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November 12, 2020 - No Comments!

What Teachers Really Need in a Remote Learning Product

The rapid switch to remote learning this past spring revealed major gaps in digital learning tools. Teachers often struggled to reach students working at different paces or levels within the same class. At times, educators even cobbled together three or four applications to ensure their students could access and understand high-quality learning content. The rise of the Zoom lesson also brought major dips in student engagement, since students felt less connected to their instructors and their peers.

Even if classrooms make a return to learning in person full-time, edTech designers now have an incredible opportunity to reflect on and meaningfully address these pain points. We surveyed our Teacher Council about the challenges of remote learning, then sat down for a roundtable discussion about their needs. By the end, we'd received numerous insights about what teachers are looking for in remote learning tools, including design ideas product owners can implement right now.

From mobile-ready design to adaptive learning technology, here's what teachers really need in remote learning products.

Teacher Pain Points: Where edTech Falls Short for Remote Learning Tools

Equity and accessibility

About 25% of our Teacher Council members report that their students don't have access to technology while working and studying at home. Most of the educators on our Teacher Council work in urban school districts. Even so, student access to technology is a nation-wide problem further exacerbated by the pandemic and socially distant learning.

While edTech will never be able to solve social inequality, there are strategies edTech designers can use to help ease this pain point. For instance, lightweight, mobile-ready designs make it easier for students to work on their parents' phones and other mobile devices, especially when using spotty or public internet connections.

Engagement

During distance learning, teachers have fewer opportunities to connect with students and support their social-emotional growth with the one-on-one attention that reinforces learning. When digital tools promote student engagement, students are more likely to stay focused, learn material, and retain complex subject matter.

edTech products should help older students understand the value of using the tool, promote learner agency, and facilitate group learning. edTech can also bolster products with SEL features to address the need for additional support.

Differentiation and adaptive tech

In the classroom, teachers are able to differentiate—or, quickly change their teaching style, language of instruction, mode, or medium—in order to reach every student.

Digital tools need to offer this kind of flexibility when a teacher can't work with students in person. This might mean providing additional language support for emerging ELL students, developing audio or video components to content, or using voice-to-text tools to help teachers meet students where they are.

Adaptive learning technology can provide additional support for teachers looking to differentiate content. In an ideal piece of software, adaptive learning technology would recognize a student's level of content knowledge and deliver additional content at the right level. Adaptive technology is especially important during remote learning, when teachers can't necessarily assess and reassess how students are performing during one-on-one interactions.

Ultimately, teachers are looking for tools that differentiate because they want to streamline the number of tools used during distance learning. When teachers are able to pick one digital learning tool that all the students in their class can use, regardless of ability, content knowledge, or language acquisition, they are better able to facilitate learning and ensure accessibility for all their students.

Professional development

Suddenly having to deliver an entire curriculum using digital tools was a challenge for most teachers, especially those who felt less confident using technology. Through onboarding and other forms of support, edTech products can do more to help teachers sequence their curriculum or guide those who find digital learning tools less intuitive to use.

When edTech product owners also switch their professional development content to flexible, mobile-friendly content like pre-recorded video, teachers are more likely to engage with and use content on their own time. Post-pandemic, flexibility and asynchronous content are key for busy, overwhelmed educators who still want to learn, develop, and grow.

75% of teachers reported that their students became less engaged in socially distant learning over time. 

How edTech can Lead the Way in Designing Better Remote Learning Tools

As leaders in the edTech industry, we have a unique opportunity to reflect on the successes and failures of digital tools in remote learning contexts. Now is the time to better understand the challenges faced by both teachers and students through more thoughtful UXR.

Whether you opt for low-hanging fruit, like mobile-friendly design, or go all out with new and improved remote learning features, we hope our insights deck provides you the road map you need to a stronger product.

When we take the time to learn from teachers about their needs and challenges as an industry, all edTech products become more useful—and more valuable—learning tools.

Download insights on remote learning from our Teacher Council below—and stay tuned for even more teacher takeaways you can apply to product design in the future.

