CV
SD5398@RIT.EDU
CV
SD5398@RIT.EDU

Reimagining how 19,000+ RIT students manage their academic workload, through an AI-assisted redesign of MyCourses.

Reimagining how 19,000+ RIT students manage their academic workload, through an
AI-assisted redesign of MyCourses.

Overview

Learning management systems weren't built for how students actually think.
They were built for how institutions organize information.

This redesign asks a different question : What if the platform did some of that thinking for you?

Current Design

Every RIT student I spoke to described the same Sunday night feeling - five tabs open, three course pages loaded, no idea where to start.

MyCourses, RIT's learning management system, isn't broken.
It just presents everything at once and asked students to figure out the rest.

MyCourses desktop app - a grid of all enrolled courses, announcements and upcoming deadlines.

Course Content Page - announcements, links, and resources in a single column.

Student Survey

I surveyed 24 students across four departments to understand how they actually navigated academic workload.

The question that changed everything

Not what should it look like - but what does a student actually need to do?
The answer wasn't manage. It was connect.

Why a node, not a list

Dive in Design

The redesign is built around one idea : the student decides the action, the platform handles the connection. Everything else follows from that.

The System

MyCourses redesigned around three pillars :

Process
I cycled through dozens of different ideas and iterations before shipping final screens.

Flow 1

Reimagining how 19,000+ RIT students manage their academic workload, through an
AI-assisted redesign of MyCourses.

What if submitting work and getting feedback happened in the same place?

Reimagining how 19,000+ RIT students manage their academic workload, through an
AI-assisted redesign of MyCourses.

Deadline-Driven Priority
This immediately implements the Prioritization design pillar. The student's focus shifts from which course they are in to what specific task is due next, giving action primacy.


Single-View Submission Pane
This enacts the Single-View Workflow pillar. The user performs the entire submission process—including action selection and file upload—without navigating away from the main dashboard, centralizing all due-task interactions and reducing cognitive load.


Relational Feedback Connection
This delivers the Collaborative Flow pillar. It transforms isolated file sharing into a trackable, in-context feedback loop, making peer support an integrated step rather than an external, manual chore.

Deadline-Driven Priority
This immediately implements the Prioritization design pillar. The student's focus shifts from which course they are in to what specific task is due next, giving action primacy.


Single-View Submission Pane
This enacts the Single-View Workflow pillar. The user performs the entire submission process—including action selection and file upload—without navigating away from the main dashboard, centralizing all due-task interactions and reducing cognitive load.


Relational Feedback Connection
This delivers the Collaborative Flow pillar. It transforms isolated file sharing into a trackable, in-context feedback loop, making peer support an integrated step rather than an external, manual chore.

Flow 2

Reimagining how 19,000+ RIT students manage their academic workload, through an
AI-assisted redesign of MyCourses.

What if the platform could tell you exactly what to do next?

Reimagining how 19,000+ RIT students manage their academic workload, through an
AI-assisted redesign of MyCourses.

Decomposition and Scheduling
The AI breaks the assignment into steps and suggests a timeline. One overwhelming deadline becomes a concrete list of small wins.


Focused Resource Grounding
Course resources surface automatically alongside the task. No tab switching, no context switching — everything needed stays in one place.


AI Prompted Resource Retrieval

The platform finds relevant resources so the student doesn't have to. Research stays inside the learning environment, not scattered across browsers.

What I designed for - three shifts

From fragmented to focusedOne dashboard. Everything that matters today.
From passive to activeThe platform interprets, not just displays.
From overwhelmed to in controlDesigned for how a student feels on Sunday night.

What I'd do differently

I would have tested the AI Coach with real students on real assignments — not to prove it works, but to find out where it breaks. Does the AI actually suggest tasks the way a student thinks about them? I don't know. That's the honest answer.


What I didn't get to

I didn't design for failure states. What happens when the AI gets it wrong? What happens when a student ignores the suggestion and does it their own way? The next version needs those answers.


What this could become

The node-based system isn't specific to MyCourses. Any platform where users need to connect tasks to actions — project management, health admin, event planning — could use this model. That's what makes it worth building properly.