PBLWorks

Overview

Engagement analytics for a project-based learning platform used by K-12 schools. The work teachers were already doing in the product becomes a picture of who is most active, what they use most, and which projects have the biggest impact in the classroom.

The opportunity

PBLWorks trains teachers in project-based learning, and TEACH is the platform that carries that training into classrooms. Teachers were already in it every week, which meant the product was already generating the most valuable thing an education platform can have: a record of how real practitioners teach.

The opportunity was to read it. Which projects land best in a classroom, which features teachers reach for most, how often they come back, who the most active schools are and what they do differently. Those answers make the next release and the next project better, and they let the team reach out to a school early, while there is still a whole term ahead of it.

My approach

I modelled the product events into a funnel, so every step of the training reads as progress and completion rather than a raw event count. That gives each project and each feature an honest measure of how far teachers get with it.

The same event model carries the rest of the picture: which features are used and how often, which projects are opened, run and finished, when in the school year that happens, and how one district’s rhythm differs from another’s. One teacher’s path and a whole district’s pattern are the same data read at different resolutions, which is why the instrumentation is worth building once and using everywhere.

On top of it I built the views the work actually needs: engagement by organisation and by individual teacher, filtered by time range, with tables a support agent or a school leader can search and sort.

The result

For the content

The projects teachers return to are visible, and so is the moment a project earns its place in a classroom. The content team writes the next one from evidence about what works and can put its effort behind the formats with the most impact.

For the product

Feature usage shows what teachers actually reach for, so the roadmap argues from how the platform is really used and each release can be measured against the one before it.

For support and schools

Customer support and school leaders can see who the most active teachers are and what they do differently, then pass that on to the schools still finding their rhythm. They can also see who has yet to start and reach out proactively, with a specific offer of help rather than a generic check-in.