V School
Accelerating V School Course Completion Times by 50%
Summary
Collaborating with V School's education leadership team, we tackled post-online transition challenges using the Product Kata. Through clearer expectations and improved progress tracking, we collectively cut course completion times by 50%, enhancing student success.
Roles
Learning experience designer
UX designer
Product manager
Team
Learning experience designer
UX designer
Product manager
Director of student success
Director of education
Deliverables
Kata documentation
Draft enrollment agreement
Final Enrollment agreement
Curriculum updates
Student journey map
Prototype and UI design
Unexpected challenges emerged from the shift to online
Before the pandemic, V School was thriving:
Always full, in-person programs in Salt Lake City, Utah
Consistent student graduation rates
Strong job placement performance
In an effort to grow the business, V School's leadership made a forward-thinking decision to expand into online learning. This foresight proved crucial when the pandemic hit, allowing for a swift transition of all students to the new online platform.
Initial results seemed promising. However, over the next few years, troubling trends emerged:
Program completion times more than doubled
Student engagement declined significantly
Job placement rates plummeted
These challenges threatened the core mission of V School and demanded immediate attention. While the team had previously begun working on solving these problems, as a new team member, I needed more context so I began by conducting some research.
The unique challenges of online learning weren’t fully understood
Building on the initial shift to online learning, it became apparent that V School faced a steeper learning curve than anticipated. Through conversations with various stakeholders, a clearer picture emerged of the gaps between in-person and online education.
Several key aspects that were once easily managed in the physical classroom proved challenging in the virtual environment:
Student attendance tracking
Progress monitoring and comprehension
Engagement and community building
In the physical classroom, these elements occurred naturally and were easy to manage. While the team had implemented online solutions for each of these, none of the solutions adequately replaced the experience of being in a physical classroom.
As these fundamental aspects of the learning experience declined, they had a cascading effect on the outcomes that truly mattered - program completion, student success, and job placement rates.
Recognizing the complexity of these challenges, the V School team realized they needed a methodical approach to address each aspect of the online learning experience.
Implementing the product kata helped us to methodically solve problems
Before my arrival, the V School team had already begun tackling the challenges of online learning. However, while well-intentioned, the team’s efforts were often fragmented and lacked consistent focus. Two key issues hampered progress:
Frequent interruptions from leadership
Lack of a structured approach to problem-solving
A turning point came with the arrival of a new Chief Product Officer, who introduced the team to a powerful tool: the Product Kata, popularized by Melissa Perri.
The product kata
The Product Kata provided a framework that:
Encouraged a methodical approach to problem-solving
Emphasized outcomes over outputs
Allowed the team to focus on overcoming one obstacle at a time
By implementing this structured method, the team was able to:
Break down the complex challenge of improving online learning
Prioritize issues effectively
Maintain focus despite potential distractions
At least weekly, the team met to review the data on our progress towards the intended outcome. We then identified the next one, sometimes two, obstacles we would address. This focused effort lead to many small solutions as well as a few large solutions.
A key result of using the Product Kata was the creation of a new and improved enrollment agreement which clarified expectations for students. This development marked the beginning of significant improvements in the online learning experience.
Student focus and commitment increased with clearer expectations
Historically, every V School student signed an enrollment agreement detailing expectations for behavior and performance. However, this agreement was not designed with online learning in mind, leaving gaps in expectations for the new virtual environment.
To address this, the director of student success led a significant update to the agreement, focusing on:
Clear expectations for online attendance
Specific guidelines for progress reporting frequency
Weekly progress targets to ensure timely program completion
The Enrollment Agreement
This updated agreement was sent to all current students as an academic policy update, requiring their signatures. Despite leadership concerns about potential backlash to stricter expectations, students largely responded positively. Many expressed gratitude for the clearer, higher expectations.
In parallel to the Enrollment Agreement being developed and implemented, I lead the team in an effort to increase the frequency with which students reported their learning progress, a key part of the problem.
An increase in progress reporting CTAs encouraged students to report more frequently
While evaluating the curriculum and online learning environment, I noticed two key issues:
A disjointed and poorly organized learning experience
Lack of prompts for students to report their daily progress
Students primarily viewed lessons in Notion, but the existing structure failed to encourage regular progress reporting—a crucial metric for tracking both curriculum advancement and attendance.
To address this, I worked on short-term and long-term solutions:
Short-term: Added reminders and links to the student learning progress form in every lesson and activity
Short-term: Added an embedded progress reporting form to the course homepages.
Long-term: Collaborated with the software product team to automate student learning progress tracking
Track Your Progress added to course homepage for easier progress reporting
Automating progress tracking increased the staff’s ability to help students progress
While Notion offered flexibility and cost-effectiveness for curriculum distribution, it lacked individual progress tracking capabilities. This limitation posed a significant challenge to accurate data collection to aid in supporting students.
To overcome this, I worked with the software product team to integrate our curriculum into V Hub, V School’s student portal. This solution intended to address the shortcomings of the Notion-based system while maintaining the benefits of accessible curriculum distribution.
Lessons learned and looking into the future
The education team made great progress over the course of many months to cut the average course completion time in half. Looking back on our work there are a couple lessons that were learned:
Alignment across teams is essential. There were times when it was easier for us to try to leave other teams out and do the work ourselves. While that felt efficient, it wasn’t effective. In the future, I’ll work to collaborate earlier whenever necessary.
Buy-in from the whole team is essential. Our instructors and success mentors were where the rubber meets the road. We didn’t always execute on getting their buy-in perfectly. Moving forward I can be mindful of who should be involved in the implementing of a solution and involve them in the process earlier.
V Hub is well on its way to becoming the place for V School students to learn. When it is fully functional students will no longer need to report their progress or attendance. Instead we’ll be able to gather that information automatically by tracking usage and activity in V Hub. We’ll then be able to use that data to show students their progress and compare that against their course end date. Attendance and progress data will also provide V School staff with valuable insights that will help them to more effectively supports students and identify opportunities to improve the curriculum.
