as the coronavirus (covid-19) spreads across the globe, it has already impacted nearly all of our professional and personal plans.

to slow the spread of this pandemic, it is vital that we follow cdc guidelines and best practices. these include social distancing, which involves increasing the physical distance between people to a minimum of six feet.

this recommendation has led to the cancellation of many public events—including the administration of standardized tests.

so what should you do if you have a test coming up?

table of contents

• understanding the effects of covid-19 on your test
• what is the status of your exam? official test-maker responses
• what we currently know
  • sat/act + ap exams + college admissions updates
  • gre
  • gmat
  • ielts
  • toefl
  • lsat
  • mcat
  • other exams
• magoosh’s response

understanding the effects of covid-19 on your test

if you and your loved ones are doing well—and we certainly hope that this is the case—this might be a good time for you to fit in some extra studying. but don’t feel bad if you’re not in the position to do so right now—it’s important to take care of your physical and mental well-being first.

if you’re wondering what to do about the logistics of your exam, ask yourself the following questions:

1. was it canceled? if it was:
   • how do you get a refund?
   • how do you reschedule?
   • can you take it at home?
2. was it postponed? if it was:
   • how do you reschedule?
3. how does this affect application deadlines for college and grad school?

what is the status of your exam? official test-maker responses

• to find out the latest on exam-wide cancellations and postponements, check the test-maker’s official response on their website:
  • sat
  • act
  • gre
  • gmat
  • ielts
  • toefl
  • lsat
  • mcat
• to learn more about your already scheduled test, reach out to your testing center (if applicable).
• to learn more about application deadlines and decision dates, reach out directly to university admissions departments (expect delayed responses).

what we currently know

college admissions + sat/act + ap exams updates

college admissions updates

at the height of the pandemic, droves of colleges have announced changes in their testing policy to test-optional. several continue to do so for at least one more year and many colleges plan to make this change permanent. the university of california system made a huge splash as it relates to standardized testing—first by announcing plans to phase out the use of sat/act for admissions decisions by 2024 and then by receiving a court-ordered mandate barring the uc system from using test scores at all.

as vaccines become more readily available and colleges seek to return to normal, their admissions policies continue to evolve. make sure to refer to the websites of specific schools for the latest information.

>> watch & read: test-optional colleges: what you need to know

sat

the latest updates about how the college board is dealing with covid-19 here. it appears that things may be going back to normal in terms of sat administration; while the college board is still requiring masks and other safety measures, it appears that test closures may not be as common as it was when the pandemic was in full swing. still, it would wise to check the college board’s test center closure page and your email often.

the anticipated dates for the 2021-2022 school year are as follows:

• august 28, 2021
• october 2, 2021
• november 6, 2021
• december 4, 2021
• march 12, 2022
• may 7, 2022
• june 4, 2022

in january, the college board announced they would be discontinuing the optional sat essay and subject tests:

• the optional sat essay will only be offered until june 2021.
• sat subject tests will only be offered to international students until june 2021.

act

not much has been reported as of late on the act website regarding covid-19, indicating that like the sat, the makers of the act are facilitating a return to normalcy. it is unclear whether or not the at-home act test, which was piloted during the crisis, is still under development.

the following are the test dates for the 2021-2022 school year:

• september 11, 2021
• october 23, 2021
• december 11, 2021
• february 12, 2022
• april 2, 2022
• june 11, 2022
• july 16, 2022

ap exams

college board has released 2022 dates for ap testing and they will follow the pre-covid schedule (the first two weeks of may with make-up testing in the third week of may). it is unclear if they will continue with digital administrations, but it appears unlikely for those who don’t need accommodations.

gre

the gre at-home is here to stay permanently. if you’re planning on taking the gre soon, check out our online gre blog post to see what that means for you.

as of july 11, 2020, in mainland china, the national education examinations authority announced that the gre general test has resumed at a few locations.

as of june 15, 2020, gre test centers around the world are beginning to reopen for june and july test dates (with the exception of mainland china, where gre testing has been suspended until june 30, 2020). check here to see if gre test centers near you are open and accepting appointments.

most gre exams, including all computer-based gre testing done by prometric test centers, have been suspended around the globe. check your email and gre account online for specific information about your exam.

you can reschedule your gre exam free of charge if you reschedule via live chat, email (gre-info@ets.org), or phone (1-866-473-4373).if you reschedule by yourself online, you will incur a rescheduling fee (don’t do this!).

