SEMESTER PLANNER

UI/UX Design

Semester Planner course page

Semester Planner is a mobile application prototype designed in December 2021 to help solve the problem of student procrastination.

Academic procrastination of students

Procrastination is the behaviour of putting things off. It is a common behaviour among all people. Academic procrastination of students is defined by college students putting off schoolwork. For students, academic procrastination often leads to falling behind on schoolwork and feeling bad later on.

Why is academic procrastination a problem for students?

Academic procrastination has many negative effects on students. Putting things off and doing things later can lower the quality of schoolwork and cause stress for students (as cited in Grunschel et al., 2013, p.842). Moreover, academic procrastination can lower students’ confidence and self-esteem, increase their anxiety and depression, and lead them to unhealthy sleeping, diet, and exercise habits (as cited in Hussain & Sultan, 2010, p.1898). Overall, procrastination is bad for students’ physical and mental health.

Introduce the solution: Semester Planner

Semester Planner is an application prototype that is developed with the prototyping software Axure RP. Semester Planner is created to helps students make their study schedule with ease. Many universities use the online course management system Canvas to show students the course information such as grades, exams, and assignments. Semester Planner connects to the students’ Canvas account to get the information regarding the course exams and assignments and help students create their study schedule based on the exams and assignments.

Why is Semester Planner effective?

Based on the research, one of the most effective ways to reduce procrastination is breaking down a big task into small study sessions and work on the sessions early (Wessel et al., 2020, p.5). However, breaking down assignments and exams into small study sessions takes effort and time. Putting the study sessions on the calendar one by one can be as annoying as actually doing schoolwork for some students. Semester Planner is here to solve that problem. Semester Planner asks the student to connect to the online course management system Canvas. Afterwards, Canvas will stay connected and the student only needs to take one simple step to create a study schedule for an assignment or exam. As shown in Figure 1, after filling out a few necessary options, the study sessions are automatically created. It is effortless compared to making the study sessions one by one on other applications.

Figure 1. Creating a study schedule in Semester Planner.

The application interface is as simple as it can get. All of the pages display only the necessary information. For example, in Figure 2, the home page only displays today’s sessions, the courses, and the calendar with the study sessions and the due dates. No other distracting information is shown.

Figure 2. The home page of Semester Planner.

Semester Planner will also send out a notification a day before to remind the user of their study session and check in on the student’s progress after the session as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3. Semester Planner notification from the day before the study session (left) and from right after the study session (right).

If a session is missed, it can be rescheduled easily as shown in Figure 4. The information will be checked and updated on Semester Planner regularly and automatically.

Figure 4. Rescheduling a study session in Semester Planner.

Semester Planner is easy and clear to use. It helps students break down assignments and exams into small study sessions effortlessly, which is effective in helping students reduce academic procrastination.

References

  1. Grunschel, C., Patrzek, J., & Fries, S. (2013). Exploring reasons and consequences of academic procrastination: an interview study. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 28(3), 841–861. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10212-012-0143-4
  2. Hussain, I, & Sultan, S. (2010). Analysis of procrastination among university students. Procedia social and behavioral science (pp. 1897-1904). Elsevier Ltd. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2010.07.385
  3. Wessel, J., Bradley, G. L., & Hood, M. (2020). A Low-Intensity, High-Frequency Intervention to Reduce Procrastination. Applied Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1111/apps.12293