Peek-through Customization: Example-Based In-Context Sharing for Learning Management Systems

Authors

Laton Vermette, Joanna McGrenere, Parmit K. Chilana

Research Lab

Parmit Chilana

Abstract

Learning to use a learning management system (LMS) can often be complex and challenging for instructors who have little time to explore the application interface. We ran formative interviews (N=10) suggesting that instructors often prefer to consult colleagues to seek examples of customizations and their explanations. Based on our findings, we designed and developed Customizer, an in-context example-based customization sharing platform that runs atop a widely-used LMS and facilitates discovery of relevant customizations shared by peers. Customizer allows instructors to experiment with shared customizations in familiar contexts by copying their course content into on-the-fly testing environments, minimizing any risk of breaking their live course setups. Our usability evaluation (N=10) showed that most users found Customizer intuitive and useful, and that its exploratory interface was helpful in a variety of use cases. Furthermore, many participants saw potential for Customizer to improve their workflows in other applications beyond educational contexts.

Citation

Laton Vermette, Joanna McGrenere, and Parmit K. Chilana. "Peek-through Customization: Example-Based In-Context Sharing for Learning Management Systems." In Proceedings of the Designing Interactive Systems Conference 2020 (DIS '20), July 6-10, 2020, Eindhoven, Netherlands. (*Best Paper Honorable Mention!)

@inproceedings{Vermette2020PeekThrough,
  author = {Vermette, Laton and McGrenere, Joanna and Chilana, Parmit K.},
  title = {Peek-through Customization: Example-Based In-Context Sharing for Learning Management Systems},
  year = {2020},
  isbn = {9781450369749},
  publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
  address = {New York, NY, USA},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3357236.3395507},
  doi = {10.1145/3357236.3395507},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference},
  pages = {1155–1167},
  numpages = {13},
  keywords = {software customization, learning management systems, example-centric customization, customization sharing},
  location = {Eindhoven, Netherlands},
  series = {DIS ’20}
}