>> as of monday, march 23rd, students can register to take the gre general test online at home. while this started as a temporary solution with limited availability, ets has now made the gre general test at home a permanent, widely available option. students can now schedule tests 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. to find out more, check out ets’s official gre at home faq. note also that as of december 2020, ets is temporarily accepting expired identification documents for those taking the gre at home. according to the ets website, “ets is temporarily accepting government-issued ids with expiration dates from february 1, 2020, forward. all other id policies still apply.” also as of december 2020, the gre at home test is scheduled directly through ets’s website; previously test-takers scheduled through proctoru, and ets partner company. proctoru staff still provide proctoring services for this test, even though they no longer handle booking.

note that some programs are waiving gre exam requirements for 2021 applicants. this isn’t widespread, so check with your specific program for updates.

>> watch: gre at home: a real student’s experience & tips
>> watch: ets online gre: a good experience with unexpected surprises
>> read: was your gre canceled? you can take it at home
>> read: a student’s guide to taking the gre online with proctoru
>> read: magoosh gre prep during covid-19
 

gmat

the gmat online exam will be a permanent testing option alongside the in-person gmat. gmac will also be rolling out these changes to the gmat online for appointments on april 8, 2021, and onward:

• return of the awa (gmat essay) section
• choose your own section order (just like the in-person gmat)
• two optional 8-minute breaks
• view your unofficial score as soon as you finish

registration for this enhanced gmat online format will open on february 17, 2021. exams taken before april 8, 2021, will have the current gmat online format.

starting september 23, 2020, at 12:01 est, you have the option to retake the gmat online exam. the online exam option is also being offered until february 2021. the gmat online exam price is $250 usd, and rescheduling and exam cancellation fees will be reinstated at $25 and $100 usd respectively. gmat online exams taken on or after september 23rd will also begin counting towards your overall 12-month and lifetime gmat attempt limits.

as of june 15, 2020, many gmat test centers are reopening with increased safety measures in place to protect test-takers and proctors (see the updated list of open test centers by clicking here). safety measures include the use of face masks, frequent sanitation of check-in and testing equipment, and easily accessible hand sanitizer throughout the test center.

starting may 12, 2020, all test-takers are required to wear a face mask for the duration of the exam (with the exception of test centers in australia and the united kingdom). you may also wear disposable gloves if you wish. please check your nearest test center location for rules and regulations.

all gmat exams at us and canadian pearson vue centers have been suspended until further notice. if you have a gmat scheduled outside of the us/canada, you can check the status of your exam here.

if your exam has been affected, it will be either rescheduled or canceled, with fees waived. you will receive notifications via email, and the organization asks that you do not try to reschedule or cancel your appointment online but instead contact customer service.

note that some business school programs are waiving gmat exam requirements for 2021 applicants. this isn’t widespread, so check with your specific program for updates.

>> read: gmat canceled? you can take the gmat online exam at home
>> watch: gmat at home: real experience and tips
>> read: online gmat exam experience and tips

ielts

to help students whose test centers are closed as well as those would prefer to test from the safety of their home during the pandemic, ielts partners has introduced ielts indicator. ielts indicator is an online test created for students who want to take the ielts. at this time, it is not a full substitution for the ielts, as it is not accepted at all institutions. however, the ielts does list the growing number of schools that accept the ielts indicator worldwide.

check out our ielts blog (especially the “read” article linked below), where we’ll update with more information about ielts indicator as it comes in.

ielts has is opening more and more locations, although testing is still limited or cancelled in some countries or regions. to find out more, go to the official ielts booking site, or contact your local test center with questions. but do not go to ielts’ covid-news web page. this page is outdated, even though ielts hasn’t taken it down.

while ielts is reopening test centers around the world, the makers of the exam are sensitive to the new dangers of in-person testing during the pandemic. re-opened test centers often take number of safety and social distancing precautions. these requirements vary form region to region, so you’ll want to contact your local test center for any onsite covid safety requirements.

in addition, to address the need for home study during the pandemic, the ielts now offers a number of home study options:

• the ielts has partnered with kaplan to provide official online ielts preparation courses for students who currently reside in the united states. and of coruse, our magoosh ielts courses remain available worldwide!
• students can now take a free ielts masterclass, online or in person. these 90 minute sessions allow studnetys to learn more about the exam and ask questions of a live ielts instructor. recordings of past materclasses are available online as well. for details, see the official ielts masterclass website.
• in addition to the masterclasses, the ielts test-makers offer a number of other study-from home educational resources, including ielts webinars and the courses linked under the “ielts online courses” heading on the ielts idp preparation web page.
• the ielts also now provides a paid practice test that can be taken online. students who complete this test will have their results scored by actual ielts examiners. this practice test is called the ielts progress check, and it costs $49.95 usd.

