The Outschool team is always working on ways to enhance your experience on our platform, and we’re grateful for the feedback we receive from our community that helps us prioritize important changes and upgrades.

To ensure that any changes we make to the platform will benefit educators and families, we’ll often test new features with a small group of users before rolling them out to all educators or families. There may be times when you notice a small difference in your Outschool dashboard, indicating you may be part of one of these test groups for a platform update that impacts the educator experience. Or, we may release a new feature to only a segment of families and learners to evaluate their experience before launching a change more widely on the platform.

We know that educators dedicate valuable time to learning how to use the Outschool platform and that any unexpected changes to your dashboard can be confusing or even frustrating. We appreciate your patience in these instances, and we always welcome feedback sent to support@outschool.com that helps us make changes in the right direction.

Why we test product features in small groups

Our goal is that every update we make enhances your teaching experience, and small group tests help us establish data that lets us know if the new feature we’re designing will positively affect how you use Outschool. Often we see encouraging results and can give all users access to the update, like these product improvements from 2021. Occasionally a test may tell us that we’ve missed the mark, and we use that feedback to revisit our goals and make adjustments.

Here’s an example of a product update to Educator Profiles that had promising results in our small group test and was then launched on the entire platform. The new profile design has since secured over 20% more enrollments after a parent visits a profile than before the update.

Rest assured that if we think an update will significantly impact the function of our platform or your ability to teach your classes, we will work to give proper notice before the change goes into effect.

We appreciate your flexibility and willingness to help us make the Outschool experience better for every member of our community. If you ever have questions about a new feature on our platform, we encourage you to reach out to support@outschool.com. There’s a chance you’re seeing a product experiment—and we’d love your feedback!