Enhancing Human-Computer Interaction And User Experience Education Through A Hybrid Approach To Experiential Learning

Abstract

This paper introduces the concept and implementation of a hybrid experiential learning approach to building a User Experience (UX) Lab at a large public university (the University of Central Florida). The UX Lab @ UCF (UX Lab) is intended to bridge the gap between traditional project-based courses and full-time industry internships to provide Information Technology (IT) undergraduates (and students from other disciplines and levels) with the opportunity to apply their Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) knowledge and hone their UX skills by working in partnership with local companies. Specifically, students work as part-time, paid UX consultants for local companies while receiving guidance, mentoring, and feedback from a faculty mentor and graduate student with expertise in HCI and UX. Thus, the UX Lab contributes to IT pedagogy by providing students with a unique opportunity to apply what they've learned in their HCI coursework to real products in development by actual companies. Our approach complements other pedagogical approaches, such as industry-sponsored project-based courses and capstone courses. In this paper, we describe the conceptual model upon which the UX Lab was built, and the success of the first proof-of-concept project that was recently completed in May 2017.

Publication Date

9-27-2017

Publication Title

SIGITE 2017 - Proceedings of the 18th Annual Conference on Information Technology Education

Number of Pages

83-88

Document Type

Article; Proceedings Paper

Personal Identifier

scopus

DOI Link

https://doi.org/10.1145/3125659.3125685

Socpus ID

85037129573 (Scopus)

Source API URL

https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/85037129573

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