>> read:

• • • what to do if your ielts study plans have been disrupted due to coronavirus (covid-19)

• • i took the ielts indicator. here’s everything you need to know

toefl

although test centers are continuing to reopen around the world, some toefl exams are still cancelled or less available. check both your email and your toefl account online for more information about your specific exam.

as of december 2020, a number of changes have been made to the toefl home edition:

• the toefl home edition, initially created as a temporary home-based testing option for the pandemic, is now being offered permanently. according to ets’s toefl home edition faq: “the toefl ibt home edition is now a standard option for test takers and will be available for the foreseeable future, along with the option of testing at a test center.”
• also per the toefl home edition faq, ets is temporarily accepting expired ids for toefl home edition registration. from the faq: “ets is temporarily accepting government-issued ids with expiration dates from february 1, 2020, forward. all other id policies still apply.”
• although proctoru’s staff still provide proctoring for the toefl home edition, you no longer book the home edition through proctoru’s website. booking and scheduling for the home version of this exam are now handled entirely on the ets website, through the same platform that you’d use to book a test-center toefl.
• for all toefl tests, including the toefl home edition, there is now a $60 fee for rescheduling the exam, and all exams must be rescheduled at least four days in advance. for more information, see this page from the official toefl website.

the toefl home edition test was originally created as a safe way to take a real toefl exam from home during the pandemic; it is now being offered on a permanent basis.

this at-home test is available everywhere except mainland china and iran. if you are able to take the toefl home edition outside of mainland china or iran, you can register with ets here.

in addition to the home edition, the toefl has also unveiled a completely new version of the exam that can also be taken online: the toefl essentials test. the format is slightly different than the ibt, although many of the details on this exam have yet to be announced. for more info, read this magoosh toefl blog post.

one covid-era alternative to the regular toefl has been discontinued. now that the standard toefl is increasingly available in mainland china, the toefl itp plus, which was created specifically to address the pandemic, has been discontinued. the good news is that if you’ve taken the itp plus, you can still use your score report when applying for work or study. read here for details.

last but certainly not least, ets has reopened test centers in various countries, regions and cities in the americas, europe, the middle east, africa, and asia pacific. to see toefl availability in your test or region, use the toefl’s test center and date lookup service.

>> read:

• • • what to do if your toefl study plans have been disrupted due to coronavirus (covid-19)

• • i took the toefl home edition. here’s how it went.

lsat

in 2020, lsac began to offer a new, remote-proctored, at-home lsat exam: lsat-flex. a remote version of the exam will continue to replace the in-person lsat through at least june 2022. however, as of august 2021, the 3-section lsat-flex will change into a remote lsat with 3 scored sections and 1 unscored section. like the lsat-flex, the remote lsat uses real lsat questions and is monitored by live proctors.

as of august, 2021, the remote lsat will:

• have 3 scored sections and 1 un-scored, experimental section,
• include a 10-minute break between sections 2 and 3,
• and be scored on the standard 120-180 lsat range.

magoosh lsat prep is customizable for remote lsat studiers, and includes official full-length practice tests with flex timing, study schedules, and a score predictor.

>> watch: lsat-flex review & tips: a student’s experience
>> read: taking the lsat-flex exam: online at-home lsat testing
>> read: lsat-flex score conversion table (how to predict your lsat flex score!)

mcat

mcat & coronavirus in 2021

on october 7, 2020, aamc announced their plans to return to regularly scheduled programming in 2021. that means administering mcat exams on the typical full-year schedule, and holding only in-person administrations of the full-length exam. aamc added a new january testing option, and began offering an afternoon testing session (non-morning-people rejoice!).

there are updated health and safety standards at testing centers, to help keep testers safe during their exam. you can learn more in aamc’s faqs: the mcat and covid-19.

what happened with the mcat & coronavirus in 2020?

at the onset of the covid-19 pandemic, aamc cancelled mcat exams and then offered a shortened mcat for the remainder of 2020. this exam was 5 hours and 45 minutes long, as opposed to the normal 7 and a half hours. aamc also added three new test dates: june 28, september 27, and september 28, and expedited score release timelines. if you were scheduled to take one of the cancelled exams, you should have received a cancellation email.

