The international studnts social learning Website

Doaa ElrayesHCI program- software and UI development

1- Domain Why Carleton university and this website?

“Carleton has always done relatively well in terms of international Student recruitment, with Carleton’s unique programs and good reputation, they have been quite successful in attracting international students with about 10% of our undergraduate and 18% of our graduate Student populations being international students” (Office of the Provost and Vice-President (Academic), 2010). While international students are important segment in Carleton’s student body, they face some significant challenges that have led to increased levels of dissatisfaction and dropout. There are two major types of challenges international students face in their earlier years at Carleton.

The first is academic challenges. One of the main academic challenges is related to language. Although international students are admitted to Carleton with minimum language requirements, they still have language limitations when they put the language to practice. It is usually not easy for international students to fully understand what the professors really mean or expect from them. Worse yet, when they face these challenges, they usually do not know where to turn for help.

The second is social challenges. International students sometimes feel helpless to establish social networks as in their home countries at first. As a matter of fact, international students often have more limited social networks compared to their peers in the university. They find it hard to make new friends so that, they end up only hanging out with people from their home countries. As a result, international students often miss on gaining cross-cultural experience, which is one of the main ingredients of university life and also one of the most important windows for enhancing learning.

Given these challenges and the lack of support from the local community or the university, students are likely to experience poor academic performance which can lead to drop out. This is a true loss for both the student and the university. In 2010, the office of the Provost and Vice-President Academic noted”It is a significant waste of resources if the students do not succeed and complete their programs. It also represents a loss to the individual students, and to the staff who have worked with them.”

Clearly, there is a significant need at Carleton for ways to assist international students in overcoming their academic and social challenges in order to enhance their academic performance.

Carleton Lounge is a webpage for social learning that is targeted mainly to address the challenges that Carleton international students face. Carleton lounge will connect the international students with their local peers. This will help the international students get help with experienced students about school work, and what is expected from them to do in order to succeed in the new educational system. By doing so, the webpage through instant messenger and video chat capabilities is creating the chance for all Carleton students to make friends with new people coming from different cultures (gaining cross-cultural experience). The webpage will also create a space for international students clubs on campus to offer support and services for new comers. Eventually, this will help international student to cope fast into Carleton educational system. .

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2- StylesThe user-computer interface is a two-way communication link between humans and devices. The user-computer interface includes hardware devices and the software for displaying information or taking the user's input.

The webpage will be presented in three usable user interface styles which are Form Fill-in, Direct Manipulation and Hypertext. Usability is about ensuring that the design is user-friendly, intuitive and easy to grasp and thus use. “Usability is the measure to which the design of a particular user interface takes into account the human psychology and physiology of the users, and makes the process of using the system effective, efficient and satisfying”. (Norman, 2002)

Form fill-in advantages as Shneiderman stated in We can design better user interfaces article “simplifies data entry, requires modest training makes assistance convenient, and permits use of form-management tools”. The reason of using the form fill-in in Carleton Lounge, is leading the student to concise and direct inputs, and time-saving. In addition it will help the students to understand what information are required without confusion.

Direct manipulation is a style of performing operations by making changes to data directly, such as clicking on it, dragging it, resizing it, and typing over it, as opposed to indirect operations, such as typing in commands on a command line or using menus and dialog boxes. “Direct manipulation style tends to present a comprehensive visual environment to the user, with the assumption that the user can judge relevance better than the system”. (Healey, 2001) In Shneiderman experiment in 1997 paper, some enthusiastic users reported positive feelings when they interact with direct manipulation user interface style. The style gave the users Mastery of the interface Competence in performing task, Ease in learning the system originally, and in assimilating advanced features, Enjoyment in using the system, and Desire to explore more powerful aspects of the system. These feelings are the optimum goals to be delivered through using the proposed webpage.

Hypertext style as Nelson, Theodor defines it in 1974 is a form of writing which branch or perform on request; they are best presented on computer display screens. There are several advantages using such style for Carleton lounge webpage as Jeff Conklin mentioned in his paper in 1987 such as: Ease of tracing references meaning: machine support for link tracing means that all references are equally easy to follow forward to their referent, or backward to their reference. Ease of creating new references, meaning: users can grow their own networks, or simply annotate someone else's document with a comment. Consistency of information meaning: references are embedded in their text, and if the text is moved, even to another document, the link information still provides direct access to the reference. These advantages will allow Carleton lounge students access to resources also, will further the relationships, and will offer them multiple layers and multiple explorations and engagements.

