted so that their reading process can be more smooth. On the top of the reading page menu, there
After reading:
The discussion room is a place for students to find peers who want to share thoughts/ideas about the readings. Students can join established discussion groups or create their own. This creates opportunities and motivations for students to dig into readings and get better understanding.
Usability test:
After finishing mid-fi prototype, we have recruited 6 potential target users to participate in our usability testing. For the testing, the following questions are listed to guide our test:
Is the process of finding a particular reading smooth and intuitive?
Is the display feature helpful in making reading annotations more efficiently?
Is the process of writing annotation and notes intuitive?
How do users think of discussion room feature?
What features worked well/not so well?
Usability analysis:
Before reading:
Users think the process is generally intuitive and easy to follow. They like "recently reviewed" feature which could provides them with quick access to the readings they have been working on. Some small modifications are also needed to help users better locate readings on the course page. i.e. highlighting the current week readings.
While reading:
Users think selective display mode can help them efficiently absorb others' annotations. The process of writing annotations and notes are easy to follow. Some users mentioned they would want to download notes so that they can organize them in their own drive or folder.
After reading:
Discussion room is the feature that most students are excited about. Some says discussion room could be a motivation for them to finish weekly readings on time so that they could join discussion groups and exchange ideas with classmates to consolidate their comprehension of the readings.
Below shows some key features of CO-READ. If you are interested, you check out the website here.