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November 9, 2020 - No Comments!

How to Build and Launch an Online Course in a Crowded Market

When we work with brands to develop an online course from existing content or from the ground-up, we know how important it is to design a product that will stand out in a crowded market. Teachers already have many products to choose from, which means plug-and-play content and turn-key solutions will only take your company so far.

Even if you already have tried-and-true learning content to work with, translating a validated curriculum into the digital realm is a deceptively heavy lift. It requires more research and more creative design thinking to create an engaging digital tool based on existing intellectual property. Not only are you working in a different medium with new challenges (and benefits!), you'll also have to re-validate your content with subject matter experts to ensure the new learning experience is still valuable for students.

But this work is where the magic happens—and what can actually make your product stand out from the crowd. With a strong commitment to user experience research (UXR), you can leverage all the strengths of the medium to drive student engagement, facilitate learning, and differentiate your online course in an overcrowded marketplace.

Stand out from the Crowd with Engaging Features, Sequencing Tools, and Teacher Support

As soon as you move from textbooks and worksheets to eCourses and digital curricula, the expectations of school administrators, teachers, and students change. In order to be adopted and supported by educators, your new online course needs to fit into their curricular ecosystem—and deliver on engagement and ease-of-use.

Here are a few of the tactics we always consider as we work with clients to differentiate their products:

Engagement

Wherever we can, we look for ways to interject the interactive and peer learning features that make content more engaging.

Not only are these features more interesting than testing or assessment, but they also support teachers who want to use whole-group instruction to get to the heart of content. Encouraging participation with tools like Kahoot, used to conduct real-time polling, can also keep students engaged as they see their peers' opinions unfold in real time.

By designing engaging features that complement your learning content, you'll receive user data that demonstrates your product is more effective than an eCourse without these features. Often this corresponds to greater satisfaction from teachers, too. Your product makes their job easier. If you also include strong reporting tools, your product will make educators look good in front of both bosses and parents—a win-win.

Together, engagement and reporting features are more likely to spur teacher advocacy and school district adoption. And that means your tool is more likely to get noticed.

Sequencing 

From an edTech design standpoint, eCourses are meant to sequence information in an intuitive and intelligent way. Traditional sequencing allows students to work asynchronously and finish lessons on their own time—an especially important benefit during remote learning.

Smart sequencing tools can also react to learners' individual interests, promote learner agency, and spark more engagement. For example, low-stakes questions about content can establish where a learner's interests lie and offer multiple ways to engage in the next step or piece of content.

Whether you use traditional sequencing features or amp up your design, automating these features will streamline a teacher's workload. When a tool is easy to use and helps teachers cut down on administrative tasks, you're one step closer to adoption.

Teacher Support

In order to be adopted, your product has to do more than engage students and help teachers sequence information in smart ways. It also needs an exceptionally designed teaching experience.

Onboarding elements should help teachers understand how your product is an easy-to-use part of their toolkit that fits seamlessly into their classroom or curriculum. Improve searchability, so teachers can easily find materials for specific concepts or explainers that link your content to state and national standards.

Providing superior teacher support means teachers will spend less time learning how to use your tool and more time doing what they're best at—teaching.

How SuperD!ville Transformed a YouTube Channel into a Full SEL Curriculum

SuperD!ville was founded to empower students with learning disabilities, prevent frustration, and reduce stigma. Before re-launching their site, the company had developed incredible video content that taught students of all abilities SEL skills. Their videos feature students with learning disabilities and address issues as diverse as bullying and coping with dyslexia. In order to reach more students and make a bigger impact, SuperD!ville wanted to transform their stand-alone videos into a full SEL curriculum.

To provide SuperD!ville with the scaffolding they needed to reach more users, Backpack Interactive built a high-quality interface that helps teachers integrate video content and interactive lessons into their curriculum. When it comes to SEL, we know how important it is for kids to discuss content and reflect on behaviors they encounter in their own lives. With discussion prompts and tips, teachers who use SuperD!ville's curriculum can now create those important reflective moments in their own classrooms.

