Client: National Commission on Teaching & America's Future (NCTAF)
Challenge: NCTAF provides district curriculum coordinators, instructional coaches, and teacher team leaders with a set of design and evaluation tools, protocols, rubrics, and case studies to guide and monitor the complex, interdisciplinary curriculum and assessment work that the new standards demand. Blue Marble Creative was hired to design the Learning Studios Toolkit, an online guide to the resources available to all involved in offering this learning experience for students.
Process: My part in this project was to develop options to show relationships between the students, teachers, and outside content experts. Ultimately, the client chose an illustrative approach with colors that defined the roles and helped to explain the relationships in the learning experiences. A set of icons within process maps were also created to show in overview, how the various tools functioned.
Outcome: The Learning Studios Toolkit has been effective in explaining in words and showing in illustrations how the different learning models work, and offers one place where many resources can be accessed.
Color was used throughout the toolkit to show the different groups, how they interact, and level of engagement.
The illustrations progress through the different learning models, showing in a glance how they function. A screenshot of the Learning Studios page is shown on the right.
Icons within process maps show in overview how the various tools function. These are accessed from buttons below each model's explanation.