<p>Systems engineering (SE) is an increasingly relevant domain in
an increasingly interconnected world, but the demand for SE education is
impeded by the challenges of effectively teaching interdisciplinary material
that emphasizes the development of a mentality over specific skills. A
modularized, asynchronous, distributed course configuration may provide an
advantageous alternative to more traditional hybrid course designs. Online
courses have been a topic in the educational field since the establishment of
the internet. However, the widespread disruptions to higher education due to
the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the demand for and difficulty of developing
deliberate and robust learning environments designs that consider a variety of
traditional and non-traditional students. This thesis presents a case design of
a learning environment for an interdisciplinary-focused, introductory
graduate-level systems course that has previously been designed for, and taught
in, a hybrid environment. The case design will emphasize the information
architecture (IA) and user experience (UX) prototype design of the learning
environment as informed by user-centric principles, cognitive theories and
analyses, the IA literature, and existing course content. This focus on learner
knowledge development (“beyond-the-screen”) factors rather than the direct user
interface (“at-the-screen”) provides design recommendations and insights that
are robust to changing user interface trends and preferences. A distribution of
learners with varying backgrounds, learning needs, and goals associated with
the material will be identified. These individual differences can dramatically
impact the effectiveness of potential interventions, particularly when
different types of learners have directly conflicting needs. Thus, the online
learning environment will utilize adaptable interfaces to move away from a
“one-size-fits-all” design approach. Content modularization and non-sequential,
tag-based navigation were utilized to address the challenges of teaching highly
interdisciplinary material. This thesis emphasizes a learning environment
design that aims to teach highly interdisciplinary systems subject matter to a
variety of learners with a variety of characteristics in an asynchronous,
online format while making use of existing course material. </p>
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:purdue.edu/oai:figshare.com:article/15040491 |
| Date | 23 July 2021 |
| Creators | Cassandra M McCormack (11173440) |
| Source Sets | Purdue University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, Thesis |
| Rights | CC BY 4.0 |
| Relation | https://figshare.com/articles/thesis/Information_Architecture_and_Cognitive_User_Experience_in_Distributed_Asynchronous_Learning_A_Case_Design_of_a_Modularized_Online_Systems_Engineering_Learning_Environment/15040491 |
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