As the Certification Team Lead at VIPKid, I designed a new process for teacher certification. This process was developed in collaboration with the Product team and implemented into the teacher certification process in 2019. Over 70,000 VIPKid teachers utilized this process to obtain certifications to teach various courses online for VIPKid. The goal of the project was to increase the number of teachers certified for different courses, increase teaching quality, and make it easier to get certified. Additionally, throughout my time as the Certification Team Lead, I created and oversaw the creation of numerous courses and created a Standard Operating Procedure for course design and creation. All of these achievements were presented to company leadership in a promotion meeting pitch in November 2019, after which I was promoted to the Learning and Development Team manager.
Tools used: Internal LMS, Internal Rich text editor, Canva, Camtasia, PowerPointThe Steamlined Certification Center Process won an award for outstanding project in August, 2019. Francis left the company soon thereafter and I was promoted to L&D Manager
From Left: Jessie Chen, Co-founder of VIPKid; Caolan, Project Manager; Francis Wang, L&D Manager; Me, Certification Center Manager;
Zelda, Instructional Designer; Peter, Trainer
The goal of the Streamlined Certification Center process was to maintain quality of teaching while increasing the number of certified teachers. The teacher certification number increased 4-fold from an overall rate of 7.8% to 31.95% (percentage is based on number who finished over number who started). At the same time metrics for quality, based on parent feedback scores showed over a 100% decrease in negative parent feedback from 0.29% to 0.11%.
The image below shows the various iterations of the Certification Process.
The process was to provided a provisional certification for teaching a specific course based on reviewing material and passing a quiz. The full certification would be awarded after one of the teachers classes was evaluated by a team of evaluators based in the Philippines. If the first class review failed teachers would receive feedback and be given another chance for a class review.
I created the below SOP to ensure that there was a clear expectation regarding the delivery of resources and also to ensure that other teams were aligned regarding expectations on material and timelines. This was complicated by the fact the testing of the class was done only after a few lessons of a course were built. To match the timelines close collaboration and communication ensured a smooth project delivery.
While the above SOP was a way I managed up towards leaders and external teams, the below material structure was an example of how I managed down. To align expectations with the team regarding deliverables, this basic structure was created to set a basic standard for certification material. The details of the resource creation was at the discretion of the Instructional Designer. However, I montoried progress and viewed samples throughout the process to ensure the creation of quality resources.
The below image shows a sample of a certification material. Despite working with a CMS that was essentially a Rich-text editor we were able to embed videos and infographics creating a comprehensive learning experience.
As the teacher number grew surveys were conducted by the L&D team as well as other teams to learn more about the teacher population regarding their educational background as well as other information. This information was used to provide us with the knowledge of the various teacher personas that existed and to make sure the resources created aligned with these personas.
A teacher satisfaction survey was conducted for every certification created. On a five tiered scale all of the certification created, except for 1, received a positive feedback rating over 90% in the 4-5 range for teacher satisfaction.
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