YEAR
CLIENT
ROLE
SECTOR
DISCIPLINES
SUMMARY
This project is an ecosystem of interventions to enable facilitators with tools to teach a Career and Skilling curriculum for a 3-month pilot program. It was launched in 45 training centers in India and later deployed for 250,000 learners across the country.
The program bridges gaps of language through a rigorous English program while equipping learning to becoming career minded and self-reliant with 21st century skills.
OUTCOMES
User Research ▪ Teaching Strategy ▪ Learning Experience ▪ Lesson Plans ▪ Learner Handbook ▪ Trainer Manuals ▪ Onboarding Materials
Snapshots from the project
Challenge
BACKGROUND
India has a presence of more than 300 Industrial Training and Vocational Training Institutes across the country that prepare young people to enter the workforce. In about 4 states MyQuest, a flagship blended learning program by Quest Alliance, combines Career & Employbility Skills to help learners and facilitators achieve this goal.
This pilot program consists of experiential group activities and classroom sessions along with at home nudges to help learners achieve their goals. This part of the project focuses on how the program can support trainers to learn new facilitation skills, as well as help them to enable students to develop market-oriented skills while building their confidence.
BRIEF
How might we design a teaching experience to support facilitators to deliver blended learning curriculum?
As part of the MyQuest Ecosystem, Learners & Facilitators have scheduled in person classes where topics for the week are discussed and clarified, this is done according to the ‘Learning Journey’ or curriculum that had newly been re-stratergised in a blended learning model.
However, the existing Facilitator’s Manual was outdated and needed a more experiential modality to deliver the new curriculum in an effective way along with an updated Student Handbook to support the learning and teaching material ecosystem.
MyQuest Pilot Program: Teaching & Learning Ecosystem
Approach
My approach began with grounding the work in an internal audit, cataloging existing facilitation material and course content across the 3-month program. This helped surface gaps in the material and where facilitation could bridge or extend them. For example, there was no material or interface to support a personalised learning experience based on a learner's goals and interests. The e-learning course had also been redone and the learner journey re-strategised, which left the facilitation material lacking cohesion.
Next, I mapped content across the full course timeline to build a distribution of material week by week. This led to designing how workload should be spread across the program, anchored by progress milestones such as career cards, a career day, and a site visit. Alongside this, I designed each day, week, and phase's learning goals in coherence with the program's overall Learning Objectives, using the milestones to set pacing and ensure every part of the ecosystem stayed in conversation with the rest.
This was followed by a phase of rigorous planning, research, and execution of daily experiential lesson plans. I was responsible for envisioning each day, carrying concepts forward across sessions, and designing the material to be accessible and engaging for learners of varying calibers.
I also advocated for and owned a critical piece of the ecosystem: a learn-by-choice module, which I took from initial strategy through to execution. The other significant piece I owned was the interface of the facilitator manual itself, designed for low-connectivity, low-bandwidth contexts — a PDF built to behave like an app, putting each week's lesson plans at a facilitator's fingertips without requiring internet access or a high-spec device.
This work was further improved and post the initial pilot study that revealed how the learners and facilitators responded to the program. The Facilitator's manual that I owned was found to have a steep learning curve but proved to be 30% more engaging than the previous versions. To abridge the learning curve, I designed onboarding materials to help familiarise facilitators with the interactive manuals.
HOW
I contributed to several parts of the learning ecosystem. From setting learning goals to research and strategy and imagining how the learning experience might be delivered. Being a constellation of processes that feed into each other, this learning experience required a 4-fold intervention.
Snapshots from the Facilitators Manual
Process & Impact
Snapshot
RESEARCH & DIRECTIONS
Extensive review of existing course material, content and existing experience was conducted. We found that there were a lot of knowledge gaps that came in the ways of course delivery.
The program was also not engaging to create excitement for learners and teachers alike.
LEARNING UX PROCESS
How can we enable Facilitators to help Learners cultivate a career and self-learning mindset?
METHODS
Designed 12 weeks/160hrs of teaching material for facilitators. The activities involved include:
⁰¹
Conducting Focus Groups with Facilitators on ground to understand teaching needs.
⁰²
Strategizing Learn-by-Choice experience and curriculum.
⁰³
Designing the experiential lesson plans and activities for 160+ hours of the program.
⁰⁴
Design and produce accessible, low-tech ‘Facilitators Manuals’ templates
⁰⁵
Designing ‘Student Handbook’ exercises as a supplement to lesson plans. And daily nudge reminders
EVALUATION & IMPACT
INSIGHTS
User Testing by the team provided the following insights and I was tasked with creating better onboarding material for the Facilitators.
CHANGE
The Elective Experience was renamed to Learn-by-Choice to create a more direct understanding of the Personalisation of the program.
IMPACT
We also found out the learning curve is high but over time more rewarding than the previous manuals.
The Facilitator Manuals were "app-like" interactive pdf's which made the experience very engaging.
impact
