UMGC – Learner Support Portal

Embedding student support as infrastructure within the learning experience

UMGC branding

Snapshot

  • Role: Manager, Digital Learning Experience
  • Scope: UX strategy, system integration, and experience design
  • Platform: D2L Brightspace + InScribe
  • Scale: Deployed across First-Year Experience (FYE) courses (~10,000+ learners annually)
  • Focus: Improving how and when learners discover support

Why This Work Mattered

UMGC offers a wide range of student support services—coaching, tutoring, library resources—but these services often lived outside the core learning experience.

For many learners, support existed—but wasn’t found until it was too late.

This work shifted support from a separate destination to something embedded within the learning experience—so learners encounter help when they need it, not after they struggle.

The Situation

Support systems were available, but difficult to access:

  • Learners struggled to find help—even when it existed
  • Support was often accessed only after frustration or failure
  • Faculty lacked a consistent way to surface resources
  • Systems were disconnected from the learning environment

The challenge wasn’t adding more support—it was making existing support visible, understandable, and timely.

My Mandate

I was responsible for:

  • Designing a unified support experience within the LMS ecosystem
  • Reducing friction in how learners discover help
  • Creating a model that scales across courses
  • Aligning academic, technical, and vendor stakeholders

This required balancing usability, platform constraints, and institutional consistency.

Key Decisions

This work was shaped by decisions about timing, clarity, and integration.

Treat support as infrastructure—not a destination

Instead of building a standalone portal, we embedded support into the learning experience.

Why: Learners don’t seek help proactively—they encounter it in context. Separate systems increase friction and drop-off.

Tradeoff: Less control over a centralized “portal experience,” but significantly higher visibility and real-world usage.

Prioritize clarity over deep integration

We intentionally avoided over-embedding the system into the LMS UI.

Why: Competing navigation models create confusion. Predictability matters more than technical depth.

Tradeoff: Less seamless integration, but a more intuitive and consistent experience.

Design for just-in-time visibility

We positioned support where learners already look—rather than expecting them to search for it.

Why: Timing matters more than feature richness. Reducing cognitive load increases engagement.

Tradeoff: Less emphasis on comprehensive browsing, but stronger alignment with real learner behavior.

Design for scale from the beginning

We defined:

  • Naming conventions
  • Content structure
  • Reusable templates

Why: One-off solutions would fragment quickly. The system needed to support thousands of learners across courses.

Tradeoff: More upfront coordination, but a sustainable long-term model.

What I Built

This work resulted in a scalable, LMS-integrated support system:

Learner Support Experience Model

A consistent approach to surfacing support within courses:

  • Standardized entry points within the LMS
  • Clear, predictable labeling
  • Integrated access to academic and support resources

This ensured learners could find help without leaving the learning experience.

Platform Integration Strategy

  • Leveraged InScribe for scalable support delivery
  • Designed integration within LMS constraints
  • Prioritized institutional coherence over vendor-specific features

This created a foundation for long-term evolution alongside the LMS.

How I Led

This work required coordination across:

  • Academic support units
  • Instructional designers
  • Platform developers
  • Vendor partners
  • Institutional leadership

My role focused on:

  • Aligning stakeholders around shared goals
  • Making tradeoffs visible (integration vs clarity)
  • Managing vendor collaboration within institutional constraints
  • Defining clear decision boundaries to reduce friction

Progress depended on shared understanding—not just implementation.

Outcomes

The Learner Support Portal became a scalable, embedded system:

  • Launched successfully for Fall 2024 pilot
  • Adopted as a standard component across FYE courses
  • Scaled to 10,000+ learners annually
  • Positive student feedback on improved discoverability

More importantly:

  • Support shifted from reactive to proactive
  • Learners encountered help earlier—before failure points

What I Learned

  • Timing and visibility matter more than feature completeness
  • Integration is only valuable if it improves clarity
  • Systems should meet users where they already are
  • Platform-connected experiences require coordinated evolution

How This Connects to My Work

This project reflects how I approach human-centered systems:

  • Support as infrastructure → embed help within the experience
  • Clarity over complexity → reduce friction instead of adding features
  • Platform thinking → design across systems, not within silos

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