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3- Design

Fill-In Form.

Adam is a new student in Carleton he is coming from Egypt as an international student he is in firs year civil engineer. Adam will hear about Carleton lounge from the orientation day, it’s a tool that connects Carleton students with each other’s, through social learning sitting and it has been made exclusively to Carleton students to get more familiarized about the class and the expectation that required from him in class projects and over all the Carleton University.

Adam will go and put the website address and search for Carlton lounge he will find this interface as a registration interface he will go and fill in his information in 6 steps:

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1- He will click on the button to find his country and fill it in the space.

2- He will fill in that he is an engineer

3- He will fill in that he is a first year

4- He will fill his Carleton email

5- He will fill his preferred password

6-He will fill in his preferred name on Carleton lounge if it’s not like his original name

Adam wanted also to discover that he could chose his own language to start interacting with website by choosing his own langue in the upright box so he found the language that he is speaking as his mother tongue but her preferred to go with English . he notice that if he wanted to know about his country or any other country in very brief information he could go and fill in the country name in this area of search (Egypt) then a small window will show up with some information about the requested country and he will click on go to register.

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2- He is now registered the seconded tab will be opened to him. Adam Carleton lounge profile will be as a small introduction about Adam in front of all other Carleton lounge students. In this Page in the up left Adam will fill in some brief information about him such as: what program he is in, in what year, what his weaknesses and what his strengths in the academic areas. Then to the down of this box he will write on a white board to keep update his profile visitors about the recent feelings or interesting stories or observations or needs.

Considering Adam has been active on this webpage now for a month …Bellow that white board he will see the history of his sticky notes that he posted recently (fresh) on other people profile seeking help from them. .when he finds it checked by checking mark that means that they responded to these notes if not, they will be there till the other person sees it. (every day every user has 4 sticky notes to receive from the same student, or stick it on other people )Also if the name was disable that means that the person is not available on the website and if the name is in blue that means that the person is available to have a video chat or a chat over the website.

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In the upper right we will find that Adam can fill his pic and allows having interactive communication once he is on the profile or not like allowing the video chat or turning on or off his profile picture and his nationality flag.

Bellow that Adam he will fill-in on daily basis his mood and if he is free or busy today.

Below that Adam will see the people that they red and know that he could help in math and they will stick in his wall asking him about some problems.

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3- after he finishes checking his personal lounge he will go and discover about some structure problems in the third year engineer because he have been told by their professors that the problems they have they will take it in third year too , so he will write in search area “structure problems third year” to have more students to help him out.in the same time he will find bellow in the section called Carleton Lounge Students' Conversations.... all the student conversation that have been discussed between students before that related to his subject.

Direct manipulation

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1-Roberto is an international student that coming from Mexico. He is a hard working student. He wants to get in Carleton community very quickly to cope with the culture. He wants to defeat the language and the social barrier. So, he heard about Carleton lounge as a social leaning website for international students to help him with his problems. He puts the address. Hit search. He will find the registration page. He will click and chose from the option that will appear to him. He will choose the country the he will click on Mexico and he will choose his degree and he will click on engineering. He will click on the year of study. He will put his student number and his pin number by flipping with the numbers.

He also wanted to choose the language of his country by dragging the ball to his flag and pointing to his country name that will appear once he is on his country flag.

As a final step of registration, he will drag the arrows release it on the word go and (as an action of click on it) to direct him to his personal page.

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2- These pages is totally flexible for organizing it, and make it more personalized Roberto played with the default system and dragged the windows and organized them the way he liked them to be.

