ECHO Collective Learning Management System (LMS)

ECHO Collective is a non-profit founded during the start of the Covid-19 pandemic that provides opportunities and connections for refugee and immigrant women in the Lincoln area. ECHO Collective’s education program, The Refinery, selects a small group of entrepreneurial refugee and immigrant women for a 4-month business course twice every year. Currently, assignments and lessons for the Refinery program are given to students in a paper notebook. Students can manually translate their books and reach out to instructors through WhatsApp if they have any questions on lessons or assignments and can look at the ECHO Collective homepage for information on events and other programs. As more students go through the Refinery program, this system becomes increasingly overwhelming for instructors. Additionally, the 4-month program limits the time for technology education, leaving women unsure how to grow their technology experience and confidence. The Design Studio team’s solution is a customized learning management web application designed for the multi-cultural needs of the Refinery’s students. While ECHO Collective had investigated learning management systems such as Canvas and Google Classroom, they found that these solutions were not designed for users with low tech literacy and were too expensive. To counter this, the Design Studio team built a custom solution that limits user confusion by removing unnecessary or irreversible actions. For all actions a user can take, the LMS also provides clear directions. With this solution, ECHO Collective’s Refinery students can build their confidence in technology.