We have used personas and scenarios to help ensure we meet the requirements and expectations of all of our potential users. Each persona represents a category of person who would use the website for their own reasons. Scenarios then detail the use cases which are associated with a persona.

Person A (Alex)

This user is an existing student at the University of Southampton. They have had bad experiences with modules in the past and would hate for others to undergo similar situations.

Person B (Bob)

This user is a prospective student comparing Computer Science degrees across a few universities. They are very aspirational and want to become a top student studying the most relevant course content they can in this constantly evolving field.

Person C (Chloe)

This user is a lecturer at the University of Southampton who runs a module. They are under pressure from higher members in the faculty to ensure student satisfaction is very high.

Person D (Dianne)

Head of faculty at University of Southampton. Dianne has seen a fall in the university’s league table rankings. She is very keen to do everything she can to prevent this fall.

Person E (Edward)

This user is an existing student at the University of Southampton. They are known to be very indecisive but don’t want this to stop them getting the best out of their university degree!

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Scenario 1

Alex has to select their optional modules for the semester ahead. They have been given a list of choices but are unsure of the quality of each module (in terms of both lecturer quality and course content). They are looking for feedback from students who have previously studied these modules to help with their decision.

They can now log into the website via their university credentials and search for their available options. Each result shows a page for the module with an aggregated list of information about the module (submitted by previous users). This information includes a rating of lecturer quality and course content quality (among other things). This information can also be filtered to only include responses from last year’s cohort and see variation on the feedback over time (year on year).

With this newfound information, Alex feels satisfied that he can make the correct module choices to suit his needs.

Scenario 2

Alex has completed a semester of modules and wishes to provide feedback for other users about the modules they selected. They login to the website with their university credentials and complete a small feedback form for each module. They will be able to submit this form for other users to see. Users may only provide feedback to modules in which they were enrolled.

Scenario 3

Bob is comparing a few top Computer Science universities in England but wants to be sure that they choose a university teaching the most up to date module content. They can visit the website publicly, without the need to login, and view modules by course (in this case they select Computer Science). They are then presented with an overview of modules, which they can filter by feedback from previous students. One such feedback item is the currentness rating. They can see how current the content is deemed and compare this to other universities also using the system.

Scenario 4

Chloe wants to be sure they are getting maximum engagement from students by ensuring the content is kept relevant and interesting. Chloe knows that this information is requested in the end of module feedback forms sent to all students but many students fail to complete these forms. So swell she can browse the site publicly and navigate to their module. From here they can see feedback about the module and use this information to improve the course.

Scenario 5

Dianne is running a periodical review of teaching within the faculty and wishes to audit the effectiveness of lectures and their content. Using access to the website they can filter modules within only their faculty and order them by quality (or any other metrics). By ordering in ascending order they can quickly see modules for which investigation and improvement should probably be made.

Scenario 6

Alex wishes to leave honest feedback about a module but is worried about any negative implications this may have, particularly if the course leader can identify him. Because of this, he will be able to assign himself a pseudo-anonymous ID that cannot be traced back to him, but will ensure all of his posts can be related in order to still make sense.

Scenario 7

Bob is looking at prospective universities and wishes to know not only the quality of the modules on offer, but also full descriptions of the modules. The information he wishes to find out is detailed syllabus information, type of coursework and size of coursework groups (if any). He would like to do this without creating an account.

Scenario 8

Edward has to select new modules for the coming semester but cannot make up his mind. He would like suggested modules based on the modules he has previously chosen, and potentially based on his preferred assessment type (exam or coursework).

Scenario 9

Edward has started a new module and would like to ask questions about today’s lecture. He thinks he may have missed a key piece of information and is confused. He would like to visit the module’s page on LessonPlan to ask for help.

Scenario 10

Alex has started a new module and would like to find coursemates to work with in the newly set group coursework assignment.

Scenario 11

Chloe would like to suggest improvements to the system to help with her teaching. She will use a feedback form to do this.