Case Study: District Coaching Product Exploration & Development

Project Overview

BetterLesson’s mission is to support every teacher in the world in developing the next generation of compassionate, resourceful, and iterative learners. Up until 2018, Its digital products primarily focused on facilitating one-on-one virtual coaching between teachers and BetterLesson coaches. Two factors led BetterLesson to expand its product services beyond its primary focus on teachers.

1. The growing number of school-based coaches posed a challenge to our traditional model.
   Top reasons for FY2018 that deals have been lost:

   1. No budget/Lost funding (25%)

   2. Timing isn’t right (24%)

   3. Satisfied with existing PD (20%)
      

2. However, it also presented an opportunity to support these coaches, a growing user group that faces significant challenges in their role.

   From the 17-18 to 18-19 school year, school leaders and school-based district coaches were the fastest-growing segments of customers receiving BetterLesson coaching services (167% increase in bookings).

BetterLesson’s value proposition has been providing the leading platform for schools’ professional learning. BetterLesson had already begun delivering professional development coaching services to a small number of in-school coaches, but the digital product offerings were designed for a teacher audience and didn’t fully support district coaches. The vision of the project was to provide schools with support for school-based coaches while continuing to supplement with BetterLesson Coaching services. Based on these market and business needs, the Product Owner and I began exploring questions around this relatively new demographic of school-based district coaches. Who are they? What do they do? What do they need? How can we help?

The Problem

Based on our research (described in more detail below,) we found that: 

• The district coach role is a new frontier in education.

• Day to day responsibilities include:

  • observations and debrief conversations,

  • helping teachers set focused goals,

  • recommending things for teachers to try,

  • learning new content areas 

  • And facilitating professional learning communities. 

• District coaches’ roles vary widely and are loosely defined. 

• Their work includes both formal and unwritten responsibilities that spill over beyond working hours. 

• District coaches receive minimal support or training 

• And they lack a useful way to demonstrate their value and effectiveness to their school administrations. 

• On top of that some are concerned about being perceived as a spy for school school administrators. 

Process

Discover

In August of 2018, the PO and I began investigating the wants and needs of district coaches; uncovering through primary and secondary research methods the problems they face in their work. We conducted interviews of in-school district coaches who were not currently registered with BetterLesson. Interviewees were recruited through BetterLesson employees’ networks. We conducted expert interviews with Betterlesson coaches that had begun working with a pilot group of in-school district coaches. We also combed through that pilot’s recruitment application data where district coaches stated their areas of growth and their motivation for joining.

After gathering research data we synthesized our learnings in a whiteboard session and developed a user persona to guide our decisions and create a shared understanding of this new user group.

Competitor Analysis

Researching the advantages and disadvantages of other players in the coaching field helped us determine what features we might consider including in an MVP release and beyond.

Ideation

After the initial rounds of research, we dug into how we could start addressing the needs of an in-school district coach. We whiteboarded a few possible solutions by mapping potential user flows and features together before moving to the computer.

The initial wireframes allowed us to gain stakeholder buy-in and place a district coach-focused product into the product roadmap. Open questions remained around how narrow or broad our focus would be and more research and information was needed before any product requirements could be formed. Conducting a Design Sprint enabled us to consult with more people with broader expertise and allowed us to put a prototype in the hands of users for immediate feedback.

Design Sprint

Our design sprint team included our Senior Director of Learning and Instructional Content, Creative Director, Senior Software Engineer, Senior Manager of Data Insights, Product Manager and myself. We consulted with several salespeople and BetterLesson coaches with experience working with in-school district coaches.

We framed the problem by drafting the following How Might We question: How might we help define, support, and share the work of District Coaches across different coaching models?

In my sketches, I determined the actors involved in the coaching process and mapped out their journey and possible solutions to our HMW question. After coming together and discussing our sketches, we narrowed our focus toward two areas:

• Providing a dashboard experience where district coaches could have an at-a-glance view of their teachers, their professional development, and their schedule.

• Providing a workspace where district coaches can create goals, share feedback, and collect evidence of growth with their teachers.

We split into two teams to create prototypes for the two areas of focus. I lead the design and building of the dashboard experience.

User-testing

The greatest source of learning came at the end of the design sprint from putting prototypes in the hands of users at the end of the design sprint. Many of our assumptions made during the sprint were challenged in the user-testing sessions. Below is a sample of my interview questions.

In the dashboard experience, the strongest feedback was against any calendar features. District coaches were tied to their existing calendars as the calendars played a central role in their day-to-day. Some were concerned about adding new complications into their lives if this calendar did not sync with existing calendars. Others preferred paper planners and were reluctant to change. Most coaches had initial confusion or resistance towards the professional learning section at top of the dashboard. All of the interviewees had never worked with BetterLesson and were unfamiliar with our professional development process. Many interviewees had questions regarding how tailored or relevant content would be to them; wondering what determined how content populated that section. District coaches stated that they preferred their professional learning and their work with their own teachers be separated rather than together in the same experience. The area that received the most positive response was the ability to see all of their teachers and keep track of notes, conversation, and coaching sessions.

In the workspace experience, district coaches responded positively towards an area where they can keep a “digital binder of their work”. Some district coaches had reservations about tagging goals to specific frameworks shown in the prototype. District coaches have different pedagogical frameworks that their schools adhere to. Some wondered whether tags could be added based on their school’s framework. District coaches revealed that they are more likely to be working on one focus area at a time rather than multiple goals. Interviewees were the most resistant to delivering any type of evaluative feedback to their teachers. The “Needs Support” language in the interface signaled the wrong type of message for the coach-teacher relationship. These concerns stemmed from union laws pertaining to teacher evaluations by fellow union members. Another major concern was adding any new tools for their teachers to learn and implement into their overloaded schedules.

Solution

Following the design sprint, I began reiterating on previous design concepts. The user-testing sessions revealed that knowing who they are working with and what they are working on was most important to district coaches. Additionally, district coaches needed a place to keep track of the work being done towards teachers’ goals in a safe, non-evaluative way while simultaneously being able to highlight and share that work with their administrators. District coaches strongly preferred their professional learning and their work with their teachers to be separate experiences.

The understanding was that the MVP would be a pilot project, thus should fit into the BetterLesson product ecosystem without affecting too many other pages or disrupt expectations of users who had already begun their school year with BetterLesson. Upon logging in district coaches see their familiar professional learning dashboard with the addition of a new “My Teachers Tab.” The this tab allows district coaches to invite their teachers into the BetterLesson platform. An invitation grants access to BetterLesson content. Once an invitation is accepted, district coaches can recommend lessons and strategies that are delivered to the teachers’ email. Each teacher added has a workspace where district coaches can track teacher progress and goals in a story timeline with or without teacher participation. More hands-on teachers can also access and add to their story timeline as well.

The story timeline experience is adopted from the current story timeline used by BetterLesson coaches and their teachers. The main difference is how goals work. In this paradigm, goal creation is agnostic to any pedagogical framework. District coaches have a WYSWYG text editor to create any type of goal. Goal completion is not dependent on completing any series of actions within the software. In addition to goals, notes, progress updates, evidence, and strategies can be shared amongst the district coach and their teachers. District coaches can select certain moments to highlight and share with their school administrators.