campus toolkit flash cards a website for student success

Campus ToolKit Flash Cardsa website for student success

Mark S. Kroh, CEOCampus ToolKit

303 East Market StreetYork PA 17403

[email protected] (p)717.845.5620 (f)

mailto:[email protected]

Project Overview

The Campus ToolKit Flash Card site will be a free resource for students to create digital flash cards. They will be able to save flash card sets and share them with their classmates. They will also be able to create flash cards that include images, sounds and videos. Students will be able to access the flash cards using a standard computer or a mobile device such as a web-enabled phone.

There are several sites that exist where users can create their own flash cards (e.g. - www.flashcardmachine.com, www.flashcardexchange.com, www.aplusmath.com/Flashcards). The difference with the one we create will be the quality of the user interface. Most sites have horrible designs and they are very confusing. Our goal is to create a user interface that is completely intuitive so that students can EASILY use it.

The typical user for our site will be a high school or college student who needs to study things like vocabulary words or maybe art history slides. Since some of these students aren't very sophisticated computer users, we will strive for easy navigation and very clear processes. We also plan to only use one graphic (the logo) so that the site loads very, very quickly. If the design works as planned, the user should have a very good experience and we’re hoping that they will use the Tell a Friend link to spread knowledge of the site to their friends.

Project Goals, Objectives and Functionality Specifications

Main Goal 1: Enable students to create digital flash cards and use them to study.– Secondary Goal: Create interface for mobile

devices.» Create new navigation for mobile use.» Create abbreviated display for cards.» Restrict to viewing text-only flash cards.

– Secondary Goal: Allow flash cards with images, audio & video.

» Allow the following image types: .jpg & .gif.» Allow the following audio types: .wav, .aiff & .mp3» Allow the following video types: .mov & .mpg» Create size restrictions for each file.» Create total storage space allotment for each user.» Create mechanism to delete files to make more room for

new cards.

– Secondary Goal: Allow flash cards to be printed.» Create print layout that shows both sides of the card.


Main Goal 2: Enable students to share flash card sets with other users.– Secondary Goal: Allow students to post

in the public area.» Default card sets to Public. Allow students to

privatize them.

– Secondary Goal: Allow students to send an email invitation to view a particular card set.

» Collect friend’s name & email address. Automate rest of process.

» Send out with user’s email as reply-to.» Include account creation instructions & link to site.» Notify & thank originating user if the friend creates an

account.


Main Goal 3: Enable students to tell their friends about the web site.

» On Tell a Friend page, collect friend’s name & email address. Automate rest of process.

» Send out with user’s email as reply-to.» Include account creation instructions & link to

site.» Notify & thank originating user if the friend

creates an account.

User Goals & Needs

Main Goal 1: Create/edit a user account.» User provides valid email account & creates

password.» User receives account validation email. Clicks link to

validate.» To edit, user goes to settings page.

Main Goal 2: Create flash card sets.» All flash cards belong to a flash card set.» User creates new set.» User names set.» User has option to privatize the set so it doesn’t

become available to others.» User creates cards to populate the set.» Once set is created user may add/edit/delete

individual cards or delete the set.

User Goals & Needs

Main Goal 3: Create flash cards.– Once a set is created, user creates cards.– Allow students to import tab-delimited files to

automatically create text-only cards.– To create cards one-by-one, user first creates the front

of the card.» User adds text.» User may add image, audio or video.» User may access Help screen and/or tutorial at any time.

– User then creates back of card.» User adds text.» User may add image, audio or video.» User may access Help screen and/or tutorial at any time.

– User then creates new card or finishes set.– If the files storage allotment is reached during card

creation, user may delete previous files to make more room.

» User may access Help screen and/or tutorial at any time.

User Goals & Needs

Main Goal 4: Study flash cards online.» User needs to be able to easily identify which card

sets are available to study.» Users may study their own sites or search public

database for other users’ sets.

Main Goal 5: Study flash cards in print format.

» User needs to be able to print cards in a format that can be cut or folded to use as physical flash cards.

Main Goal 6: Share flash card sets.» Users need to make their card sets public for other

users.» Users need to be able to send notifications via email

to friends to tell them about the site and their cards.

User Goals & Needs

Main Goal 7: Tell friends about site & have them create an account.

» Users need to easily be able to tell friends about the site.

» The system should automatically include the site URL, a description and instructions for creating an account.

» Users should be notified that their friends created an account.

