Between Potential and Practice: Teacher Engagement with Blended Learning Platforms Through a Service Design Lens

Author:
Daiga Strenga
Supervisor:
Kiwoong Nam
University:
ULAP

This thesis investigates why teachers with access to a comprehensive blended learningplatform engage with it differently – some extensively, some selectively, and some barely at all – and what service design interventions could help close the gap between what the platform offers and what teachers use in everyday school practice. Conducted incollaboration with a Latvian educational publishing company, the study applies a Double Diamond service design framework across four research phases: a semi-structured interview with the industry partner, an autoethnographic exploration of the platform, a co-creationworkshop with seven secondary school teachers, and validation interviews with twointernational EdTech experts. The findings show that teacher disengagement is not primarilya motivational or training problem, but rather it is a design problem rooted in interface friction, content gaps, and a structural misalignment between how the platform is organisedand how teachers actually work. A consolidated set of 35 service design interventions was developed, prioritised through an impact-effort matrix, and validated by the industry partnerand external experts. The study provides one of the first empirical accounts of teacherplatform engagement in a small-country, single-language educational market, anddemonstrates the value of combining service design methods with technology acceptance frameworks in applied EdTech research.

Link to full thesis