Solution description

Learning programs and university courses are ineffective: only 12-20% of people apply the learning to their work, according to research. Many students are lost about what they want to study. Rarely if at all are students emotional and psychological needs taken into account. And quite often there is no proper channel to express their struggles.

Coaching is a solution that could solve many of these issues, especially if the coach also is able to collect critical qualitative data from the sessions. But often coaching is way too expensive. We are scaling coaching. We provide personalized scalable coaching for every student to drive learning transfer, reflection, and self-directedness while collecting anonymized feedback. We do that by working via text/chat/instant messaging platforms. That allows one coach to work with up to 50 people at the same time - up from the usual 10-20. Working via text would also allow us to automate some parts of the solution (chatbot exercises like Woebot or Wysa, NLP), which would help us scale even further.

The success of the solution could be measured via a comparative study to see how the control group progressed in developing certain behaviors and achieving their goals in comparison with the micro-coaching group, we are currently developing one such study with one of our corporate clients.

Solution context

Learning programs and university courses are ineffective: only 12-20% of people apply the learning to their work, according to research. Many students are lost about what they want to study. Rarely if at all are students emotional and psychological needs taken into account. And quite often there is no proper channel to express their struggles.

Solution target group

Students that are studying soft skills like leadership, entrepreneurship, sales, presentation, etc - things that are hard to apply. 

Teachers could also be a good target group where we could support teacher education with our solution.

We could help students and teachers alike to apply the knowledge in practice, increase their self-awareness, help to deal with hard emotions.

Solution impact

The impact of our solution is more self-aware students, lower drop out rates, more engagement in studies, higher adoption of high skills by students, less emotional and psychological struggles of students and teachers alike, and improvement of the university educational processes through high-quality feedback collection. All of these lead to a growth of everyone involved into better individuals, which in turn affects everyone in their lives.

As mentioned before, the success of the solution could be measured via a comparative study to see how the control group progressed in developing certain behaviors and achieving their goals in comparison with the micro-coaching group, we are currently developing one such study with one of our corporate clients. And of course, drop our rates could be easily measured in the case with students.

Solution tweet text

We coach students and teachers via Slack/WhatsApp to drive learning transfer, reflection, emotional support, and higher adoption of soft skills, while collecting high quality feedback about the educational processes.

Solution innovativeness

Unique Insights: 

1. Coaching works via text.
2. Chatbots don’t cut it but partial automation is still possible*.
3. Coaching is most effective when applied to specific programs because it serves organizational/societal goals and thus encourages future investment.
4. Coaching can be used to collect high-quality data.

Solution transferability

Yes, absolutely. We are already working with companies like Bayer, Posti, Fortum, HY+ and in discussions with Sweco, Kesko, Neste about using micro-coaching in driving learning and change management programs.

We are also starting a pilot with NewCo Accelerator and are in discussions with the Red Brick accelerator to use micro-coaching for supporting entrepreneurs.

Also, we are in discussions with TreStart and Ely about using micro-coaching to support the unemployed.

Solution sustainability

We are still piloting it with most of the companies. The idea is to start automating the solution down the road, slowly. 

Validation: 

Phase 1: 5 users ✔

Phase 2: 50 users 

Phase 3: 500 users

Expansion: 

Start with Finland, reconsider after Phase 2

*Automation (partial): 

Path 1. Add exercises: like Woebot, Wysa.

Path 2. Create a template, give suggestions on what to write for the coaching with NLP.

+ Return to this question after Phase 2 validation

Solution team work

Dima and Lauri worked together for 3.5 years. That is some evidence that we can stick together. Our third co-founder Jere joined the team 1.5 years ago. So far there is no reason to suspect that we won't be able to work together going forward!