We worked with the SuperD! team and content experts to create smart activity sequencing for teachers, as well as pre- and post-assessments for each lesson. Multiple rounds of product testing with teachers validated the importance of SuperD!ville's content and the effectiveness of the curricular guides. By incorporating teacher support into the design, we ensured teachers would find immediate, tangible value in the product.

In addition to developing the UI for their video content and curricular materials, we provided additional strategic and design support for SuperD!ville's eCommerce and subscription models. By taking early elements of SuperD!Ville's branding and developing them throughout product design, their new site became the foundation for the entire corporate look and feel. On the back end, we built tools that allowed SuperD!ville to monitor user behavior and adjust or iterate as needed.

When the Right Features and Brand Elements Help You Reach More Users

Ultimately, the development of SuperD!ville's new site is a classic example of how designing for one persona affects all the personas in the product's ecosystem. (Around here, we tend to call that "persona resonance.") On the surface, we helped SuperD! develop a fun, engaging product for middle school students. In reality, however, the content demanded that we also develop a product that spoke directly to middle school teachers. By creating curricular coherence through design and using a sophisticated approach to packaging, we ensured that teachers would use, love, and adopt SuperD!'s transformative SEL content.

Even when you start out with incredible content, like SuperD!, the product development process for a new online course is intensive. But when you invest in content experts, UXR, and high-quality design, the end results speak for themselves. With engaging features, smart sequencing tools, and dedicated support for teachers, you can take strong learning content and leverage incredible UX to make a product guaranteed to stand out from the crowd.

If you need help taking your learning content to the next level, let's talk.
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September 11, 2020 - No Comments!

How to Design Impactful Digital Experiences on a Small Budget

Nonprofit and community organizations are already working hard to support their communities with few resources. The realities of the COVID-19 pandemic have made delivering these services even more challenging, especially for organizations that depend on in-person programming.

If your mission is to fill a critical gap with educational programming or services, it's our mission to support your shift to the digital sphere. Whether you have a shoestring budget and a small staff or dedicated resources for digital experiences, this article will help you design experiences that help you serve your community.

The Value of Creating a Digital Interactive Experience Right Now

If the sudden onset of remote learning or social distancing drastically impacted your ability to provide in-person services, your organization might be struggling to reach community members in need at the same scale.

Creating a digital experience showcases your organization's content and expertise while also providing a powerful stop-gap as you wait to safely resume in-person services. But digital experiences have value outside of temporary solutions, too.

Executed well, a powerful digital experience permanently transforms your organization by enhancing your ability to fulfill your mission. By curating your content in a creative way online, digital experiences extend the reach of your organization and make your content or services even more accessible to your audience.

Organizing and formalizing your message also leads to positive outcomes for your organization. The act of curating your best content helps small teams become even more effective communicators and advocates of your mission.

How Nonprofits Can Scale Digital Experiences for Their Staff and Budgets

No matter how big your organization is, building a digital interactive experience is scalable.

You don't have to create an out-of-the-box product or completely re-tool your mission. In fact, if your idea for a digital experience changes your understanding of your mission, that's a much bigger conversation!

Start small and scale your digital resources based on your budget and bandwidth. There's value in thinking big if you're ready to think big. You can also build something meaningful right where you are. For example:

  • Embed existing YouTube content into your site along with suggestions for using content in the classroom.
  • Offer pre-existing print lesson plans as downloadable resources.
  • Curate pre-existing digital content on your site in a meaningful way for your audience.
  • Create a podcast.
  • Publish actionable blog posts.
  • If you're an outdoor organization, set up a webcam that allows your community to watch the activities that you sponsor. For instance, if you're a zoo or wildlife refuge, your audience may want to watch and connect with animals.
  • Use existing payment platforms to capture sales for classes or products or to collect donations. (Be aware that these platforms also take a percentage of your sale.)

