The Pitch

[Onlineschool.com] is a site that hosts several introductory college-level courses for dramatically less than the traditional cost of an in-person university. Think $500 dollars for 4-credits, not $2,500.

Students at Onlineschool are enrolled with a well-known and accredited university when they purchase these courses. The classes are developed in part with this university but are simply implemented by onlineschool.com for significantly less than other schools. Each student selects a start date, and then enrolls in an asynchronous, fully remote cohort lasting fourteen weeks, just as in a traditional school. As an additional value add, Onlineschool boasts pre-recorded, cinematically produced lectures from giants in their academic fields. Ivy-league professors, celebrated authors, award-winning social scientists, economists, and mathematicians present the lectures. Onlineschool’s team of learning scientists incorporate them into a robust curriculum that matches, and in many cases exceeds, the rigor of traditional universities.

The only deadlines in these courses come around exams and writing assignments. Otherwise, take your test at 3 AM. Finish your lecture on your break from waiting tables. Sneak in a quiz while the kids are asleep. Any time—anywhere. College made new.

The goal of all this? Make quality education attainable. Don’t skimp on the rigor or support—but instead of billion-dollar campuses, try finding the best professors, the best designers, and the best tutors—wherever in the world they might be hiding.

The hitch

As a groundbreaking hybrid of educational models, Onlineschool faces exciting new challenges that need to be unraveled before the experience can be perfected. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and if the experiment is to thrive (as society frankly needs it to), more than anything else—the students need to be successful. Today, there are several problems to be solved, some of which I have outlined in my Problem of Practice Statement. The core of these obstacles revolve around student engagement and are not unfamiliar to online educators. In an online environment, motivating students and guiding them to their course requirements can be exceptionally challenging. Most students drawn to this model consider themselves epically skilled multi-taskers—parents, employees, and full-time students with competing coursework at in-person universities. All of these students are building their academic careers in strategic pieces, but rather than one step at a time, they’re usually taking the stairwell to a college degree 3 or 4 steps at a time. Without guidance, they tire themselves out, lose motivation, or rush their coursework and end up with grades that discourage them from continuing in their academic career.

In short, keeping these students engaged in their coursework at Onlineschool is hard work. When competing with all these very real priorities, staff and designers at Onlineschool need the best tools and the most effective processes, if they’re going to give these students the support they deserve.

At present, course communications such as reminders and expectation-setting correspondence are critical levers for student success. As the problem of practice states, this is a channel that has yet to be mastered.

In my position on the latter, I handle exam extensions, troubleshooting, and any other general inquiries that a student may have during enrollment. These questions are not related to the academic subject matter they are grappling with in their courses, but rather all of the packaging that happens around it. The short of it: I may not be an expert in introductory college-level statistics, but I am an expert in all the tricks and tips that make a student successful at onlineschool.com.

Student support rarely does proactive outreach. In other words, they respond when a student reaches out reagarding a problem already in play. (For example, “I have Covid, I cannot do my exam this week”, “I do not know how to request my transcript for these credits,” or “I need to exit my course, my son is very ill.)”

Scheduled emails to a student's personal address are the primary channel for automated reminders through the “lifecycle” of a student’s enrollment.

The Lifecycle Team, acting as an offshoot of the marketing team, collaborates with Student Support to ensure that students receive the notes they need when they need them. Think, the announcements section of a Canvas module, but empowered with the ability to “set it and forget it”—allowing messages to be sent on certain milestones, rather than as an instructor sees fit.

When a student responds to one of those automated messages, however, the Student Support team of live agents is there to answer the email. It’s from this position that I’ve become aware of the shortcomings around some of this messaging, as outlined in the problem of practice.

The Problem

The messages don’t originate from those building the course, and they are subject to technical errors in a wide range of areas. Sometimes, they’re poorly timed (I haven’t started my course yet, why are you telling me I’m behind?!”) to annoyingly frequent (“Please stop sending me a congratulatory email every time I score above an 80% on a quiz. There are sooo many quizzes!”) to inaccurate (“I dropped this course two weeks ago, it is most certainly not time for my midterm!”).

The most problematic response of all, however—is complete silence. Onlineschool.com sends a lot of emails to its students—even ads for courses that haven’t come out yet. Students frequently unsubscribe from these ads, and in doing so—the current model cuts off all actual course-related correspondence at the same time.

What’s more, students spend 99% of their time on Onlineschool’s site. Email is not an essential tool for the course, and when everything they need is seemingly hosted all in one spot at Onlineschool.com, additional locations feel peripheral and unnecessary. Add inaccurate and tedious emails that sometimes feel like spam—and you have a recipe for a completely failed resource in student success.

Jaime’s course closed on a Monday at 12 PM ET. His grades were tabulated automatically and manually reviewed before being sent to his official academic record with The University. As we would come to find out, Jaime scored just five points below his target letter grade of B.

On Tuesday at 2 PM, student support receives an inbound email from Jaime. He would like to know why he received a C-. In his email, Jaime stated that he had calculated the grade himself, and our math was five points off.

Come to find out, Jaime had never logged into his Discussion Community hosted on an external site. Participation there, says his syllabus and initial orientation emails, is worth 5% of his overall grade. Without his participation, Jaime did not earn those five points.

Jaime was aware of this grading breakdown but apparently was under the impression that his message submissions to tutors throughout his course were the participation element.

Jaime had missed every email reminding him to log into his discussion community. He did not use email and could not understand why there weren’t clear instructions and reminders on the site itself. That’s where he spent all his time, after all. Without a single pop-up on his site, Jaime became laser-focused on his coursework. Within the fourteen-week cohort, he forgot about everything happening around it.

The reaction

The student support and lifecycle management at Onlineschool leaned heavily on the idea that this student was negligent in his coursework, and that they could in no way be blamed for him missing this crucial element. Jaime, however, had arrived strongly at every other aspect of his exceptionally challenging course. He used his tutoring resources, logged in regularly, and turned in assignments on time.

In my review of the materials involved, I did find the record that Jaime had been initially bombarded with marketing emails at the beginning of his course. He has expressed interest in another upcoming course, and as a result, was part of a high-volume marketing campaign to the same email address where his course reminders were being sent. Jaime tuned out the emails and focused on the site, where there were no pop-ups reminding him to head to an external discussion tool on a different platform.

I’ve raised this to the team and requested that the product team build a system of pop-ups and reminders on our site. If Jaime had received a notification next to his lectures, for example, reminding him to dive into the discussion on the topic being discussed, he very likely would’ve come out with a B that met the prerequisites for his target degree program.

For every Jaime, there are many more silent students fighting their way through busy schedules and competing priorities. The ability to meet them where they are at and avoid adding even more friction to their learning is critical to their success—and with it the success of onlineschool overall.