Coursera Personalized Learning Path

web design, product strategy, interface layout, interaction design, user experience

With over 2,000 courses on the Coursera platform, many of our users struggled to find the content that met their needs. As we talked with our learners about their career goals, we noticed a theme. Many said that they know where they want to go in their career, but aren’t sure what they need to learn to get there; or that they’ve taken one course in a field they’re interested in, but aren’t sure what to take next. My research partner and I came up with a hypothesis that goal oriented recommendations, in the form of a sequence of courses tied to specific goals, increase the likelihood that our users would achieve their learning goals, become a paid user, and come back to Coursera in the future.

My Role

Led interaction and visual design from concept to delivery
Devised research plan and ran full study with head of design research
Also, worked cross-functionally with product, engineering, content design, marketing, customer strategy
Utilized my direct design partners and greater design team for critiques and feedback

Goals

The project aimed to provide transformational, goal-oriented learning for Coursera users like landing a job, advancing in their careers or acquiring skills throughout their life with an everlasting relationship with Coursera. Additionally:

Engage new learners on the platform and drive monthly active learners
Increase paid conversion rates by directing learners to these pages
Surface skills-to-careers and skills-to-content mapping
Collect skills data about learners for future recommendations and user profile

Key Elements

Onboarding - Learners can provide information about why they are joining Coursera through a goal setting journey right after they sign up.
Learning Paths - Based on learner goals, we provide them with a selection of courses to achieve those goals.
Dashboard - Module on “My Coursera” learner dashboard to bring learning paths front and center to the learning experience.

Onboarding

Through various entry points on our site, learners will go through a short onboarding experience, set goals, and create a Learning Path tailored to their career or personal learning goals.

For career starters, I worked with the content team to assemble 16 customizable paths in high demand fields like data science, web development, and marketing. For career advancers, we curated Learning Paths for 34 skills like python programming, data analysis, and leadership. In total, we created 189 new customizable sequences that combine the best of Coursera’s content.

Through the onboarding process, we ask users about their current careers, education background and demographic information in order to build their user profile and collect skills data to be able to surface better recommendations in the future.

Learning Plan

After completing the onboarding questions, the user lands on their personal learning plan page. Learners are shown a complete guide to that career or subject area including what skills they need to know, the sequence of courses that teach those skills and in some cases pre-requisites needed to successfully master those skills. Additionally, they can enroll directly into courses, view course info, customize their path and keep track of course progress.

Key Findings

It’s a great fit for Career Starters:

Starters view the Path as a prescribed plan to take them from A to B. Edwin from a user research study said “I trust this inherently. The organizers of this have put a lot of thought...there’s a logic behind it...they’ve done that step for me.” Learners just starting their careers or getting into a new field need and seek expert guidance.

Career Advancers and Adjusters need more power:

Advancers and Adjusters viewed it as a starting point for catalog exploration, analysis, and planning. They treated the Path as a collection of recommended courses and looked for ways to filter and customize the list to suit their needs. They need recommendations and tools.

Plans for the Future

We want to add new content for specific career paths, improve the conversion funnel, and build interventions that will increase retention and user experience. Additionally, for Career Advancers and Adjusters we are currently building a more robust catalog browse experience that includes skill based recommendations and the ability to save and order courses to a wishlist feature. We anticipate this high self-directed mode of use will be much more useful for learners who want to create their own paths.