Can the report card serve as a medium that provides information about student performance in an understandable manner to facilitate positive dialogue among teachers, parents and students to assist in their learning process?
This academic project was undertaken under the guidance of Tarun Deep Girdher, Senior Faculty, Graphic Design, NID.
The report card is the only document that communicates student performance from the school to parents on a regular basis, and hence it serves an extremely sensitive purpose of guiding the way parents look at their child’s performance.
It needs to act as a diagnostic tool for student performance, which enables parents and teachers to work with students on their weaknesses, and build on their strengths. It needs to provide information on student learning in the broader context of understanding and application of knowledge.
The shift in the representation of student performance from marks to grades, the complexities of evaluation criteria and the lack of clarity on the basis for the given grades has made the report card an extremely complicated document to comprehend for parents, by merely creating a sea of alphabets that is difficult to wade across.
Considerations & Analysis Of The Existing Report Card Template
At this stage, the need to restructure the manner in which complex information is presented was identified. This would make it easy to understand, and further guide the parents in making sense of the progress their child is making at school, so that eventually, assessment can aid the learning process in its true sense. Other considerations were to seek ways to reduce the burden on teachers while filling the report card, and make sure that the report card is easily accessible without barriers of printing and web technology.
Design Strategy
Most schools use MS-Excel to maintain student records and their performance data. To make sure that the proposed system does not add to the burden for teachers, the template was designed on MS-Excel for ease of access and data handling.
Sample data was used to print prototypes which were once again validated with a few parets and teachers. The progress card can be printed back to back on an A3 sheet in black and white. Its low cost of production makes it viable for schools across the country.
Design Explorations
Possibilities of restructuring the information hierarchy and visual elements were explored to make it easier both to fill, as well as comprehend and analyze the report card.
For a detailed look at all the modifications made to the information heirarchy and visual representation of the content of the report card, please refer to the documentation here.
The design explorations were tested with parents & teachers and then iterated upon.
The redesigned report card for class 6-8 filled with dummy information to give a sense of the representation of student evaluation.
A concise documentation of the Report Card Project, discussing the various research insights and design decisions taken during the course of the project. This document hopes to create dialogue and debate concerning student evaluation in India, going beyond the visual representation of the report card itself.
The project is chronologically documented in detail here. This blog contains excerpts from research interviews, sheds light on the thought process behind the project and shows glimpses from the long but eventful journey it took.
