Designing a product feature to inculcate the habit of practice and self-learning
Every educator’s dream is to raise a generation of learners who are self-motivated, practice on their own without external reinforcements and understand the true meaning of learning.
Said that achieving this is quite a task both in the classrooms and in educational products.
Surely, every product manager of any ed-tech product comes across this challenge several times.
In this article, I am proposing some simple solutions that might solve this problem to an extent.
Please note:
- These are just some strategies and ideas which can be analyzed further and implemented on a need basis.
- The included images are samples of existing best practices from other products and are included for reference purposes.
An Ed-tech company, let us call it X.
X uses its learning management system(LMS) to provide tech courses in the form of videos, live teaching etc. to college students. It also provides placement assistance to its users by giving practical knowledge of the industry and fostering better performance at the workplace. The courses include practical projects, mentorship from industry experts and course completion certificates.
Problem statement:
Design product feature/strategy to:
- Ensure that students practice and solve the assignments instead of just completing the video sessions.
- Inculcate a habit of self-learning among the students.
Problem 1: Focus on practice
Practice is a habit that we build over time. It requires consistency, extreme motivation and passion. This can be achieved by converting practice into an unconscious action i.e. habit.
Solution: Incorporating the habit-forming Hook Model into the product
The Hook Model is a four-phase process that businesses can use to create products or services used habitually by customers. The goal is to result in voluntary, high-frequency engagement. At its core, the Hook Model is about creating a customer habit. It also seeks to connect a customer’s problem to a company’s solution with enough frequency to make the engagement an ongoing practice.
The Hook Model consists of the following phases:
Trigger (External or Internal): This is the actuator of behavior. It cues the action that then builds a habit.
Action: Behavior executed in anticipation of the reward.
Variable Reward: The problem that’s solved because the action taken reinforces the cycle of behavior. Reward types include Rewards of the Tribe (social rewards based on connection and acceptance), Rewards of the Hunt (search for material resources), and Rewards of the Self (personal gratification in the form of mastery or self-realization).
Investment: An action that improves the product or service in the future.
Applying the hook model:
- Goal setting: Let students set their own goals. Even if the course requires 6 hours a week, let them choose 3 hours. The idea is to give them autonomy. Eg:
2. Progress bar: Show users their progress as per specific content of the course. This will help them identify which area of the course was mostly completed by them and why. When they reflect on this, they will understand their area of interest in a better way. This is nothing but the Endowed Progress Effect.
3. Buddy system: Be it cohort or non-cohort-based courses, users must have the access to a feature called Buddy system where they are assigned buddies for various tasks.
4. Group assignments and projects: All of us know the impact of having a teammate working along with us. A fellow mate not only just increases the motivation of the user but also increases accountability making the completion rate better and higher. (These can be incorporated into the curriculum)
5. Rewards and streaks: If the user has been consistent with the practice, displaying their efforts through such messages will help them and push them to not miss it further.
Similar streaks can be shown when they achieve their goals and complete a task. Just to add some more user-friendly, we can also be slightly lenient with the streaks count that is if the user misses just a day it does not break the streak. This is also important considering that the loss of made progress or lack of apparent progress can be demotivating. The product and user are both better served if the streak is not lost.
6. Social sharing: This feature will help the users share their progress with their friends or in their community. This will not only motivate the user but also his community.
7. In-house hackathons and many more challenges with added rewards tied to the organization’s vision. Eg: 1-month fee cancellation, 1-month direct mentorship with experts, 1-month internship opportunity which can be started immediately, unlocking some incredible resources and giving them for free. Participation here can be in groups or solo.
Some of the success metrics could be:
- No. of users actively meeting their practice goals every day/ month
- No. of users using the sharing feature
- No. of users working with buddies
- No. of assignments and projects completed every week
- User satisfaction score
Problem 2: Encourage self-learning
Self-learning is a habit that does not come naturally to the majority of us. But this habit can be built over time. Nobody can master self-learning overnight. The same applies to various e-learning products. Self-learning is difficult to measure and track. It also requires consistency, extreme motivation, curiosity and a love for problem-solving. Self-learning becomes a habit when we start doing it unconsciously.
Solution: 4 laws of behaviour change from the book The Atomic Habits by James Clear.
The 4 laws explained in the above image beautifully narrate 4 steps simple solution to inculcate any habit.
How these laws can be applied to instil self-learning:
- Make it obvious: The design of the user interface must be such that user finds it a very obvious thing to do the first when they log in to the LMS. The idea here is to raise awareness about the new structure. Eg: Instead of making the “Ask doubts” feature obvious on the LMS make the “Are you stuck? Want to re-watch these lessons?” feature obvious.
- Make it attractive: We could post simple notifications like “ 1 min of self-reading can help you in a long way. Imagine doing more of this?” Instead of rewarding users with coins/badges or extrinsic rewards, we could reward them by sending such notifications. This will check the intrinsic motivation box on the list. A constant reminder of greater rewards like the IRC, internships etc. will also help users here.
- Make it easy: Levelled quizzes to recap will help the users initially to stay motivated while learning. To begin with, we can have very simple skill-focused questions and then move on to difficult ones. If the user gets mins 60% — 80% score, then they need not retake the quiz.
- Make it satisfying: The score of the quiz would be a reward in itself. But another encouragement reward could be telling the user the final time of the self-study. Having a set-up that keeps track of the time of their self-study will help users know how much of it they have been doing. Initially, we could show the time of this every 10 mins and later increase the time. Eg: a) Woohoo! You just completed 10 mins of self-study. This is amazing!
Some of the success metrics could be:
- No. of doubts asked in a day/ week (if the number is reducing, then self-learning is happening)
- No. of times the self-learn button was clicked in a day/week
- No. of quizzes taken in a day/ week
- User satisfaction score
Assumptions:
- The users are not rewarded on day to day basis
- There are no challenges and groups events organized for students
- The organization has a specific budget allotted to solve the issues mentioned in the problem statements.
Find this article useful?
Long press the clap icon and show some love.
For more such articles, follow me :)