Before you begin brainstorming ideas for your own digital experience, consider the return on investment for your organization or team. Can this digital space or tool be self-sustaining? How will you use this space even after you're open to the public?

Just take national nonprofit ReadWorks, for example. Their mission, to create a powerful ELA curriculum, required an equitable distribution policy to make the biggest impact. The organization transformed their curriculum and teaching tools into a free digital experience with national reach. By thinking digitally, ReadWorks went on to register and support more than a million teachers in every state in the country.

But your organization's digital transformation doesn't have to operate on a huge scale. SuperD!ville, an educational site that helps teachers integrate SEL concepts into middle school curricula, started out with a YouTube channel containing video lessons. As they grew, they added a subscription model and instructional tools for teachers who wanted to use SuperD!ville video content as part of their curriculum. Another educational nonprofit, Learning Ally, designed an entire portal for parents who want to support their child's literacy at home. They provide audiobooks, graphic organizers, and other literacy content—all for free.

Extend Your Organization's Reach with a Digital Interactive Experience

Whether you make existing assets more readily accessible to your audience or entirely transform your organization's digital presence, designing a digital experience boosts your mission and extends your reach.

When you design digital experiences with a growth mindset, you support your mission far into the future—long after you return to in-person programming. By setting yourself up for success during the planning phase, you'll be able to execute on bigger projects in more meaningful ways and feel proud about expanding your mission.

Even if you start small, there's value in thinking big.

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July 22, 2020 - No Comments!

Are Your Products Remote Learning-Ready?

The data is in.

According to The New York Times, the last four months of at-home learning have only highlighted the steep divides in American education.

"New research suggests that by September, most students will have fallen behind where they would have been if they had stayed in classrooms, with some losing the equivalent of a full school year’s worth of academic gains," writes national correspondent Dana Goldstein.

We've always known that the most important dynamic in the classroom is the relationship between teachers and students. While edTech isn't the solution to the systemic inequality exacerbated by at-home learning, it can give teachers better tools for reaching students at home, collecting work created offline, and tracking student performance.

When edTech designers understand the technological ecosystem of teachers and students, we are better able to identify the challenges of unevenly distributed technology and anticipate the unpredictability of learning at home. We can design remote learning solutions that are lightweight and easy to use, with robust online and offline capabilities.

What's a Remote-Learning Ready Tool?

When we say a tool is "remote-learning ready," we're not talking about self-guided learning tools students use on their own.

"Remote-learning ready" tools work effectively, even with uneven infrastructure. They provide teachers with features that augment how students interact in real classrooms, helping students to develop SEL skills and engage directly with content and concepts. "Remote-learning ready" tools are interactive and adaptive tools for teachers and students alike.

Whether you're redesigning tools for fall or creating new tools that are remote-learning ready right out of the box, here's why you should leverage features that support the challenges of teachers and students learning from home.

Break through Social Isolation and Encourage Collaboration with SEL & Collaborative Features

Tools with collaborative features that promote social-emotional growth are now more important than ever. Because learners have been physically separated from their peers and their teachers, they may feel more isolated or lose touch with the collaborative elements that improve academic outcomes through SEL.

By creating remote-learning ready tools that allow teachers and students to deepen their relationships, you drive engagement and ensure greater efficacy. SEL and collaborative features are crucial for developing peer relationships, too.

Whether students post work to a class feed or teachers encourage peer feedback, learning tools that foster discussion and create a rich, social community around subject matter inspire both meaningful conversations and learning. SEL and collaborative features also nurture an online culture of kindness, create more respectful and effective learning environments, and foster a sense of good digital citizenship.

In Backpack Interactive's work for Scholastic's Literacy Pro, for example, students have the opportunity to review books and communicate directly with their teachers. This feedback process gives students agency over their work and reading goals. Because this is an independent reading program, the stakes are also much lower than graded assignments and students are empowered to be more candid

The digital environment of Literacy Pro encourages this openness and facilitates student-teacher connection. We created an interactive scaffolding around each book, so teachers can do more than assign students a book they think the student will enjoy. They can also create a one-on-one book club, interact with reviews, and help students foster a love of reading.

