Interaction - Bachelor
A digital mobile platform designed from the perspective of early-career & pre-service Australian school teachers (including in-service teachers as users) that promotes social connection and sharing pedagogical thoughts/ learnings/ content to strengthen the communal & collegial support in the profession.
The inspiration for this project came from a deeply personal event. A teacher who had worked closely with my friend overseas took his own life after struggling with overwhelming workload and stress. This tragedy made me reflect on how someone who entered the profession with such passion for educating and nurturing young minds could be driven to such despair. It also made me more aware of how teachers in Australia face similar challenges (work intensification, time poverty, unsafe classrooms…) that often go unnoticed.
Designing solutions for Australian school teachers: a small step toward addressing a significant challenge in education.
Estimates suggest that up to 50% of teachers leave within their first five years. This worsens teacher shortages and deprives schools of valuable potential, fresh ideas, and future leadership.
More than half of the state’s schools are in regional, rural, or remote areas, where early career teachers are often placed with financial incentives. However, many leave shortly after due to social isolation, limited collegial support, and few professional development opportunities. Additional challenges such as geographic remoteness, heavy & intensified workloads, and inadequate ongoing support further contribute to teacher attrition in these hard-to-staff schools.
Many early-career teachers felt hesitant to share pedagogical ideas with experienced teachers online, fearing their limited experience or professional status made them less credible. The digitalised social hierarchy further intensified this fear, often leading to passive participation and reduced collaboration, which are both key elements of effective mobile learning.
Early-career teachers struggled to find quality, relevant resources on PLNs due to disorganised information feeds and promotional content that blurred authenticity, making it harder to identify trustworthy materials.
– Flexibility to connect/ link with specific topics/ people
– Space to converse & share pedagogical resources/ thoughts/ content
– Keeping users’ identity authentic and relevant to teaching
[1] How can we encourage early career teachers/ pre-service teachers (PSTs) to share pedagogical content/ thoughts to converse or collaborate with both peers and in-service teachers (ISTs) ?
[2] How can we give users’ sense of control and achievement when seeking or sharing pedagogical content ?
[3] How can we sort and provide navigation of pedagogical content that can be personalised by users to suit different teaching contexts relevant to them ?
Andy is an aspiring UX designer with a passion for problem-solving and crafting thoughtful design solutions across diverse contexts. He is dedicated to understanding users’ needs and creating meaningful, uplifting experiences that enhance people’s everyday lives.