TIME 2020 – 2021   SKILL UX/UI Design   CLIENT Mein Mutiger Weg GbR   TEAM Christoph Geier (Developer)

Modular Learning 
in Career Orientation

The ‘Traumjob Campus’ is a digital learning platform that enables students to reflect on their personalities and to deeply think about their visions for their future lives and careers.

The aim

• Support secondary school students to explore their personalities and develop ideas for their future careers
• Creating a safe space for pupils to explore their dreams within coaching sessions of Mein Mutiger Weg GbR

Approach

• Secondary research: pedagogical recommendations for learning processes
• Design research: Interview series with pupils to uncover their needs
  
• Iterative design and testing of digital features in Figma

Outcome

• Brand identity for ‘Mein Mutiger Weg’
• Visual and content re-design of the ‘Traumjob Campus’ online platform including 4 new features 
• Implementation in WordPress

Re-designed
learning platform

The final design of the ‘Traumjob Campus’ 
a modular learning platform for personality development and career guidance for teenagers aged 16-19, launched in 2021/2022 
 

Team
UX/UI design by Linda Klotzbach
Software development by Christoph Geier
Content design by the team of ‘Mein Mutiger Weg’

Why it is important

7 out of 10 
young people in Germany feel left alone when it comes to early career choices.

— according to a study conducted by ‘Generation What’ (2017)

Thinking back to my own school experience, I always felt there has been a lack of preparation for anything following the time in school. Proactively searching for initiatives or collaboration partners that tackle this problem, I became a full-time member of ‘Mein Mutiger Weg GbR’, a German start-up focusing on pupils’ career orientation.

In tandem with the company’s physical workshop sessions at German schools for students in grades 8 to 12, I have been developing the new digital learning platform as the team's UX/UI designer.

The research questions

Which criteria must digital learning platforms fulfill to best support the learning processes of students aged 16–19?

During the two-month research phase, it was of particular interest to investigate the success factors of a digitally supported learning process for young people in their final years of high school.

How can career and study guidance content be designed digitally so that students can easily engage with these resources?

In addition to the aspect of digital learning, both primary and secondary research attempted to uncover success factors for comprehensive and, above all, actionable career guidance at the secondary level.

Interviewing

»The time after school is a great uncertainty that everyone of us tries to suppress.«

— Philomena, student of 12th grade (2020)

Statements like this are the result of two rounds of in-depth interviews with 15 secondary school students of different ages.

Firstly, I spoke to them about their future planning, their wishes, and ideas for a more valuable future guidance integrated into regular school life. In the second round, I focused on their usage of digital learning tools and their current learning success in digital environments.

Interview insights

Insights: Career and study orientation

The interviewed students expressed the following wishes in terms of career guidance in their school environment: 

• More practical and professional experience
  (more internships desired, preferably earlier)
  
  
• Greater awareness of the official career guidance process (for example through a project week or a separate subject)
  
  
• More opportunities to exchange ideas with fellow students about this topic
  
  
• More encouragement and anxiety reduction by teachers and parents
  
  
• Better integration of the career guidance process into existing digital applications (such as Moodle)
  
  
• Exchange with people with professional experience (ie. with trainees/students/employees)

Insights: Digital tools in learning processes

The following main points can be summarised in response to the question about students' wishes and ideas about digital school lessons:

• Students primarily see a need for further training for teachers, as the students themselves often have more knowledge about the use of digital media
  
  
• Schools are already equipped with sufficient technical hardware in many areas, but students criticise the lack of use and integration into lessons
  
  
• Students would like to see different learning formats integrated into lessons to make them more vivid (audio, video, text, graphics)
  
  
• Students would like the learning and communication platforms to be better adapted to their school and the individual needs of their peers

Defining

Success criteria for a future career orientation learning platform

Based on the findings from the primary research interviews, I drew up a checklist with various success factors for a future digital learning platform for career guidance. With this checklist as a reference basis, I entered the design phase of the learning platform.

Prototyping
the learning platform

Development of a corporate identity 

The development process started with redesigning the current ‘Traumjob Campus’ of 2020. The first step was to clearly define the visual elements of the brand. Derived from the existing logo and marketing materials, I developed a custom color scheme and a new sign language for the campus. 

Information architecture

This is a visualisation of all content parts of the ‘Traumjob Campus’. It served as the basis for the entire team to get an overview and, above all, to restructure the content so that it is easily accessible to the students.

From paper prototypes to digital wireframes

Starting off with hand-drwan sketches, I created the structure of the individual areas of the ‘Traumjob Campus’. Based on these sketches, the first digital wireframes were created in Figma, which contained content blocks for further subpages.

The finalised
Traumjob Campus

The entire content of the campus is based on 13 modules, half of which support students in their personal development, and the other half offer concrete help with future orientation.

Each module consists of a series of videos that convey the content to the students in a vivid way and most importantly allow them to learn at their own pace. All videos include timestamps, worksheets, a module overview as well as clearly outlined learning objectives.

Developing work materials

A range of work materials such as worksheets are provided to accompany the learning content of the online campus.

Enable module-based learning

Students have the opportunity to click into individual module tiles and explore specific subject areas.

Establishing a network

The inclusion of a network was an important part of the new campus to give the digital space a human touch.

The renewed campus contains a dedicated area for live career coaching.

In this section, students get access to the weekly live coaching sessions as well as a library with recordings of previous sessions and additional material that has been introduced.

Students can find mentors to talk about the career path they are interested in.

‘Mentor matching’ is a database of specialists offering their mentoring skills. This allows young people to search for professionals or students who have a current career path that interests them.

Impact and success

450 students were actively using the Traumjob Campus within the first year. 

— after publishing the redesigned campus in 2021

After the launch of the new campus, 450 students across Germany were given access to the campus. After taking part in one of the encouragement seminars, they used the various modules for their personal development and study advice either individually or in tandem with their classmates.

Moreover, the renewed version of the online coaching sessions, in which students were offered individually tailored training or discussions, reached a significantly larger number of participants.

Next level of ‘Traumjob Campus’ in 2022

With so many new students on campus, we've learned a lot about usability and what students want and need. Through a new round of user interviews and testing, we were able to take the campus to the next level of its visual appearance, were introducing a new navigation bar and enabling the categorisation and tagging of videos.

‘Future of Education’ Hackathon 2022

By participating in a hackathon organised by N3XTCODER, I was able to guide the MMW product team and external participants through an online workshop to develop new user flows and features. In this 48-hour design sprint, we were developing new ideas of features to include gamification elements within the ‘Traumjob Campus’.

‘Mein Mutiger Weg’ reached the second rank and gained funding from ‘Digital engagiert’ – an initiative by Amazon, AWS, and Stifterverband.