Courseloop
Inefficiencies and subsequently the cost of today’s manual Curriculum Management approach by universities have stagnated the industries ability to focus on their students and keep up with a rapidly changing workforce.
Starting in 2017, I was part of an ambitious start-up to reimagine the curriculum management experience for Australia’s second-highest export; Higher Education. From a humble early seed fund and a small team of 4, we transformed into a high-performing team of 55 and an evaluated $8 million business. We solved the unsolved.
Understanding the Audience
Service SafariContextual EnquiriesResearch SprintsCustomer Segment Validation
We interviewed teams of academics nationally around Australia. To understand the Higher Education users common jobs to be done, pains and gains. Synthesising with white label SaaS solutions in mind.
Understanding the problem space deepened our understanding of why academics say and think to inform how they need to use and feel with solutions. And because of our White Label solution intent, it was critical to eliminate biases and bespoke needs whilst bringing together marginalised voices and new perspectives. Synthesising three layers of operational, academic staff personas. Providing HCD lens delivery objectives and our feature backlog. Whilst further utilising to measure market-fit targets.
Assurance of Learning Mental Model
Mental ModellingHigh-Value JobsUser Journey MappingValue Proposition Design
Understanding the problem space from academics, students, management, and systems informed our proposition design and product offering architecture. Clearly identifying four valuable phases of curriculum management.
Curriculum Mapping - the process of mapping learning outcomes to measurable assessments.
Curriculum Structure - a credit-unit system, with choices both in selecting courses and in the sequence and pace of electives.
Assessment Learning Assurance - gaining an understanding of their student's knowledge and skills to guide instruction.
Learning Progression - the pathway that students progress toward mastery of the skills needed for career and continued learning readiness
Curriculum Mapping Ideation
Google Design SprintPaper PrototypingWireframingInformation Architecture TestingConceptual TestingSet-based Design
We understood to opportunity areas, but how to solve for them? It had never been attempted before. The users solved the problem space to date using spreadsheets…
The university teams had been using spreadsheets to design and govern their curriculum. We could have easily replicated existing approaches and visualisations into a software platform, but we wouldn't truly be innovating curriculum design by doing so. Through many co-design workshops and why-how-prototype-iterate sessions, the university teams eventually started unlearning how to solve for curriculum design and started appreciating what curriculum design is?
Couseloop Ecosystem Development
Hi-Fidelity DesignDesign System DesignUsability Testing
Story-mapping
The empathy of our users and utilising system thinking from the beginning allowed a confident understanding of the problem space.
Continuous ideation and validation utilising Design Thinking techniques enabled culture to continually optimise the solution offerings to the higher education industry. Today the Courseloop ecosystem continues to provide a contemporary curriculum, ensuring their students are ready to meet the challenges of tomorrow.
“What normally would take us about 3 months because of individuals… politics… and version control issues is taking us now 15min and I can’t believe it, it’s good scary.”
— Anonymous, Monash univeristy
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