Teachers Pay Teachers Diary Study

Teachers Pay Teachers (TPT) enables educators to share lesson plans, classroom activities, worksheets, educational games, and other instructional materials with fellow teachers. Educators can either sell their original resources to other educators or offer them for free, on a platform that serves roughly 7 million educators worldwide. Additionally, TPT offers a subscription service called School Access (TPTSA), allowing schools, districts, or specific departments to pay for yearly access to a curated catalog of resources for their teachers at no additional personal cost.

Project Context

TPT leadership’s goal was to increase daily active users on TPTSA, expecting it to lead to higher re-subscriptions and new sales. However, there was a lack of alignment between teams, strong internal biases, and unclear direction. Competing ideas surfaced regarding the growth strategy for TPTSA's daily active users, with some team members advocating for the development or investment in an online planner for teachers to aid in lesson planning. However, implementing this idea would have required significant effort and financial investment.
In this scenario, UX research could play a pivotal role in providing strategic direction. UXR could help ascertain the significance of teacher planning but also facilitate a broader examination of potential avenues to enhance daily active usage.

My Role

  • Develop a research plan to present to leadership, aimed at assessing the broader landscape of teachers' pain points and daily activities in addition to planning

  • Device the research plan from inception to completion

  • Conduct the research while ensuring ongoing engagement with stakeholders

  • Synthesize the findings into a digestible format, consolidating qualitative and quantitative insights into actionable outputs

The Research Questions


With leadership's support for a more comprehensive approach, I collaborated with my team to define the fundamental research questions for this initiative.

  1. What are the core pain points for K-6 teachers and how, if at all, do they currently solve them?

  2. How are teachers preparing for lessons and activities in their classroom?

  3. What role does TPT play in the classroom?

The Team

  • 1 Product Managers from TPTSA

  • 1 Lead Product Designer from TPTSA

In addition to my core team there was a long list of invested stakeholders from Product leadership, Product Marketing, Sales, and Engineering.

My Approach

Methodology

  • Analyzed behavioral data including frequency of site purchases, cart size, and number of re-downloads of previously purchased materials

  • Organized a 4-week diary study to observe user behavior and gather detailed insights over an extended period using the dscout software

  • Performed brief in-product surveys to quantify and validate qualitative insights obtained from the diary study using both Hotjar and Survey Monkey

Recruitment

For the diary study:

  • Launched an on-site screener to recruit participants

  • Sought out a diverse mix of participants based on grades, locations, and TPTSA subscriber status

The survey participants mimicked the same participant details from the diary study.

Project Timeline

The project was completed in the Fall of 2022.

Data collection lasted 4 weeks with 4 additional weeks that included planning and analysis.

The length of data collection was determined based on 3 main factors:

  1. Teachers were visiting the site on average 1-2 times a month, highlighting the importance of understanding this behavior and frequency in more depth

  2. Seasonality played a significant role at Teachers Pay Teachers, with holidays being particularly prominent I aimed to capture both the holiday itself and the preceding weeks

  3. Anecdotal information suggested that TPT resources were utilized daily

Analysis

  • Implemented a structured approach to data organization using Miro boards, assigning each participant their own board for daily tracking throughout the 4-week study period

  • Developed a comprehensive codebook to categorize and tag data throughout the analysis process

  • Aggregated participant survey data weekly and compared findings from various sources, ensuring comprehensive analysis of all collected information

  • Facilitated team workshops to review raw notes and aggregated evidence, inviting team members to provide insights and collaborate on identifying patterns and trends

Deliverables

  • A compilation of the weekly reports stakeholders had received throughout the study

  • The Miro board of aggregated raw notes and categorized data

  • Curated videos organized by category from daily dairy study check-ins

  • User journey visualization with Figma

  • Chart visual to highlight key pain points in a concise, shareable medium

  • Detailed written report with findings and recommendations