>> read: what to do if your mcat study plans have been disrupted due to coronavirus
>> watch: message to mcat students from an mcat expert re: coronavirus (covid-19) and med school admissions
>> watch: study with me live – medkinza & kat from magoosh mcat

other tests

the praxis exam now has a home edition! for teachers seeking licensure, the praxis portion of that path is now safer and more convenient. for more information, see ets’s press release on the home-based praxis tests.

if you live in a state where the hiset is accepted as a high school equivalency exam, then you’re in luck. you can now take the hiset from home as well! check out the ets website for more information.

the widely accepted ged high school quivalency exam is also now available in a home-based format for those unable to take the traditional ged due to covid-19. click this link for more information on the home-based ged.

magoosh’s response

students with a magoosh account

if you are a current magoosh student, we know that your studying plans may be disrupted. we are offering all of our existing students the option to pause or extend your magoosh account free of charge. please send a message to our team at help@www.catharsisit.com if you’ve been impacted.

new magoosh students

are you thinking of purchasing magoosh prep but worried your standardized test will be affected due to the implications of coronavirus?

after completing your purchase, email us at help@www.catharsisit.com and we will pause or extend your magoosh subscription plan for free.

take care

we wish everyone the best at this stressful time! please take good care of yourselves, your loved ones, and your community.

the post live updates: effects of covid-19 on standardized testing appeared first on magoosh 2022年足球世界杯举办地.

spend enough time in startup land and you’ll stumble upon one of the holy commandments of saas (software as a service) businesses: thou shalt talk to your users early and often.

that means not just doing usability testing (putting a mockup or a new feature in front of users to see how they interact with it), but also picking up the phone to learn about users and potential customers before you build, mock, or even brainstorm.

unfortunately, implementing a consistent user research practice is like building a regular fitness routine: we all know we should do it because it’ll be good for our short- and long-term (business) health, it’ll give us iterative and actionable feedback that will help us improve more quickly, and it has a tendency to spread positive ripple effects to other areas of our lives (and our companies).

and yet, too many startups do the equivalent of driving past the gym every morning by putting user research on the back burner for an ever-distant “someday.” if you’re at a small startup like ours, the justification is often a lack of resources — with a tiny team (that already wears multiple hats) and limited capital (that takes a lot of sweat equity to raise), user research can understandably feel like a “nice to have” luxury, one meant to be saved for the day when your company finally makes it and can afford to hire a snazzy ux researcher.

well, we’re here to channel our best richard simmons-esque level of encouragement and let you know that the benefits of asking your customers for feedback are well worth the work, even and especially if you’re on a team that lacks a dedicated ux researcher. here’s how we’ve approached user interviews at magoosh from the very start, how they’ve helped our business grow, and tips and advice for getting started.

three benefits we’ve gained from conducting user interviews with our students

image credit: thinglass (licensed via shutterstock)

we’ve conducted user interviews in some iteration for nearly every quarter over the past ten years. there are three main motivations—and resulting benefits—behind our prolific user research habit:

reason/benefit #1 – offer better products

as a relatively young startup with a global student population, achieving product-market fit has been crucial to our growth and success.

it’s allowed us to make it to profitability on just one seed round of funding, grow our product line from our staple gre offering to products helping students prep for over nine standardized tests, and invest in expanding our team, fostering great company culture along the way.

throughout our now decade-long journey, our growth has been catalyzed by product feedback from our users, from our recent addition of text-message reminders to our act and sat products, to our 2010 decision to switch from user-generated to expert-written content. today, though our products can always continue to be improved, we’re stoked to see our net promoter (nps) scores overall on the rise, and our student numbers continuing to climb from eight million served.

reason/benefit #2 – check our assumptions

we’ll be the first to admit that, even amidst the fiercely proud-nerd culture of magoosh, there’s still so much we don’t know!

when we first entered the sat market, we assumed parents would be the louder voices we’d need to listen to. a round of user interviews later, we realized the story was actually much more nuanced: many students were studying on their own, with little or no parent involvement.

it’s in the spirit of one of our core company values, learning > knowing, that we acknowledge our blind spots and seek to listen to our students in the hopes of learning what they can teach us or broaden our perspective around.

reason/benefit #3 – deepen empathy for our customers

the world of education is rapidly changing, and even as lifelong learners, it can be incredibly hard to keep up.

this is especially true as the college admissions landscape becomes more complex and less accessible to students and, in line with our mission, user interviews have afforded us a personal, humanizing means of empathizing with our customers and their wildly diverse lived experiences. we would never have known what it’s like to prepare for the toefl in iran if we didn’t talk with people doing exactly that.

when – and how – to start conducting user interviews

image credit: notto yeez (licensed via shutterstock)

when should you conduct user interviews?