In this page he will go and check on his sticky notes that he sent it to Mark yesterday asking him to help him to tutor him on how he could solve a kind of math problems and taking him in a tour to see Carleton through the tunnels. He goes to the being helped window and he will drag the arrow and drop it on the button to open it. (Shown the drag process)

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3- once he is on this page he will be seeing every kind of note he sent through the month so he will go and manipulate them by scrolling down the bar under the calendar to the late dates and he could stop on the day that he is interested in. he know that he was marking the note as an important one so he could go and just show or see the important ones by clicking in the important check box to let the other not important disappear. Next step to open mark sticky note, he will go and stand on the arrow to have let the menu appear as its diaper once he moved away from it.

The menu will appear down showing some options to Roberto to select. he will click on open to then this sticky not will go bigger to full fill the whole page as anew window

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4- Roberto he will read the sticky note and in the end when he will want to reply. He will find a small arrow in the end of the sticky note .when he stays on it; it will stretch to show some option that Roberto could do. He will go and click reply then a sticky note will show and he will start writing on. He could also drag the sticky anywhere he is comfortable with on the screen to write on it. When he finishes writing he will click on the arrow in the right end of the sticky note. A window will pump down with options for action for the sticky note. he will chose the option that says drag and stick on mark profile as a response for that action, marks’ profile will appear and he will be able to drag and release the sticky not on mark profile, as an action of send.

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Hypertext

1-Liman is an international student coming from china and she is very social person; she likes to meet and talk with new people and go to events all the times.

Liman heard about Carleton lounge from the international student orientation day and she was told that this website is accessible with a hyper-tab once she puts her user name and password in the current student page for Carleton University

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2- Once she is on the Carleton portal page website is accessible from there the liman clicked on the Carleton lounge tab (hyperlink) then she will be transformed to her personal Carleton lounge.

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Lounge


3- Liman has been used this page before and she is starting to get more experienced about how to use this page. When she first entered this page she clicked the You link (the profile page) and she put it her photo and put some information about herself. She was starting to service and send sticky notes (being helpful/ being helped pages) from Carleton student. This time, the window that she interested in is the Carleton lounge update as this window has a lot of other tabs that could be useful to Liman. Liman clicks on this hypertext link under this small window to go to this page.......

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4- Once she hits the link the page will have another window page over the original page that has a multiple tabs like rent sell events and restaurants. All these tabs have ads in hyperlinks, offering information and provide services to the students. Liman used them to make her more formalized about Carleton students experience, services and Ottawa as well.

Liman was searching about today events. So she will hit the tab of the events. She will see that the page is hypertext bias. She will hit the calendar day and this day was 6 of Feb. this number is hypertext so the page will show all the events that happen on this day. Liman saw something that caught her eyes on Ottawa events called let your hair talk so she went and hit the hypertext to go and discover more about this event.

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4-Prespective analysisIn this perspective analysis I will apply the marketing strategy and the consumer behavior trying to look from this window to my design. In addition in the second part I will analyze the use Social Network Technology trying to answer Why the use of social networks?

Consumer Decision-Making processConsumer behavior can be defined as the process and activities which people engage in when searching for, selecting, and using, products or services to satisfy needs and desires. Marketing research on consumer behavior advances a conceptual model of consumer decision making that has 5 stages. These stages are first, Need Recognition, second, Information Search, third, Alternative Evaluation, fourth, Purchase Decision, and finally, Post purchase Evaluation (Belch, Belch & Guolla, 2008). This model views the customer as a problem solver and information processor who engages in mental process to evaluate the problem and determine the degree to which the alternatives might satisfy his needs.

Next, I apply this framework on international students who are considered in this context to be the consumers of Carleton Lounge.

1-Need Recognition.

Need recognition happens when the customers feel the need and become motivated to resolve the felt need. In our situation the international students will feel the need to cope with the educational system and the new social networks of Carleton. This will portray the first promotional and marketing message that could be done as a marketing message for Carleton lounge.

International students need recognition starts when they experience the actual state first, being educationally challenged according to this research reported about the difficulties felt by international students across a wide spectrum of essential academic skills that were linked to an insufficient command of the second language, for example, problems in written work (grammar, accuracy, and academic writing skills), in listening comprehension of lectures, in tutorial participation, in oral presentations, in communication with supervisors, and so on (Bretag et al., 2002; Hellsten & Prescott, 2004; Robertson et al., 2000; Sakthivel, 2003; Storch & Hill, 2008; Wong, 2004). Second, socially challenged as how well students deal with the interpersonal-societal demands of a study, such as making friends, being part of social activities or being able to work in groups (Baker and Siryk 1999), which deifiers from the ideal state which is higher self-expectations to cop easy and smoothly in Carleton educational system and social networks.

