portfolio

Udacity

2019

Udacity is a global e-learning and upskilling platform with a mission of democratizing education. Their courses help individuals build the most in-demand technical skills through stackable micro credentials called Nanodegrees.

I joined the team as one of three scholarship community managers who launched some of Udacity’s first scholarship partnerships with Google and Bertelsmann. I was responsible for leading learning communities of scholarship students and creating a cohesive student experience while driving towards key graduation metrics.

Results snapshot

Orientation pulled best practices from scholarship programs that doubled baseline graduation rates

Streamlined onboarding saved an average of 5 hours/week

Project description

While all students, both scholarship and paying, experienced community support through their Nanodegree programs, the type of support and overall learner experience varied significantly between programs. Graduation rates and student NPS also varied, and students enrolled in multiple programs expressed confusion at differences in the learner experience.

I spearheaded a project to create onboarding curriculum that all students would complete, regardless of program enrollment. This project involved partnering with the media team to script, film, and edit orientation content, the product team to embed content into dozens of existing programs, and the community team to document best practices and developed unified messaging.

Goals

  • Align community team around student support best practices, leading to higher graduation rates and student satisfaction

  • Create a consistent onboarding experience for all students, reducing confusion and friction for students enrolled in multiple programs

Audience

Thousands of Udacity students enrolled in all programs across the globe

Challenges

  • Bringing together disparate teams: Many learning functions were silo’ed into respective teams, meaning that community managers had minimal overlap with the media and content development teams. To gain buy-in, feedback, and support, I had to build relationships with colleagues who often had competing priorities.

  • Nuance between programs: While we sought to create a consistent student experience, there were differences between programs that were important to maintain. To avoid contradicting information, it was necessary to get feedback from dozens of Nanodegrees content developers.

Cross-functional partners

Community team, product, media team, and content developers

Learning modalities

Written curriculum, prerecorded video content, recorded visuals with audio overlay, automated assessments

Process

Stage I - early Q1 2019

  • Meet with community managers to align on goals and brainstorm solutions

  • Get feedback from content developers

  • Develop proposal and submit request to media team

Stage II - early Q1 2019

  • Write script for prerecorded content

  • Write supplemental curriculum and assessments to embed in LMS

  • Get feedback from community team, content developers, and media team

Stage III - mid Q1 2019

  • Film content over two days

  • Edit content

  • Get leadership feedback on final draft before embedding

  • Draft written comms for Slack and email to reinforce expectations for students

Stage IV - late Q1 2019

  • Embed content in all learning programs and launch to students

  • Collect feedback through built-in prompts in coursework

  • Track student engagement in learning community and course progress

Results

  • Rolled out across more than two dozen Nanodegree programs for thousands of students across the globe

  • 10% increase in student enrollment in Slack community

  • Average of five hours saved per community team member in the days following enrollment due to reduced tickets/student questions

Image credit: Udacity website