When we built General Assembly's Web Development Immersive Remote program, we focused on what made our in-person program successful across our campuses around the world. Since collaboration and community are primary contributors to the success of our programs, we built the classroom experience using technology to facilitate that community online.
We developed General Assembly's Web Development Immersive Remote synchronous online program to extend the reach of our flagship web development course and help beginners to start new careers regardless of location. When researching how we would bring immersive web development education online, we were able to work with instructors and producers of the in-person course to learn what challenges we would face. It became evident immediately that a huge component of success for the in-person course is the community and collaboration that evolves organically in the classroom. Our primary focus when building the Remote program was to translate that experience to the online classroom. In order to have a true community of students, we needed to ensure that the way that students and instructors interact with each other and work together was intuitive and natural. We have used a combination of Slack and Zoom to facilitate that connection.
Slack acts as the primary hub of the classroom experience. All materials, recordings, links, and conversations start in Slack. Students ask and answer questions in Slack throughout class. A Slack instructor associate provides support as the lead instructor is guiding the class through exercises. Having this additional instructor allows the class to move at an even pace and prevents the class from being held up by basic questions while also assuring those students with questions aren't left behind. Slack interactions also allow the instructors to guide students through the series of steps of an exercise while monitoring where students may be stuck. Through Zoom, all students can see and talk to each other and the instructors. The instructor presents over Zoom and uses a combination of screen sharing and coding IDEs to guide students. Instructors also create Zoom breakout rooms to facilitate paired programming and small group work. Through this combination of tools, we have created a truly interactive, collaborative online community. Our students are held accountable while also getting to work with their peers through the course. Through the combination of the technology we use and the approach to teaching online that we've taken, we've developed a truly interactive and engaging online classroom that is built off of the backbone of a strong sense of community and collaboration.
In this session, we will present on our process and learnings from creating a live online, interactive, full-time (13 weeks, approximately 40 hours/week) course. We'll discuss the methodology we used for translating a full-time in person course to the online classroom. We'll share the challenges we overcame to adapt in person training into an engaging online environment. We'll explain the methods that our production team has used to build community and inspire collaboration among our students. We'll demonstrate the technology and platforms that we've used to facilitate community interactions. We'll also review the metrics that we used to gauge the health of our online learning communities. By the end of our session, attendees will be able to evaluate various tools used to facilitate student engagement in virtual learning environments (IDEs, Slack, Zoom), discover new metrics for evaluating student progress and engagement with synchronous online learning programs, and develop techniques for understanding how to inspire collaboration and community among students in a live online classroom.
The session will be a mix of presentation and audience participation. The audience will be able to weigh in on their own experiences and answer a series of challenges as to what their hypothesis would be given the options we were provided in our development of the course. We will lay out the challenges of providing immersive synchronous online education. The audience will be asked to share their experiences with online education. We will discuss the planning and preparation involved in developing the course. We will identify platforms and tools and demonstrate how they have facilitated online learning communities. The audience will also be challenged to match the right form of delivery to the right type of content. This is an exercise to to identify how modality should always be chosen to facilitate learning.
As of 10.25.2016 we have graduated 10 students from the WDI Remote program, with a further 19 enrolled in our August program. We are projecting a further 50 enrollments for 2016. We are currently finalizing details to offer this in partnership across a number of universities. For now, the program is offered as part of the core curriculum at our 15 global campuses, as well as offered to our online students. Every student who enrolls in the program does so of their own volition. The majority of our students are self-funded and are personally investing in their own career change.
Our first graduating class received an end-of-course NPS of 30. Overall, engagement is predominantly positive, with all our instructors receiving instructor scores of 4.2 / 5 or higher. Our second instance mid-course NPS improved to 82.
Within six days of the pilot cohort ending, one of our graduates accepted a full-time job offer as a front-end web developer. Three other graduates of our pilot instance have already secured full time developer positions in under 90 days of graduation and the remaining job-seeking graduates are on track to start their new careers in under 180 days of graduation.
Throughout the pilot instance, we have gathered a significant amount of user data, in the form of notes from instructor meetings, three student surveys delivered after the first unit, the third unit, and the end of the program. Finally, each graduate of the pilot program participated in three one-on-one interviews with the lead instructional designer and product manager, Adi Hanash. All decisions on how to optimize the course experience have come from these areas of feedback.
WDI Remote has had a tangible impact on our in-person courses - both in terms of course experience and blended learning opportunities. In order to support WDI Remote students in their job search we developed an Online version of our Outcomes curriculum to hold students accountable in their job search and provide a centralized bank of resources for a distributed classroom.
This program has since been adopted throughout our campuses as a way to drive increased accountability and transparency into the student job search.
While there remains a great deal of skepticism around the efficacy and impact of online education, WDI Remote proves it is possible to achieve an over 80% attendance and graduation rate. Through this program we have demonstrated an ability to deliver a best-in-class online experience.
The tangible impact on our graduates' careers is evident from reading student testimonials posted on Course Report (a third-party review site):
Worth every minute of my time and every dollar spent. Invaluable experience with tangible results. Was hired at a top company within 6 days of graduation. - James Goatcher, WDIR1 Grad
I am able to dive head on to learning new tech without hesitation, my approach to working with others in the development side also changed. I'm no longer apprehensive about showing people my code, unlike 10 years ago when it terrified me to do so. I didn't go into this program to learn how to make easy money as a programmer. - Lyn Dee, WDIR1 Grad
Today was the first day I really started my job search in earnest, and GA has juice. I have gotten callbacks within hours of applying for anything, and matter of fact have an interview set for tomorrow. From an application I did halfway through today. - Joy Kaufman, WDIR1 Grad