The problem

Users were signing up and beginning online courses offered by DTA, however, data indicated that only 60% of learners who commenced a course went on to complete it.

Opportunity/problem to solve:

How might we:

Deliver courses that learners are motivated to complete?

Goal / Success metric: No fixed metric, desired an upward trajectory and positive signals

 

The approach

A initial kick off meeting with stakeholders / project team to:

Shared understanding of:

  •  Discuss the brief
  • Define the problem / why
  • Discuss the goal
  • Discuss ways of working together (e.g. how would we manage / track the project (Jira), who would be included at what points)

During the meeting, we agreed that I would conduct discovery work to validate the problem and gain a deeper understanding of the current learner experience within the problem space.

Discovery

I utilised the following methods:

Desk research

  • Journey mapping
    Mapped the user flow (learner journey    ) from start to finish

    • Reviewed the existing journey
    • Identify any gaps
  • Personas – understand the needs of some average learners (assisted by data) , their characteristics, and needs
    e.g. the largest learner cohort were Nurses located in Brisbane, New Care staff to organisations with little prior workforce experience
  • Completed a course myself to understand the journey and current state experience

Survey

  • Email survey (Qualtrics) to a number of learners who had begun a course in the last 3 months but did not complete. Why? To help us understand the reasons why a learner didn’t complete, any barriers they faced, learn if there were opportunities for us to better support their learning, and to identify any behaviour patterns or themes.

Research findings and insights

The surveys highlighted three key themes:

  1. Allocated timeframes were too tight
    Learners were time poor. The intent was there, but they were physically unable to complete their course within the allocated timeframe whilst juggling work and family commitments.
  2. The timing of reminder emails caused demotivating
    Users were sent a reminder email 48 hours prior to their course expiring. Emails were generally received within 24 hours, but with only 24 hours left to complete, learners with busy schedules and competing priorities gave up.
  3. Learners wanted more time to complete
    Learners were still motivated. When a course expired course they were unsure of next steps.


The journey map uncovered

  • Once a course had expired, it was a dead end for a learners
  • No simple way to reactivate a course and continue learning
  • Re-enrol and recomplete material already covered


Defined the scope

  • Share findings with the project group and discussed
  • Decide on the MVP – What will deliver the most value to users and the business with the lowest effort?
  • To achieve our project goal (upward trajectory in completions), we decide to
    focus on supporting existing, motivated learners to complete courses

 Ideation

  • Facilitated an ideation workshop to brainstorm what a solution might look like. Included various stakeholders in customer ops, learning manager, website team members etc
  • Upvoted solution: Make it easy for learners to extend their course enrolment once it became overdue/expired.
    • To allow motivated leaners additional time to complete
    • Support the business to capture qualitative information from learner to better understand their needs and pain points.

Design phase

Using Design System components, I design mid-fidelity design concept on what a course extensions screens and journey might look like.

Usability testing

I conducted usability testing to observe learners interacting with the design to uncover any unexpected UX issues.
Several rounds of iterations based on feedback e.g. found the button colour was interpreted as ‘disabled’

Engineering input

I also liaised with engineering around
– feasibility of the proposed changes
– effort required
– delivery timeframe
– general tech recommendations

The solution


Within the learner’s dashboard, implemented a button on the overdue course screen allowing learners to “Apply for a course extension”

This led users through to our new extension request screen where users could choose their preferred extension deadline (timeframes based on business decision), provide a reason for the request, and clearly see their new complete by deadline.

Impact

 

  • Over 3 months, Course completion rates improved from 60% to 68%. That’s an 13% increase.
  • We were capturing valuable information about our learners and their reasons for needing an extension.

Early Learning

  • Learners wanted to set their own course extension deadline. They knew their schedule best and when they would realistically have time to complete a course.
  • A business decision (based on funding reporting) was made to cap the extension timeframes, so this would become a discussion point for the next iteration.