it’s important to learn to differentiate between when a user interview is the best path for learning, and when it might actually be a distraction. generally, user interviews are better for focused learning over open exploration, such as talking through challenges and problems with your users. the more specific the info you’re trying to get, the better a user interview can help you inform next steps.

some points to consider:

should it be a user call?
whether you are trying to identify a problem, get more information about a known problem, or see if a solution will work, you should consider whether user calls are the best tool to get what you’re looking for. does the information you want already exist somewhere, or are there better methods (like a survey) to collect it? user calls may or may not be the route you want to go.

define your purpose
are you conducting “discovery calls” to try and understand problem spaces, or have you defined a problem space and want to do a deeper dive into how users may be solving this problem already? this will additionally inform who you reach out to and the questions you ask.

what does success look like?
user interviews are a means, not an end. if the sum of your user calls leads you to the next stage of your work, and that work is successful, then the calls were a success.

how to recruit (the right) participants for user interviews

image credit: ollyy (licensed via shutterstock)

so you’ve gotten clear on the information you’re trying to learn and decided that user interviews are indeed the best route. now, who in your customer pool should you reach out to?

• who you recruit for a user interview depends on what questions you are trying to answer
  recruit users who will provide the “best” source of information for the problem you are tackling. take into account the various stages of your customer journey (for example, users already aware of your brand who have yet to purchase? trial users? power users? users whose engagement has dropped off recently? blog readers who never engage with your product?) to inform what subset of your users makes the most sense.
• match your research group proportionately to your customer population
  working on your core product? well, if 70% of your customers are domestic and about 30% are from india, then aim to recruit a cohort of users that matches this 70/30 breakdown. if you can’t get there, do more recruitment, and don’t hesitate to turn some volunteers from over-represented groups down when you need to (kindly, of course!). self-selection is a real thing that can skew the makeup of your pool of users so you’ll need to find ways to target your outreach so that your research is proportionate to your user base.
• plan a funnel to determine how many users to recruit
  start with how many users you ultimately want to talk to. next, estimate the percent of users who you think will sign up and not show. then, the percent of users who will open your email and percent who click through to sign up. play around with this funnel (using historical data on the sign up and open rates of your customers, if available) until you understand how much outreach you’ll need to reach your target number of interviewees.
  
  note: this initial outreach number might be bigger than your pool of potential candidates. if that’s the case, you may need to sweeten the deal a bit with (bigger) incentives or build out a more robust campaign to increase open and sign-up rates.

 

• talk to as many users as you have time for, prioritizing the recent customers
  to find useful themes, you’re going to need to talk to more than 5 customers. we’ve found 10 works as a minimum for a lot of purposes, but shorter, less dense calls may warrant 20 or 30. for most interviews, recency matters. aim to recruit active customers from the past few weeks as opposed to the past few years. they are in the midst of using your product and not trying to remember what it was like. oh, and if you happen to be talking with low-intent or low-engagement users, get them on the phone immediately. the longer you wait after booking, the more likely it is that they won’t show up for the call.

tips and tools to streamline your user interview process

we’ve made a lot of mistakes conducting user interviews over the past 5 years (and discovered a lot of useful habits along the way!). here are seven tips and tricks:

• create a script and have someone review it
  having a script will help you avoid leading questions, control your time, and stay focused on your goals. but be prepared to shuffle the order of your questions and ask follow up questions.
• find a notetaker and tell them what type of notes to take
  humans are actually really bad multitaskers. understandably, it’s hard to have a high-level picture of a conversation when you are in the middle of it. to make the most of each of your user interviews, it’s best to have one person focused on asking questions, listening, and responding while someone else primarily takes notes.be clear about the type of notes each person should take—verbatim, paraphrasing, or highlights. when you have two people, you can take two different approaches. it’s inevitable that you’ll forget some details, so if you have one person taking notes as close to verbatim as they can get, you’ll be able to return to exact phrasing after the fact, which will help prevent false memories. but if there’s only one person in the room, conducting the interview, taking verbatim notes, and seeing the big picture becomes impossible.
• spreadsheet tracker, not a bad idea!
  with multiple calls, and potentially multiple people making calls, having a spreadsheet with the users, relevant info, and recaps from the user calls is a great way to stay organized—and know who needs to have a gift card or other reward sent to them.
• ask users for multiple modes of contact
  technical difficulties will happen, and it’s helpful to plan for them in advance. when recruiting users, ask for their phone number (or other additional contact method) so you can call them instead of having them call you.
• schedule smart, schedule often, and send reminders
  schedule less engaged users as soon as possible in your interview window to mitigate against no-shows. in that same vein, overbook more users than you ultimately need to talk to because people will flake. to account for the faulty nature of human memories, text reminders to users an hour before the scheduled call to verify they’re still available.
• plan for a debrief + aim for 2-4 takeaways
  ideally, you discuss the call immediately after the call, so make sure to reserve time in your schedule before the next one. discuss what stood out and arrive at 2-4 takeaways. if you’re pulling out more than 4 highlights, they’re probably not equally important—try to keep it to only the meaty points so you can focus on what really counts.
• know thyself
  some people can rock through eight user calls in a day. others may find it challenging to do more than a few in a day. plan the interviews so that you don’t burn out.