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*Consumer motivation

While need recognition is often a simple process the way a consumer perceive a need situation and becomes motivated to solve it will influence the reminder of the decision process. The most popular approach to understand consumer motivations is Maslow hierarchy of needs. It contains the basic levels of human needs arranged in a hierarchy based on their importance. International student’s main two needs that meet with Maslow hierarchy are self-actualization- the need for self-fulfillment and desires to realize one’s own potential (academic success) and social needs- the desire to have satisfy relationships with others. (social networks).

2- Information search

Once the customer perceive a need that can be satisfiedHe will begin to search for information to fulfill his need.

Carleton University is lacking when it comes to giving direct and immediate vital information specifically to the international student community. The international student office doesn’t have a well-known existence presence when it comes to marketing the services the office has or offer and there is no such educational support provided.Unfortunately, counseling services contributes to the marginalization of international students through misunderstandings about their cultural backgrounds, lack of understanding about their transition issues, and lack of coordination with other areas of campus to address student needs that could be met through counseling. ( Popadiuk, Arthur, 2004). Carleton Lounge will provide all kind of information to international students through social learning environment as it’s a main tool considered for learning fast. Haythornthwaite discusses learning from a social network perspective describing learning as "a social network relation” in which, learners exchange, share, deliver, and receive different experiences (2005, p. 1)

3&4-Alternative evaluation and post purchase evaluation

In these two stages the consumer will try to find alternative and starts to alternate with the most suitable and sufficient service or product to choose from. Next and finally once the consumer found the best service that will solve the need feel, he will make the decision of purchasing the service or the product.

In our case Carleton lounge has a very good advantage because of the non-existing of any other alternative similar to this webpage. Carleton University doesn’t has the tool that could compete with Carleton lounge hence the chances of waving the decision for not trying the webpage almost not existed.

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Social Network TechnologyWhy the use of social networks?The traditional form of communicating in virtual space has been email. Despite its tremendous success and subsequently vast adoption by internet users, email fell short of important features of the natural process of human communication. While email very successfully addressed the need for offline communication, it left unaddressed the human need for real-time communication and also community-based activities. Real-time exchange of information mimics the dynamics of natural human conversations, which is a significant value add compared to email. Accordingly chat platforms were met with considerable success and adoption by internet users as they better facilitated natural human conversations. However, chat platforms fell short of supporting community-based activities, which is the context that underlines human communication.Social communication networks fill these voids that exist in email and chat platforms. They enable real-time as well as offline messaging and communication in addition to supporting community-based activities.

Academic Performance of International Students

There is an ever increasing rate of enrollment by international students in North American universities and colleges. Associated with this is a growing body of literature that investigates the educational practices and experiences that could improve the academic performance of international students measured in terms of learning, development, and perception of campus life. For example, Glass (2012) finds that international students who participate in leadership programs, interact with others from their own culture, and take courses where professors facilitate intergroup dialogue, report more positive perceptions of campus climate. On the other hand, this study finds that international students who participate in leadership programs, community service, and campus-organized diversity discussions, interact with people from diverse cultural backgrounds, and take courses with materials on race and ethnicity report greater levels of learning and development. Another study (Ang and Liamputtong, 2008) finds that in their first year at Australian universities, a sample of international students from Mainland China experienced three major obstacles; lack of confidence in speaking English; the preference for using family, partners and close friends as their support networks to deal with problems; and the lack of knowledge of university counseling services. In addition, the sample did not consider using the university counseling services for support during personal difficulties.

Role of Social Networks in International Students Success

The common denominator for the above mentioned practices and experiences that are conducive to the success of international students is social interactions. Such practices and experiences require social integration both with same-culture and multicultural communities on campus. For example, Al-Sharideh and Goe (1998) find that International students who encounter problems in adjusting to their new social environment, when studying at American institutions of higher education, establish social relationships with those who share similar cultural background or nationality and form ethnic communities on university campus. Establishing social bonds with

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ethnic communities help international students cope with problems associated with lack of assimilation of American culture and difficulty in effectively interacting with Americans.