Our goal as edTech designers is to help teachers develop well-rounded students who can collaborate in other settings. When you create ways for students to talk and resolve conflict or develop systems for learners to monitor and reflect on their own progress, you design better, more effective SEL tools. These better, more effective SEL tools just happen to facilitate the interactions teachers and students need most during at-home learning.

Help Teachers Explain Complex Concepts from Afar with Interactive Features

Our approach to designing tools for the classroom has always been about creating better tools for teachers. Now that students and teachers are no longer in the classroom together, learning tools need to facilitate independent and asynchronous work more than ever before.

Teachers are still under the same pressure to deliver results remotely, and they need tools to help explain complex, advanced concepts — even when the class isn't meeting on Zoom. How can we make sure that remote learning tools still feel supportive? How can we facilitate more engagement between students and their subject matter, between students and their peers, and between students and their teachers?

While interactive games can be a good way for students to engage with and master content, teachers also need tools that make gameplay useful in the context of the classroom. Through our work for Mission U.S., we created teacher tools that help educators use the suite of history games more effectively and drive results in the classroom.

Whether you're designing a game or an interactive science experiment, all interactive tools for students should consider the instructional needs of the teacher. When you provide clear pathways for using materials in—and out—of the classroom, you facilitate higher student engagement—and provide tools for more meaningful instruction.

Direct Teacher Support and Meet Individual Student Needs with Adaptive Features

Without daily student-teacher interactions in the classroom, it's more difficult for teachers to assess a student's needs, redirect, or reteach as needed. In the absence of direct teacher-student interaction, edTech can provide adaptive tools for teachers that identify student trends and direct attention and support. AI-driven adaptive features might help teachers give student feedback or even prompt a teacher-parent phone call.

edTech designers can also use adaptive features to help students working at different speeds. Adaptive features provide more support for students who need it and more independence for the students who can handle it.

When we worked with Amplify to design the UI for their vocabulary game "Best Buddy," we created an interface that accommodated complexity. As students master vocabulary words, "Best Buddy" adapts to different levels of difficulty. Vocab words become more complex and nuanced as students fine-tune their understandings of definitions and help characters in the game. By designing a UI that combines two interactive patterns, content mastery and SEL, we were able to create a complex learning tool with adaptive features.

Even when adaptive learning software is used in physical classrooms, it's intended to meet students where they are. With the right framework, they can even promote SEL growth. After all, students who need more time benefit from interactions with students who are further along, and students who work more quickly benefit from considering the needs and challenges of their peers.

Asynchronous, adaptive features provide just enough of a challenge to keep students motivated and engaged by working at their own pace. During remote learning, adaptive features facilitate just the right amount of independence and teacher support.

Meet Existing User Needs with Mobile-Ready Professional Learning

Even before COVID-19 closed schools, surveys and user testing revealed that teachers want to engage with professional learning content on mobile devices. From an at-home learning standpoint, edTech designers have new opportunities to make high-quality products that fulfill existing needs for mobile-ready professional learning.

Teacher professional development often depends on offline tools, like binders and other paper-based resources. By leveraging technology to make a dynamic, interactive course, you may be able to engage teachers more effectively—and reach them on the devices they use most often. After all, interactive materials shouldn't just be reserved for students!

For example, when we designed the new "Healthy Kids, Healthy Futures" website for Nemours Health Group, we knew early childhood care providers would review the site on their phones. We designed the site's excellent learning content, including quizzes and action plans, by breaking up content into smaller, skimmable sections. We also introduced "show-hide" features that would limit scrolling on mobile devices.

If your revenue is tied to teacher professional development, especially in-person courses or seminars, well-designed online training programs may help make up for lost revenue during social distancing. The more robust, smart, and clear your pathways for digital instruction, the more you'll be able to leverage learning content that helps teachers fulfill their professional goals.