MIT Sloan CourseFest

MIT Sloan Educational Services group manages the course selection process for MIT Sloan School of Management. They provide information from many sources to help students learn about courses and professors in preparation for the school’s course bidding process.

Client Need

In the past, students gathered information from disparate sources: schedule information, course descriptions, faculty biographies, past syllabi and course evaluations — even videotaped interviews of professors provided by AMPS. Sifting through the information was a formidable task. Educational Services wanted to make the process easier for students and tapped the web design team to create a new web interface for the information gathering process.

Strategy

The team started by observing system administrators as they updated information and students as they gathered information prior to bidding. This user review identified the information that would be required to make a useful web tool. Next the team created wireframes (a paper prototype of the web application), refined the design on paper, and built a working prototype of the tool. Usability testing confirmed that the information gathered from users was on target.

Results

Both administrators and users are thrilled with the result. “The fact that AMPS worked directly with staff and students produced a very successful tool,” said Lisa Martin, Coordinator of Educational Services. The staff is enthusiastic about the ease of publishing new information. Students appreciate having the information in a centralized place and the advanced browsing and searching features. They especially appreciate the ability to keep a list of courses that links to all other information.