The problems underlying international students’ learning, development, and perception of the quality of campus life are social in nature. Accordingly, Carleton Lounge is proposed on the basis of using social network technology with the objective of building the social infrastructure necessary for international students to succeed in North American universities.

International students on a North American university campus face considerable challenges in formulating social groups and activities that could appropriately help and support their social and academic adjustment. For example, a student from a certain ethnicity may find it hard to find other students from a similar ethnicity or background to associate with. While student clubs may facilitate the meeting of students with similar backgrounds, student clubs could be inefficient in facilitating the grouping of students with similar interests and needs.

Throughout the past decade or so, people in general and students in particular flocked to Facebook to leverage real-time communication and community building capabilities in enriching their social interactions with family, friends, and sometimes coworkers or peer students. Facebook is the largest known social network with users in excess of one billion. Facebook offers effective capabilities for real-time as well as offline communications and also for community building at no charge. Facebook could be effectively used by international students in making new friends and acquaintances in the country where they are studying. However, the case can be made that Facebook is not an appropriate platform that would enable international students create the social infrastructure they need to succeed in university. The case is built on three basic arguments.

1. Poor focus. Facebook carries primarily personal and informal content, which is likely to overshadow task-based academic-oriented content.

2. Because it follows a gated-community design, Facebook requires prior established relationships between different parties in order for them to communicate and collaborate. In contrast, international students are looking to establish academic connections with students and persons, in their new local but foreign environment, with no prior relationships.

3. Facebook is primarily a communications platform. It is void of almost any operational capabilities that would enable students to follow up on or track their needs. a massive size network where the most common form of communication content is personal

information.

The issues raised about Facebook create an opportunity for Carleton Lounge to fill these gaps and to help international students in their social and academic adjustments necessary for succeeding in university. In contrast to Facebook, the design of Carleton Lounge focuses on Carleton’s students in general and international students in particular, enabling them to share one network with visibility and accessibility for all of its members. Furthermore, Carleton Lounge is designed to be task oriented, which is implemented using the sticky notes interface.

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5- DiscussionThis project embarked on designing an application and a user interface that I titled “Carleton Lounge”. Carleton Lounge is a social learning tool that I propose to be part of Carleton University web presence to aide international students with their social and academic adjustment.

International students have grown to be an important source of revenue to Carleton University and have also been a great source of international relations both for the university and for Ottawa. Unlike local students, international students need special support, especially in their early years at Carleton, to help them build a social life on campus and also acquire effective learning skills in what they consider a new learning culture to them. Carleton Lounge serves this purpose. Carleton lounge is a social learning environment that allows Carleton students to have their needs met by other students via interaction, academically and culturally.

In this section, I summarize the design work of Carleton Lounge in this project, analyze the proposed design using the Agile development framework, discuss the use of Balsamic prototyping tool, and future work that could extend this project.

I used three different styles in the design of Carlton lounge: fill-in form, direct manipulation, hypertext form. As expected, designing the same task in multiple styles proved to be challenging. I used each style to enable user registration and also user interaction with information and forms. I employed the stick note style as the main form of students’ expression and exchange of tasks. In order to prototype Carleton Lounge, I used Balsamiq Mockups to implement the said styles and forms. I found Balsamiq to be a useful and effective prototyping tool.

I next analyze the design and implementation of Carleton Lounge given the Agile requirements framework (Alan Kelly). The model assume the classic Agile/Scrum/XP iteration, or sprint, time boxed development episodes together with the product backlog / sprint backlog mechanism defined in Scrum (Schwaber and Beedle, 2002) and XP(Beck, 2000)(Allan Kelly, 2011). I will follow the 10-step requirements in Kelly’s framework including bjective, stake holders, vision, roles, personas, create and manage stories, Acceptance tests, Development, Delivery, and value management as shown in Figure 1ep Model

1. ObjectiveThe objective in most of the big projects comes from a higher up management chain but in the situation of Carleton lounge as a small projects that seeks the light of implementation the objective will be from a product owner vision. The Objective, It is the reason the team are brought into being, the reason the project is started, it is the goal the work is aimed towards.(Allan Kelly,2001).

