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We aim to create a digital assistant that alleviates teachers’ workloads, and provides them with useful tools and strategies so that they can focus on engaging and inspiring their students.

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Australia's teacher shortage is a generational crisis in the making

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Australia's teacher shortage is a generational crisis in the making

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“Australia is on a precipice, with up to 70 per cent of teachers considering leaving the profession” (Longmuir, 2023).

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✅ Daily Stress Check-ins – Tracks teacher well-being.
✅ Mindfulness Exercises – Quick strategies to reduce stress.
✅ Lesson Planning Support – AI-driven recommendations.
✅ Workload Balance Tools – Helps teachers prioritize tasks.

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Selective Attention Theory

People discard information that isn’t relevant.

This helps to maintain focus on information that is important or relevant.

Key focus - guide attention, avoid overhwleming users with unnecessary information.

Quokko - provides one strategy one at a time (at least initially). Strategies provided are quick and simple to increase efficiency and effectiveness.

Choice Overload

Offering a large number of options can overwhelm a user and detract from the purpose/goal of the technology.

Key f ocus - prioritising content that’s shown to them at any given moment (e.g. strategy), providing tools for narrowing down choices up front (e.g. button choices).

Quokko - provides users with options from the outset with integration of buttons (stress management, workload balance, behaviour management).

(Yablonski, 2018)

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Voiceflow is the creative suite for designing, prototyping, and building voice apps on Alexa and Google.

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White Green Modern SaaS Tools Comparison Chart Graph

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Teaching is fulfilling, but stress and burnout are common (Zhou & Brown, 2022).

Quokko helps teachers manage stress, balance workloads, and stay organized.

Inspired by the cheerful resilience of quokkas, Quokko is a calm, supportive, and interactive chatbot.

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Australian Teachers' Increasing Stress Levels and Workloads

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Australian Teachers' Increasing Stress Levels and Workloads

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Recent statistics highlight the increasing stress levels and workload challenges faced by Australian teachers (The Animated Teacher Blog, n.d.).

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Black and White Simple User Persona Brainstorm

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"Emotional exhaustion is the core dimension of teacher burnout and is frequently the first symptom to appear." (Maslach and Leiter, 2016)

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"Emotional exhaustion is the core dimension of teacher burnout and is frequently the first symptom to appear." (Maslach and Leiter, 2016)

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"Non-teaching duties and administrative workload significantly reduce teachers' ability to focus on their core task of teaching and contribute to professional dissatisfaction." (OECD, 2020)

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Following the user's response that the originally suggested strategy (deep breathing) did not work for them, Quokko was able to comprehend the user's request and offer an alternate stress management strategy.

As a result, users were able to gain strategies somewhat personalised to their preferences.

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Longmuir, F. (2023, January 29). Australia’s teacher shortage is a generational crisis in the making. How can we turn things around? ABC News. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-01-30/pandemic-exposed-australia-teacher-shortage-students-schools/101886452

Maslach, C. and Leiter, M.P., 2016. Understanding the burnout experience: recent research and its implications for psychiatry. World Psychiatry, 15(2), pp.103-111. Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4911781/ (Accessed 14 Mar. 2024).

OECD, 2020. Teachers and school leaders as valued professionals: TALIS 2018 Results (Volume II). OECD Publishing. Available at: https://www.oecd.org/education/talis/talis-2018-results-volume-ii-19cf08df-en.htm (Accessed 17 Mar. 2024).

Shoji, K., Cieslak, R., Smoktunowicz, E., Rogala, A., Benight, C.C. and Luszczynska, A., 2016. A systematic review of the relationship between self-efficacy and burnout in teachers. Educational Research Review, 17, pp.63-84. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/285928343_A_systematic_review_of_the_relationship_between_self-efficacy_and_burnout_in_teachers (Accessed 14 Mar. 2024).

The Animated Teacher Blog (n.d.) Teacher statistics Australia, The Animated Teacher. Available at: https://www.theanimatedteacherblog.com/teacher-statistics-australia (Accessed: 17 March 2025).

Yablonski, J. (2018). Laws of UX. Laws of Ux. https://lawsofux.com/

Zhou, M. and Brown, D., 2022. Educational learning theories: 2nd edition. Education Open Textbooks. Available at: https://oer.galileo.usg.edu/education-textbooks/1/ (Accessed 12 Mar. 2024).

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The use of generative AI improved the Quokko's abilities to comprend more complex questions (longer lengths/alternate wordings to that within the Knowledge Base, specifics etc).

Users reported that this was quite impressive and usually gave relevant responses that were useful for the purposes.

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During user testing, a number of testers reported that the offboarding experience was quite swift and did not always allow for the user to continue with their query.

Buttons were implemented to navigate this challenge, giving the user a prompt to select 'yes' or 'no' in response to a question regarding whether or not they would like to continue. However. this is a component that will look to be imprroved further by programming a wait time for user response before offboarding.