Major Findings
Gathered from conducting user interviews with 12 students (9 women and 3 men, average age 19.8±0.7) recruited from the diverse departments at Cornell. Most participants were in their 2nd and 3rd year of college
Many students stated that requirements is the first priority when deciding courses. Participants want to enroll in requirements first so as to have more flexibility later on. A pain-point with this is that many students find themselves in courses they are not interested in due to requirements
Awareness set: Most students sought initial recommendation from advisors, Cornell course roster and eternal, anonymized resources like ratemyprofessor.com, reddit etc.
Consideration Set: Students then looked for a follow-up recommendation from trusted connections like friends or university resources like CUReviews or directly emailing professors of class.
Pictured ABOVE Depiction of the decision making process of students from total set (all resources available) to final decision (registered for class).
Students found courses most interesting when they saw the real-life applicability of material or had hands-on experience in a course that connected the content to the external world.
Students were interested in popular fields or majors "If lots of people are taking courses in this area, I should too."
Students took courses because they had some pre-existing expectations that they wanted to concretize through exploration.
Pictured ABOVE Depiction of an expectancy value model that shows various factors that influence student's perception of value like intrinsic value (personal interest / curiosity in topic), utility value (classes related to future goals) and attainment value (classes related to their conception of their identity)
Major Findings
Gathered from user surveys sent through Qualtrics to 201 Cornell undergraduate students giving us a confidence level of 95% and confidence interval of 7. (Creative Research Systems Survey Size Calculator)
Relationship between courses and student interests
Pictured ABOVE DATA SHOWING THAT IT IS easier for students to identify interest through courses but more difficult to find courses based on interest.
Relationship between academic and career interests
Pictured ABOVE DATA SHOWING THAT Student's perceived a change in their interest from academic to career happening most during 2nd and 3rd year.
User Flow
First Time User Survey
We decided to have a survey for first time users so that we can start generating more unique data for our pathways visualizations.
Dashboard
We wanted students to land on the dashboard first so they could be given the option to navigate to saved classes or start a new pathway search.
Pathway Tool
We wanted to keep the pathway search separated from the dashboard so that students felt it was a more tool-like experience.
Currently, many students choose programs and courses largely on their own. In the guided pathways model shown below, we are helping students explore programs, consider possible careers, and develop complete academic plans at Cornell University
