Increasing engagement and optimising tutor resourcing for Further Learning Group
Further Learning Group provides quality distance learning courses that enables students to acquire the skills they need to change their careers. Established in 2004, the Group was founded to pioneer accessibility through distance learning and, classroom-based teaching and learning. They currently make provision in Interior Design, Garden Design, Fashion Design, Photography, and Digital Marketing in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Australia. On enrolment, students gain access to an Online Learning Centre (OLC), which hosts all course content, facilitates academic submissions and is maintained by staff and tutors.
The strategy
Further Learning Group collaborated with Ideas + Outcomes to redesign the OLC with the goal of addressing key challenges faced by students, tutors, and staff. The initiative aimed to enhance tutor efficiency, improve student progression rates by 10%, and increase both student retention and satisfaction. Additionally, the strategy focused on automating laborious tasks, reducing support queries and complaints by 20%, and boosting positive reviews and word-of-mouth referrals. Central to the redesign was the creation of a vibrant community, fostering peer learning, feedback, and self-service support for all users.
The solution
After an initial discovery and desk research phase, compromising a review of the OLC, in depth stakeholder engagement, data analysis and comparator review, we formed our hypotheses and set out to understand the human stories behind the data. Usability tests, interviews and contextual studies with students and tutors revealed several key insights: confusion around onboarding, lack of system orientation and clear user journeys, confusing and overly academic language, inconsistent delivery formats, delays in self-progression due to feedback wait times, and reduced user engagement due to unclear communication and limited community interaction.
Based on these insights, we developed a delivery plan focused on themes such as gamification, peer-to-peer feedback and learning, community building, onboarding and streamlined content delivery and submission. Collaborating closely with the client team, we created interactive prototypes, conducted usability tests on ideas and concepts and identified gamification behaviours that would resonate with the audience, and developed a comprehensive design system.
The impact
The new OLC, is currently in beta at the time of writing. Working collaboratively alongside Further Learning Group’s product team we are already seeing positive results, as follows:
Email and phone queries have since decreased 40%, 100% above target!
Students are completing courses 12.5%(avg) quicker
Quality of coursework has improved significantly with the addition of peer feedback, tutor stats report that rounds of feedback have reduced from 3.4 to 2.2
We look forward to continuing to optimise the OLC through data driven, user centered design into 2025 and beyond, in collaboration with Further Learning Group.
Decrease in email and phone queries
Speed increase for student course completion
Reduction in rounds of tutor to student feedback