troubleshooting common user interview challenges

image credit: juergen priewe (licensed via shutterstock)

you’ve checked off all the right things (defined a clear purpose and outcome, recruited the best users from your customers, set up a solid process and roles) but find that your questions are falling flat during the interview. what gives?

not convinced you’re framing the right questions during your user interviews? avoid these common mistakes.

avoid asking leading questions
asking leading questions is the best way to invalidate a response or even an entire call. if you ask a leading question (even one!), you may have to throw out the entire interview, so practice as much as you can to not ask leading questions. no yes/no questions. ask who, what, where, when, why, and how questions. “can you tell me about x?” and “can you tell me more about y?” are good! also, practice might just mean conducting interviews where you make mistakes and the results are thrown out, assuming that you use those learnings to improve future interviews.

priming is not the same as leading
it can be helpful to start broad and narrow into the questions you want to ask. start with something concrete and that will make it easier for them to answer questions later. instead of “how did you use magoosh to study for the sat?”, start with, “tell me about the last time you studied a new topic.”

take answers to quantitative questions with a grain of salt
people tend to search for the “right” answer or provide an answer that you want to hear. so you won’t get an honest response if you are asking for something on a scale. the nps question (“how likely are you to refer…”) when asked on a phone call is likely going to result in a higher score than the same question asked in another medium—your interviewees will try to make you happy, and may not give the most accurate response. these kinds of questions can be helpful to lead into follow-up questions, but they’re dangerous when used on their own.

covered all of your bases? here are a few bonus tips to be double sure you’re not leaving insights (and honesty) on the table during your user interviews.

you won’t hurt my feelings
start the call with why you are conducting the calls. and tell them you want them to be brutally honest, and that they can’t say anything to offend you. people will unconsciously provide answers that they think you want to hear or that they think true of themselves. prime them with a statement at the beginning that hopefully dampens this.

i know what you did last summer (or last week)
similar to setting the stage, let the user know you have their usage history in front of you, if you do. starting with a quick “i see you spend a few hours using [our product] each week”—or whatever happens to be true for the particular interviewee—can help avoid situations where people claim to have done much more or much less than they actually have. not everybody wants to admit how much time they spend on an entertainment service, and many of us will claim to have used that exercise app as much as we wished we had, not how much we really did.

silence is golden
sometimes the best way to get someone to talk is with silence. let there be a space so people can talk, and think, and talk some more. the impulse to respond right away can be a difficult one to fight, but there’s very often something more that will come out unprompted (with no danger of having led them to it, to boot!)

ready? set? research!

image credit: yummyphotos (licensed via shutterstock)

starting to conduct user interviews (and doing them well) can seem like a lot of hassle and upfront effort, especially when you’re working with limited resources, but the barrier to entry is not as high as you might think. they’re also a tremendous amount of fun! for us here at magoosh, we most appreciate them as a way to connect with and build even greater empathy towards our students.

even if you’re not ready to lead a user interview project yourself, we’d highly recommend you volunteer to be a notetaker for someone else at your company conducting user interviews, as it’ll help you be better prepared when your time comes.

we hope you find these suggestions helpful, and welcome any thoughts or questions in the comments below!

if you’d like even more resources on user research, here are a few of our favorites:

further reading on how to conduct user interviews

quick reads: tips for user calls

user research interview tips – brad dalrymple

the art of the user interview – nick babich

how to conduct user interviews – interaction design foundation

6 tips for better user interviews – veronica cámara

starter questions for user research – sarah doody

never ask what they want — 3 better questions to ask in user interviews – chuck liu

longer, in-depth guides

interviewing users: how to uncover compelling insights – steve portigal

talking to humans – giff constable

this guide was co-written by hannah baker, kevin rocci, and lucas fink.