Brittany is a high school sophomore studying biology. She needs a website to help her study for her class but she’d also like to involve her friends. She is comfortable using her PC and navigating websites but she needs to be presented with clear instructions when learning new processes. She’ll also need an easy way to invite her friends to join the website and share their flashcards with one another.

“My friends are all taking the same Biology class as me and it would be awesome if we could work together to create flash cards and then share them. It would be a lot less work for all of us and it would be more fun on the computer anyway.”

User Goals & Needs

Deb is a 40-year old mother of two going back to community college to get training to change careers. She’s taking an Art History class to fulfill her degree requirements and needs a way to study paintings. She needs to create flash cards with images so she can study individual pieces of art. She’s not very comfortable with technology so she’ll need tutorials.

“The problem I’ve always had trying to study Art History is that there’s no good way to put a picture on a flash card. Usually, I just put a page number on the card, turned to that page in the book and looked at the picture there. It would be so much easier if I could create digital flash cards and attach the picture to the front of it.”

User Goals & Needs

Kari is a 24-year old graduate student studying Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT. She has a 30-minute train commute and wants to study her physics flash cards using her cell phone. She’s very comfortable with technology and she expects a streamlined user experience, especially on her mobile devices. If the system isn’t responsive, then she’s going to lose patience and won’t use it.

“I’m always on the go. I work, I go to class, I spend hours in the library and I try to fit in a little bit of a social life. I’d love to have a mobile way to study. Flash cards on my cell phone would be great because I could make use of the time I spend commuting or the few minutes sitting around waiting for class to start.”

User Goals & Needs

User Scenario - Brittany

Brittany’s teacher tells her about Campus ToolKit Flash Cards and when she gets home from school she goes to the web site. On the front page she clicks on the Create New Account link, enters her email address and creates a password. Within a few seconds she receives her email account confirmation. She clicks the confirmation link and is taken to a short introduction page where she learns how the site works and how to make flash cards. She also sees that she can invite her friends to login so they can share flash cards. Since she likes the idea of working on the flash cards with her friends, she clicks on the Tell a Friend link at the bottom of the page. All she has to do is add her friends’ first names and their email addresses. She can also personalize the message being sent so she tells them that their teacher recommended the site and it looks pretty cool. Then she sends the invitations and begins to work on her first set of flash cards. Shortly thereafter she gets three new emails from the Campus ToolKit Flash Card site informing her that her friends have created accounts.

User Scenario - Deb

Deb finally gets her kids to bed and sits down to study. She had a big test on Monday and she needs to learn to identify about 50 paintings from the Harlem Renaissance. She has all of the pictures in her text book but she wants to try to create flash cards online. She’s used the site before for a German class, but she remembers that you can add pictures to the cards. When Deb logs in, she creates a new card set called Harlem Renaissance. Then she tries to create her first card. The system asks her if she wants to add an image to the card and she clicks that radio button. Then it asks her where the image she wants to upload is. Deb doesn’t have a lot of computer experience so she’s not sure what she has to do at this point. Fortunately, there is a link that reads, “Click here for a tutorial on creating flash cards with images.” With a little sigh of relief, Deb clicks on the link and begins the tutorial.

User Scenario - Kari

It’s 5:45 in the morning and Kari just got on the train into the city. She’s got an eight o’clock class and she needs to go over her Anisotropic and crystallographic elasticity formulations. She pulls out her cell phone and connects to the Internet. She goes to campustoolkit.com and logs in to the flash card site. Her flash card sets are listed and she selects the Mechanics of Heterogeneous Materials set. It asks her is she wants to review all cards (67 cards) or just the ones that are not marked as learned (37 cards). She selects the unlearned cards and sits back in her seat. Using her keypad she moves quickly through the cards marking the ones she has learned and keeping the others in random rotation. By the time she gets to her stop she’s only got six cards left to be mastered.

Features & Content Requirements

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Content Requirements & Asset Breakdown

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Content Requirements & Asset Breakdown

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Flow Chart

Click Image for full size .pdf.

Main Page Layout Option One

Level Two Page Option One

Main Page Layout Option Two

Level Two Page Option Two

Parameters for Developing UI

• Limit Choices for Navigational Simplicity• Tutorials and Help Screens Easily

Accessible• Effective Search for Public Card Sets• Easy Tell a Friend Process• Fast, Responsive UI for Mobile Devices• Support for Multiple File Types on Cards• Breadcrumbs to Orient Users

Contact Information

Mark S. Kroh, CEOCampus ToolKit

303 East Market StreetYork PA 17403

[email protected] (p)717.845.5620 (f)

campus toolkit flash cards a website for student success

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