Connecting public schools during COVID

Most Oakland public schools lack resources for building a website. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, this placed an extra burden on educators. When schools shut down in spring 2020, schools scrambled to connect students to online learning sources.

I led a 3-person team through OpenOakland, a Code for America brigade, to partner with a local public school in need of a website. As the project lead, I managed project timelines, client communication and the team’s workload.

Research & Site Build

As the lead researcher, I guided our team through in-depth interviews, multi-language surveys, and card sorting. Our team worked closely with teachers and parents to first understand their needs. We evaluated website builders to ensure they met accessibility standards and accommodated school staff that was new to website management.

Surveys in English, Spanish and Cantonese helped us understand how parents and students were accessing school information. Remote card sorting informed the information architecture. Additionally, I oversaw the overall website build, including the design, content, and technical integrations.

Results

Most importantly, we transferred the portal for students going into their online classroom for remote instruction. This was a scenario where we couldn’t move fast and break things. If that occurred, it would mean students wouldn’t receive school instruction that day. We conducted extensive QA and scheduled our website launch on a Friday night so that potential issues wouldn’t impact the school day. The website launched successfully and became the main portal for students accessing their online learning portal.

Our team worked with teachers to ensure they could comfortably update and manage the site. Oakland Unified School District received access to the templates so that other schools could benefit from the existing architecture.

“Working with the team from OpenOakland was simple and stress-free. Everyone was extremely helpful and very thoughtful towards our school needs. We felt it was important for our families to have a positive user-friendly website to come to when looking for information, resources, and connecting with our team. The new website design accurately reflects those needs. Thank you, Laurel, Alissa, Anwana and the rest of the OpenOakland team!”
- Olivia Wong, La Escuelita

This project included Alissa Rubin, Anwana Ntofon, and Erin Nedza.