the post no, you don’t have to be a ux researcher to conduct a (good) user interview appeared first on magoosh 2022年足球世界杯举办地.

each month, i have the pleasure of aggregating a lot of magoosh stoke. as i cull through the messages, ratings, emails, tweets, and updates, collecting individual euphorions to show our month of euphoria, themes surface.

this month, the theme is best summed up by president roosevelt. the magoosh team flexed it’s most important muscle to help our students succeed. we were empathetic!

stoke—by the numbers

we saw some growth in april with about 300 more questions than last month. this is just the beginning of our expected rise in questions through october. chris swimmer, an ex-full time magoosher who now is on our remote help team, summed up where we are nicely:

“this is the exciting part of the year where you seriously feel like you’re strapped to a rocket ship being blasted into orbit.”

the jets have ignited, and we feel the rumble and power of the rocket ship, ready to launch into space.

here we come thermosphere of test prep!

student stoke

anytime i can begin student stoke with gorilla-like chest beating, i’m going to do it!

for those who don’t know chris lele, he is our resident logophile. as mike puts it, magoosh’s collective vocabulary knowledge drops about 80% when he is not in the office.

lead with empathy, end with stoke

nothing seems more important when it comes to teaching. heck! nothing is more important than empathy when it comes to being a good person. the ability to enter into another person’s experience was a profound moment in human history—a crucial step in our ability to plan, coordinate, and coexist.

i am so proud of our team. every magoosher empathizes with our students. for this reason, i believe, our students are so stoked on magoosh. they know we care, so they trust our recommendations.

being awesome and spreading the love

this is another monthly theme that seems to persist—being awesome and spreading love and joy. i bet you didn’t think that a test prep company could do that.

mike is a rock star

mike is everywhere on the internet. he is constantly writing blog articles, responding to comments, and answering questions on forums. actually, for the 13 consecutive month, and the 22nd month overall, he was a member-of-the-month on gmat club in april. that’s why students think he is a rockstar.

magoosh—a friend, colleague, coach, and more

when i left the classroom to join magoosh, one thing i was worried about was losing the one-on-one interaction with students. i enjoyed mentoring and watching them progress. but i’ve been pleasantly surprised to find that my fear was unfounded. at magoosh, we get to be a friend, coach, colleague, peer, and teacher to our students in a very real way.

promptness leads to stoke

we are lucky to have such an awesome remote help team. thank you chris, jonathan, and carolyn for being so prompt and quick with your responses! our students appreciate your constant diligence and commitment.

we are excited to have new tutors join the team too. welcome evan, michael, amy, and andrew! let’s spread the stoke!

magoosh blogs are a treasure

we have a cornucopia of content, tips, strategies, study plans, and information spread across multiple blogs. our flagship blogs are for the gre and gmat, but we are constantly adding articles to our sat and toefl blogs to help students.

exploring @magooshgmat to review probability for some summer #tutoring. as always, great resources!

— sooner tutor (@thesoonertutor) april 1, 2014

staying stoked

magoosh is not an exception to the rule—things still can go ary. we have magoosh pens that we send to students who write student posts or to students who are awesome. we recently sent a student some pens, but they didn’t arrive. only the empty, torn envelope survived the trip to india.

we found out about it over twitter and you can see the interaction with the student below.

this interaction illustrates two important points about helping students and customers.

first, keep it lighthearted. this doesn’t mean trivialize what’s happened. rather, look for ways to ease the pain. second, if you want to make things lighthearted, you have to empathize with the person. in this case, we thought about how it must have felt to receive an empty envelope. we didn’t hesitate to send more pens (in a more robust envelope), and we found a way to lighten the mood. a perfect recipe for stoke!

it’s moments like this that make me stoked about magoosh and stoked to work with our students! they truly are awesome!

be excellent to the universe, good people! keep the happiness high and the stoke level at eleven.

the post magoosh student happiness report — april 2014 appeared first on magoosh 2022年足球世界杯举办地.

emily was right! march was a month of expectation. we did not know what sort of stoke we’d encounter. we did not know if apollo—greek god of future stoke—would smile upon us. we did not know who the persons of prognostication were and if they were stoked like us. luckily, what had been was still unchanged. magooshers were stoked in march just as they’ve been stoked before.

stoke—by the numbers

one thing that we did know about march from past experience was that we would begin our climb out of the winter slow season. as winter slowly passed (and still passes) we begin to see an uptick in student questions—almost 600 more than last month. and we expect (and hope) that this rise continues through the spring. if our projections are anything close to accurate, we could have 4,000 to 6,000 questions per month in late summer and early fall. that’s a lot of stoke!

student stoke

nothing quite kindles the stoke like a success story. can’t wait to have this magoosher in berkeley with the rest of us!

