Facilitator’s Guide

Introduction

This guide is intended to provide a facilitator with the elements needed to conduct a participatory Learning Analytics Dashboard (LAD) design session.

Methodological Framework

The objectives of these sessions are multiple. Depending on the audience, one or the other objective can become the main one, or on the contrary, serve as a pretext:

• To assist in the design of learning dashboards;
• To assist actors in a creative process;
• Generate ideas, express needs;
• Explore the field of possibilities.

Before the session, the facilitator is invited to take an interest in the description of the different elements of the method. The method is based on classic HMI support methods. It specializes them by proposing to explain specific elements of the learning dashboards, and to express a process of construction of understanding and choice (sensemaking).

Role of the facilitator

Before the session

• Prepare the material and ensure mastery of the key points

During the session

The facilitator introduces the session and then accompanies the groups with different actions. The facilitator introduces the session and then accompanies the groups with different actions, for this he/she must:

• Play a tutoring role
  • He/she limits his/her interventions to the strict minimum to avoid breaking the group’s dynamic;
  • He answers the participants’ questions of clarification;
  • For any other question about the TBA’s choices, he refers a question to the group;
  • His interventions aim to encourage the group;
• Help the groups to:
• Follow the phases;
• Refocus on the objective of the session if the discussions get too far off track;
• Remind participants of the expectations;
• Encourage participants to express themselves, to generate ideas, to follow through on their reasoning Encourage participants to express themselves, generate ideas, and follow through on their reasoning;
• Re-launch discussions and open up new perspectives if necessary.

At the end of the session

1. Facilitator collects the dashboard(s) designed by the participants (image, screenshot, link to the tool used).
2. Facilitator gives the sheet or link for the session evaluation.
3. The facilitator proposes a conclusion to the session with a debriefing.

Flow of a session

A participatory design session typically consists of 5 phases.

Phase 1: introduction

• Participants are divided into teams of a few people (typically 2 to 6)
• A short presentation of the approach (interest of participatory design) and of the proposed tools (avatar sheet, TBA sheets, maps, wireframe) is given by the facilitator.

This phase should be kept short, in the order of a few minutes.

Phase 2: Clarification of the TBA and its framework

• A round table discussion allows participants to get to know each other.
• Depending on the group, participants may choose to begin by specifying the following
  • The avatar;
  • The purpose of the TBA;
  • The possible decision(s);
  • The context.

  Encourage the emergence of agreements on certain points, in order to reach a group agreement. Reading the decision cards together is a good way to encourage discussion.

This phase takes a certain amount of time (between 20 and 30 minutes) but must be limited in time to allow a specific case to emerge and a shared understanding of the question posed.

Phase 3: exploration of use cases

During this phase, the group thinks about how they want to interact with the data, in a spirit of sensemaking. They document the thought process and the interactions to be organized, and the underlying assumptions. For each step of the reasoning, they create a specific sheet.

Phase 4: creation of the panel/wireframe

For each significant stage of the use cases, the group is invited to present a panel/screen to support the sensemaking stage.

Note that phases 3 and 4 can be intertwined. Participants may be motivated to draw their panel directly after having described it. In general, any step can be revised at any time if the group decides that it helps them clarify their work.

Phase 5: Cross-presentation and debriefing

After these two creative steps, participants take time to synthesize their results and the concepts they have chosen. If several groups are present, the different groups can make a cross-presentation. This step allows for a pooling of the proposals, reinforces the group dynamic, and leads to a synthesis that allows for further refinement of the proposal.

After the workshop, the new maps and the proposed dashboards are collected with three complementary objectives: production, capitalization and evaluation.

1. Production. This collection thus allows, through the dashboard generation process [4], to produce a dashboard corresponding to the expressed requirements.
2. Capitalization covers all the elements proposed during the workshop, to feed the PadLAD project’s study base in general and the base used to generate learning dashboards in particular. New maps may be produced to complement the tool presented here.
3. Evaluation of the tool and the workshop process are provided for improvement.