Masters Project
The development and evaluation of a web-based support program for coaches of aspiring school leaders

For my masters project, I teamed up with the Georgia Leadership Institute for School Improvement (GLISI) to create a web-based support system for coaches of aspiring school leaders (principals, assistant principals). The coaches work through a program that includes five phases each containing a number of steps with a specific set of instructions, goals, and forms associated with each step.

I began my work with GLISI in May 2005 with the first goal of understanding their vision for the program. Since GLISI was in the midst of developing the program, details were vague and prone to change. In fact, you'll see several different titles for the web-based support in the documents below. Early analysis work such as user, task, and goal analysis were kept fluid for several months.

I'm working on posting the work I've done to date.

Summer Work

• Literature Review of Peformance-Centered Design and Learner-Centered Design methodologies
• Context of Use Analysis
• User and Goals Analysis
• Task Decomposition
• Operational Sequence Diagram
• Stakeholder Identification
• Stakeholder Expectations Report
• Analysis of Existing Systems
• Design concept exploration

Fall Semester Work

• Conducted phone interviews
• Storyboarding
• Preliminary design documentation (unfinished)
• Low-fi prototypes
• User testing with domain experts and office personnel/design alternative elimination
• High-fi prototyping
• User preference testing/design alternative elimination
• Prototype refinement
• Usability testing using Think-Aloud protocol

Spring Semester Work

• Build out site with evolutionary prototype
• User testing of refined prototype
• Site refinement and continued build out
• Introduce website to users at training session
• Build out site's support section