How to Get Online Classes Right

In mid-March, COVID-19 forced America’s K-12 schools and universities to change their delivery platform from traditional classrooms to online programs. This has been a massive challenge for all involved. Not surprisingly, the online programs have fallen far short. Although most schools and universities are opening in the fall, their online classes are still mission-critical.

The urgent problem facing online learning leaders is understanding the needs of each stakeholder – students, parents, and teachers – but especially the students since they are the “customer” driving everything else. This is a watershed moment for both school districts and higher education to gain a deep understanding of how students measure success to design and deliver winning online student experiences.

Online learning leaders face the same challenge that virtually every company faces when trying to understand their customers. Historically, leaders and researchers do not have a clear definition of what a “customer need” actually is. And because not all types of customer needs are useful, the customer inputs that are obtained often ensure a suboptimal experience. Not surprisingly, after multiple solution failures due to using the wrong type of customer/student inputs, many enterprises mistakenly conclude that “customers cannot tell us what they want.”  The jobs-to-done (JTBD) innovation approach solves these problems.

JTBD is based on the insight that people “hire” products and services to get functional, emotional, and social jobs done. Products and services (and online classes) are the tools people use to get their jobs done. People can tell us what they want if we seek to understand what they want to accomplish, feel, and experience rather than requesting features and solution requirements. Then we can create an online experience that meets their metrics for success. As Steve Jobs said:

“You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology.”

Steven R. Covey taught us essentially the same thing when he said that, to be effective in any endeavor, “keep the end in mind.” This means that online education leaders must discover the students’ ends concerning their ideal online experience and then work backwards to the technology. For example, when working with a 7th-grade teacher in a Central Ohio public school district, he discovered that his students want to:

• Experience the relevance of each class in real life
• Avoid feeling alone
• Follow a regular schedule but have the flexibility to work at their convenience
• Feel confident about making progress
• Enjoy gamified activities, e.g. Kahoots, Gimkits, etc.

But it’s not enough to simply identify student needs because that alone doesn’t reveal which needs are opportunities for improvement. Only important unsatisfied needs are opportunities for improvement. The more important and less satisfied a need is, the greater the opportunity for improvement it presents. JTBD enables schools to understand the comprehensive set of needs and prioritize them accordingly. By removing the guesswork, leaders can have great confidence about where to focus and what to do to get the biggest bang for their buck. This is especially important now given increasing costs and decreasing tax revenues.

Ever-increasing competitive pressures are part of the new reality as well. Student-centric online learning platforms are being developed to democratize education. Additionally, Covid-19 showed how governors can dispense with school regulations overnight. If a governor implements “open choice” to allow kids to choose whatever education delivery platform they want, most government schools would not be competitive and would likely lose a significant percentage of their students. Online programs will never match in-person classrooms in some regards, but JTBD offers online education leaders a reliable strategy to develop the best student experience possible. Now is the time to act.

Do you know what your stakeholders are trying to get done, how they measure success, and where they struggle? It’s hard to hit a target when you’re not sure where the target is. If you are ready to stop guessing, get focused and excel at innovation, contact me at uw@revealgrowth.com.

(A version of this article appeared in The Columbus Dispatch on July 1, 2020).