Learning launch

Challenge  I am working at a language school. Recently we have been observing the drop in the

number of students and as a result the decrease of our profit. The majority of our students are  adults aged 25-40 years old. They attend classes early in the morning before their job starts or  very late in the evening when they are too tired. We were experiencing problems with attention  span of our clients during the classes and the decrease of their interest in studying.  The  challenge was to make our clients motivated in studying and keep them attending our language  school.

Selection  We have already tried out several design thinking tools and are ready to use learning

launch to test hypothesis and ideas. The learning launch is one of the design thinking tools that  helps to test ideas.

Application  At the first stage we were looking for solutions to organize our lessons and our teaching

materials in a most efficient way. The teachers and administrators of the school took part in 3  psychology seminars. Under the guidance of invited psychologists, they studied the learning  environments, the needs of learners, and the tools to make learning process be more efficient.  The results of seminars confirmed our hypothesis that the reasons for our students being  unmotivated in studying were the flaws in teaching methodology and the imperfections of the  learning environments (poor lighting, no coffee machines). We prepared a document outlining  the plan of renovation the classrooms by adding brighter lamps and comfortable chairs. We also  prepared a report to the language school emphasizing the importance of creation of a recreation  zone where the clients can drink coffee, listen to the music and chat with their colleagues.

Before getting the results from the psychology seminars we used to put a greater focus on

books and reading materials, but this time we decided to diversify the content of our classes by  inclusion of video and audio materials. The seminars opened our eyes on the importance of  working in teams and playing games as these types of activities help students to memorize new  words and master the grammar in a quicker and more efficient way. At the second stage we  launched the surveys of students, teachers, and school administrators. The questions of the  survey were targeted to the identification of problems and the feelings about the change. The  results of the surveys were collected and analyzed within a week. The results of the surveys  reaffirmed the assumptions made during the seminars. Students expressed the opinion that  classes should be more interactive and should have more breaks.  Given the answers of the  teachers and administrators the we provided recommendations to the language school to decrease  the workload and to increase remuneration packages for employees. As many teachers expressed  their concern that the design of teaching materials is very challenging, we decided to invite  several experts for consultations on the structure of classes and teaching materials.

Insight  By using the learning launch technique, we were able to confirm our hypothesis and ideas

concerning changes in teaching materials and the outline of language courses. As a part of this  approach we used surveys in order to know the positions of stakeholders and to assess their

readiness to change. The results of our analysis helped the language school to increase the  efficiency of teaching. However, several our proposals that were supported by the stakeholders  eventually underwent some changes. For instance, due to the budgetary constraints the language  school could not use a classroom to turn it into a recreational area. Instead of doing so, the  language school chose to refurnish a lobby. The budgetary constraints of the school will be  reviewed by us and incorporated into the further steps of learning launches.

Approach   Considering the fact that we have already used other approaches of design thinking, the

learning launch was a logical continuation of our chosen set of methodology. We are going to  use the insights that we have gained this time and incorporate them into the next stages of  learning launches. The next phase of learning launch will be focused on establishing new  channels of communication among the stakeholders as well as on the approaches of empowering  our clients to care about their studies at the language school. The combination of gained insights  with the new stage of learning launch will eventually contribute to the solution of the problems.

