Schools Struggle With Communication
Among the many use cases we see for the Mobs application, one of the most impactful is for schools. We wanted to do some research to find out what educators are really struggling with when it comes to capturing events throughout the year. We learned a lot about motivations from our extensive interviews and meetings with educators across the board. We wanted to share a summary of our research findings with you.
Below you will find our qualitative findings from our interviews about the struggles educators have and where they still see a gap in terms of the tools available to them to solve some of the most time-consuming requirements of the job. We all know that educators are scraped for time. It’s hard to succeed when time is already stretched to max capacity, important things slip through the cracks because the day-to-day needs and tasks take precedence. How can Mobs help educators succeed and accomplish some of the most nuanced and important pieces to education today?
Qualitative Research: Motivations and Struggles
Teachers, parents, and the administrative staff are all part of a large community where communication is key, events surrounding important life milestones happen each year, and building a school community that people want to join is a sensitive subject to market.
- Communication is an important aspect within a school’s community, between administrators and teachers and between teachers and parents. The success of communication is key to the success of the school and we discovered that this is something schools still struggle with despite the long list of apps and new communication technology that is available and marketed to them.
- Parents are eager to be part of this important time in their child’s life and more often than not the children leave something to be desired when parents ask questions about their day or latest project. Children grow up all too fast and school dances, performances, and games quickly become a faded memory for many. Parents crave a way to hold on to the memories and the school’s staff has so much to do that taking the time to capture these moments for parents who can’t be by their child’s side every moment of every day (having the space to grow on their own is an important part of child development) often falls by the wayside.
- Now more than ever parents are concerned about whether their children are going to the right school and what that even means. It can be quite a headache to do research on which is the best district and many parents don’t even know how to measure “best”. Schools have to stand out and like any other business trying to bring clients in, there is a new emphasis on marketing. But marketing a school can be sensitive since children are involved. Approval and permission have to be given and then arguments over who’s child is showcased the most can create other problems.
Quantitative Research: Data
Summery
From our research, it was obvious to us that parents, teachers, and admins all need a new way to capture school events and communicate them to the outside world. The apps they use may allow for communication between a teacher and that year’s parents but perceived fairness and the extra hands needed to make sure that events and activities are properly captured deter teachers from focusing on this aspect of communication. Most apps and tech used for communication purposes surround classroom needs and logistics or require too much time to get photos and videos uploaded, like traditional email. If specific parents or volunteers are tasked with photo and video capture, the added task of gathering all the media presents equally troublesome issues.
Despite these struggles, 60% still try to make the effort to accomplish some sort of digital collage or compilation of the year’s events. If the desire is there, we ask: Why not make it easier?