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2. StakeholdersStakeholders are those people, and groups of people, who have some interest in the work being undertaken ( allan Kelly,2011). Carleton lounge stakeholders are mainly Carleton University and the international students with All Carleton university students. The webpage will be launched mainly to help the international students coping with the first arrival problems such as the language, the educational attainment and the cultural barriers.

for Carleton university as a stakeholder this will open a future opportunity for Carleton lounge to be promoter of this tool other university that have the same objective of helping to increase the reputation of international student friendly universities. Hence this will increase the delivered values of all the international students in every educational system all over the world.

Figure 1- 10 step model

3. Vision The vision creation is related to the objective in very direct relationship the vision is almost the same as the objective in having it from the product owner perspective.

In this case Carleton lounge vision and objective is to facilitate a strong and smooth transition for the international students of Carleton University in particular and building a strong community within all Carleton university in general.

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4. Roles Carleton lounge will be under the dome of Carleton university roles, a academic policies and code of conduct between all the users. In addition this will be a unique advantage that could identify Carleton lounge as a social learning tool from any other similar tools.

5. Personas This step has been implemented in depth in this project in the user case part. There three personas have been created in favor to show what kind of tasks could Carleton lounge deliver to them. Adam, Liman, Roberto are three students that need help and Carleton lounge tried to deliver help to them by other students in very limited way because of the limitation of the time and resource that are available to this user interface project. Off course in the future implementations, Carleton lounge users will elaborate more and add needed texture that will help the user design specialists to create better tool.

6. Create and manage stories: Many people like to articulate the requirements in terms of “user stories”: concise, clear descriptions of the functionality in terms of its value to the end user of the product. ( Deemer and Benefield,2007). This is the step into which much of the existing Agile literature fits: writing User Stories, Managing the Product Backlog. The Product Backlog is continuously updated by the Product Owner to reflect changes in the needs of the customer, new ideas or insights, moves by the competition, technical hurdles that appear, and so forth. Carleton lounge as social learning tool would require a product backlog continually because of the nature of this webpage as a small update window for the students.

7, 8, 9, and 10. Acceptance tests, Development, Delivery, and value management

The future work of this project will continue in these final four steps.

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References

Office of the Provost and Vice-President (2010) “Strategies for Increasing International Enrolment at Carleton University: a Discussion Paper. “Carleton University Office of the Provost and Vice-President”

Norman,D(2002).” The Design of Everyday Things” New York: Basic Books”.

Healey, Robert St. Amant and Christopher G.(2001)” Usability Guidelines for Interactive Search in Direct Manipulation Systems”.” Proceeding IJCAI'01 Proceedings of the 17th international joint conference on Artificial intelligence” (2):1179-1184

Belch, M.A. and Guolla, M.A.(2008) Advertising and Promotion: An Integrated Marketing Communication. “McGraw-Hill Ryerson Ltd. Canada.”

Popadiuk, N. E., & Arthur N. M. (2004) Counseling international students in Canadian universities. “International Journal for the Advancement of counseling”, 26(2), 125–145

Al-Sharideh, K. A. and W. R. Goe (1998). "Ethnic communities within the university: An examination of factors influencing the personal adjustment of international students." Research in Higher Education 39(6): 699-725.

Ang, P. L. D. and P. Liamputtong (2008). ""Out of the Circle": international students and the use of university counselling services." Australian Journal of Adult Learning48(1): 108-130.Glass, C. R. (2012). "Educational Experiences Associated With International Students' Learning, Development, and Positive Perceptions of Campus Climate." Journal of Studies in International Education 16(3): 228-251.

Rienties, B., S. Beausaert, et al. (2011). "Understanding academic performance of international students: the role of ethnicity, academic and social integration." Higher Education63(6): 685-700.

Deemer, P, Benefield, G.(2007).” THE SCRUM PRIMER An Introduction to Agile Project Management with Scrum”.” scrum training in india and asia | www.goodagile.com”

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Documents

The international studnts social learning Website