Hero: designing learning tools to increase parental involvement in elementary education in china

In this paper, we present the design of Hero, a suite of learning tools that combine teacher-created extracurricular challenges with in-class motivational tools to help parents become more involved in their child's education, while also engaging students in their own learning. To inform the design, we conducted field studies and interviews involving 7 primary teachers and 15 different families. We analyzed Chinese parenting styles and problems related to parental involvement, and developed three major themes from the data. We then proposed three design goals and created a high-fidelity prototype after several iterations of user testing. A preliminary evaluation showed that teachers, parents, and students could all benefit from the design.