LET’S PLAN

Challenge

Since 2013, there has been a steady decline in a teacher union convention attendance, average 3-5% a year. The union’s asked us to learn more about their members’ attitudes, behaviors, and preferences to recommend changes that would make the convention more successful and attractive to members.

Timeline

January 2020 - May 2020

Questions

Why are teachers choosing not to go to the conference? How are they judging the value of attending the conference? How do we add value to the conference and make it more attractive for members?

Outcome

An app that gives teachers accessibility and flexibility to professional development events and event coordinators more insight and control into how their events are doing.

BACKGROUND

Understanding how the stakeholders are connected:

RESEARCH

  • Interviews with four current union members who are teachers

  • Interviews with two current conference coordinators of the union

  • Email conversation with conference committee chair

  • Email conversations with two conference coordinators for other teacher organizations in the state

  • Our desk research was originally using data that our client has gathered from their past conferences. However, weeks into the project, the client revealed that the data cannot be shared due to a NDA issue. To counter this, we:

    • Calculated the percentage of those who had long travel times using census information per each county and Google Maps

    • Charted out all the class offerings for teachers at the convention to determine the diversity makeup of classes by subject

    • Researched alternative convention halls to calculate the possibility of hosting the convention on one day in several locations

RESULTS

  • Those who attended the convention found the experience very valuable for education professionals

  • Members who attend year after year trend to be very involved in the convention itself

  • Those who attended only one year cited a lack of diversity in professional development classes (PD) as a reason to not attend again. Based on 2019’s convention pamphlet, math and science PD made up 25% of the sessions, while science, social studies, performing an d visual arts, and world language only made up a total of 18% of sessions

  • Those who only attended only one year also cited the inconvenience of the location as a reason to not attend again. This is demonstrated by 97% of educators would potentially have to drive over an hour to attend the convention, and 55% would potentially drive over two hours. This leave only 3% of possible attendees to drive less than one hour

  • Those who never attended said they were too burnt out from work, that given the chance to take a break during the school year, they would prefer to rest rather than attend the convention for additional work related activities

  • The younger attendees valued the PD sessions on teaching methods such as inclusivity, etc., while the older attendees valued the PD sessions on technology

TESTING

Based on the results from the research above, we devised three hypothesis to test and further our focus:

  • Content curation - educators would like their professional development needs curated into one destination

  • Networking - educators crave more opportunities to connect and learn from one another

  • Events information - educators currently have difficulty receiving information and planning events that they can attend

We created wireframes to test with our contacts in the education sector. With the ongoing pandemic, we were able to test virtually using the screensharing function on Zoom.

When asked which function users valued most, the majority said events management.

PROPOSITION

The results of our testing led us to concentrate on the events information hypothesis. We focused on creating an app that provides teachers a simpler, personalized, flexible method to gather information on professional development events, add and integrate the events into their personal schedules, and show them what events are nearby in addition to online events. The app also provides event coordinators a way to reach larger audiences quicker, gain real time updates, livestream online events, and ticket their events in app in one location.

The app would be paid for by the event coordinators, as most teachers already have financial difficulties. Event coordinators would pay a fee to have their events on the featured page, and an additional tiered flat fee based on the size of their event.

While the app was inspired by a multi day state wide teacher professional development conference, we believe it would have other applications, such as:

  • Trade shows

  • Workshops

  • Events series

  • Conventions

  • Conferences

  • Seasonal festivals