Reducing friction in the courses students can’t afford to fail

THE SITUATION

Math courses that serve as prerequisites for degree progress carry an outsized consequence when students struggle. ISI’s asynchronous math and core offerings in English and psychology, among others, had course structures that had grown organically over time — long module lists, inconsistent formatting, and math content rendered in ways that were neither accessible nor easy to read on modern devices.

WHAT I DID

I partnered with ISI instructors to redesign the courses from a student-experience perspective, not just a content one. That meant restructuring navigation to reduce cognitive load, standardizing visual presentation across lessons, and tackling the math accessibility rendering problem directly — learning LaTeX and MathPIX to convert legacy equation images into properly formatted, accessible math content. Design decisions were made in conversation with instructors throughout, so changes reflected both pedagogical intent and practical usability.

WHAT CHANGED

The redesigned courses are cleaner, more navigable, and fully accessible to screen reader users and students on mobile devices. Math content that previously existed as static images — unreadable by assistive technology and prone to display problems — is now properly encoded and scalable. The work also produced a repeatable process that can be applied to additional math courses as resources allow.