Kid-powered, self-directed learning: Building a learner-led experience on Outschool
1At Outschool, our mission is to make learning fun, social, and self-directed. In practice, kids take live, online classes which are generally booked by their parents and always led by a teacher. Knowing that kids’ interests are vast and that self-directed learning can be a roaming process, we wondered how we might make Outschool an even more engaging and enriching destination for self-directed learning.
So we spoke to Learners. Some loved the chance to explore self-guided learning. A girl obsessed with Jane Goodall worked under her teacher’s guidance to design and conduct a study on her guinea pigs’ dietary preferences. Other Learners reaped social benefits. A boy from rural Utah finally found other people his age to play D&D with.
Some of us hypothesized that learners would enjoy a very interest-driven version of Outschool, heavy on content and skill-building. Others argued that Learners would prefer an extremely social one, emphasizing chat and community features. Each offered something more than our current experience, which emphasized attending and finding new clases.
We tested both directions with a broader pool of Learners. Our findings? Both hypotheses were right, and wrong – Learners were most excited about the features we tested which enabled bite-sized ways to build skills and share success with other Learners.
Today, we’re finding ways to apply these learnings. Maintaining vision and focus while supporting our business goals requires strong design principles, tight collaboration, and, of course, frequent co-design with learners.
Learn More At https://outschool.com/