This past week was an exciting week with regards to my group’s project! To recap I am working with Priya and Selam on an Open Source Contribution for Oppia. About two weeks ago we reached out to Oppia and figured out together what our project would be. We will be working on a Partnership Package; essentially we are tasked with developing two new tabs on the Oppia Website. The tabs, For Parents and For Teachers will provide new users of Oppia with an introduction to Oppia’s impact, a guide on how to navigate the site, and tips on how to motivate students.

What have we done so far?

Working with the Oppia team has been a smooth, fun ride so far. We have already had several meetings with various members of the team to help make our project become a reality. Last Sunday we came up with a plan for the week where we conduct research about Oppia’s parents and teachers. Then from our research we would come up with the core features of the two different pages we are tasked with building. Throughout the week we came up with a User Journey and a Product Requirement document to help understand what it is a Parent and Teacher of Oppia would want to know when they first start using the tool.

To help us with our research a member of the Oppia team put us in contact with a former Oppia teacher. Through our discussion with her we were really able to shape the exact features we wanted to include. It was from her that we knew we had to include an indepth guide on how to navigate the site. She mentioned little details we would not have thought of, like mentioning you can change the language at the bottom of the page. Oppia is used globally, so this is important to know.

After compiling our research and writing out the potential features we had another meeting with the Oppia team who approved our features.

How have we been working?

One of the unique challenges we are facing right now is not being able to work together in person due to the current circumstances. However we have been able to overcome this obstacle through lots of Facetime calls and scheduled meetings. Right before we have a meeting, even if it’s just between us we have an agenda of what we want to talk about and get done. This is to ensure we utilize our time efficiently and get necessary tasks done. Throughout the week we also have checkins with Oppia and various meetings with different members of their team. To help keep track of these I have added a Calendar Bot to our slack channel that schedules our meetings and let’s us know when they are about to happen.

What’s next?

Since our features have been approved by Oppia, we are going forward this week with Wireframing. Additionally we will be drafting up the exact information that will be dislayed on the pages.

Right now we are currently still brainstorming how we want to present information on the page. I think we definitely want to include animations and gifs. For example in the section where we show teachers and parents how to navigate the site we would like to include gifs like the one below:

At the bottom of the Oppia Site you can change to your prefered language

At the end of the week we will be talking to the Oppia team again to go over next steps.