@magooshgre loved my experience with magoosh – and now i'm going to cal in the fall to study public policy! cheers to the team.

— charlotte hill (@hill_charlotte) march 31, 2014

stoked on magoosh questions, lessons, and apps

one thing that is clear at magoosh—we care about making quality products. our designer tests infographics and their readability like a baby goose tests its wings before leaping from the nest. our product team avoids assumptions about our apps like a cat avoids a bath. our content team sniffs out weak questions like a grizzly bear sniffs the breeze for food miles away. our animal instincts let happiness reign over the entire internet—well, not the whole internet, but they at least make are students happy.

magoosh stoke could change the world

if only there was a way to put magoosh stoke in every commercial and tv around the globe. we’re always accepting suggestions.

students are stoked on mike!

we are starting to see a trend. mike mcgarry has a following!

@magooshgmat you guys are amazing! i follow mike on gmatclub and i owe so much to his explanations. great work, guys!

— krishna chaitanya (@kconfused) march 29, 2014

his lesson videos make minds explode!

students sign up for magoosh because they know mike writes clear and concise answer explanations.

his blog posts are printed our and put on the walls!

magoosh stoke—a secret weapon

magoosh is a secret weapon of awesome test domination! i think we should work on not keeping it such a secret, though. once again, if you know how we can get on every commercial on the globe, do tell. we love to hear new ideas!

2 days until gmat crunch time. @magooshgmat is my secret weapon.

— brian trenkamp (@beefcakebrian) march 27, 2014

students stoked on magoosh teachers and tutors

mike isn’t the only one developing a following. there are other tutors and teachers at magoosh helping students dominate test prep!

magoosh is a family—invite everyone!

the more that i talk with students, the more i realize that we are all just one big family—a family dedicated to awesomeness, proper breathing techniques, and sharing the stoke with others. if you love something, give it away.

magoosh stoked—winning a gold medal

i try not to have any favorites. all stoke should be treated equally. but this student especially made me smile. i guess i am a sucker for good metaphors and similes.

staying stoked

when we receive feedback like this, it’s easy to bask in our glory and let hubris reign.

but we are not the types who like to sit around patting each other on the back for all the stoke we’ve spread and all the success we’ve facilitated. even though the taj mahal may appear perfect after centuries, the gardens need care. the stone pathways need love. the stone doesn’t polish itself so that it can shine bright in the evening sun!

we enjoy what we have but know it is fleeting. we must focus, and as ronke, our outreach manager said, we must focus on focus if we want to keep helping students and continue to be most excellent purveyors of the stoke!

be excellent to the universe, good people! keep the happiness high and the stoke level at eleven.

the post magoosh student happiness report — march 2014 appeared first on magoosh 2022年足球世界杯举办地.

stoke—by the numbers

with only 28 days in the month and with the effects of seasonality, we had a relatively small number of questions to answer from students. we know that the numbers will start to grow from now until the fall, and are projecting a very busy summer, as you can see in the graph below. we’ve enjoyed this slight lull and are ready to roll up our sleeves and spread the stoke to even more students!

one data point of note is that our response rate shot up in the past month. from 31% last month, and just above 25% in december, more and more students are rating our responses to their questions. of students who reached out to magoosh for help, 41% of them rated our responses, and of those ratings, 99% were good ratings.

i just find this amazing. last month only 350 magoosh responses received a rating. we nearly doubled that in february—the shortest month of the year. looks like the stoke karma just keeps on giving!

enough with the numbers. let’s bathe in the warm glow of magoosher stoke.

student stoke

this first comment says it all! we are awesome goodness! i am not quite sure what that is but i know it’s good, and i know i will be saying it a lot now around magoosh.

magoosh = awesome!

students are stoked on mike!

mike is an experienced teacher and an expert purveyor of the stoke. he brings a smile to everyone here at magoosh as well as makes students smile around the web. he’s an active blogger and an active contributor on beat the gmat and gmat club. this is just a small sampling of his stoke exploits.

spreading the magoosh stoke to friends!

when it comes to stoke, the best thing to do is pass it on. and students seem to know this. the stoke karma is contagious. when you pass it along to friends and family, it ends up back in your lap.

students stoked on magoosh’s questions

students stoked on magoosh the company

@bkparikh i love what you guys do and even more why you do it. magoosh has been an inspiration for quite sometime.

— ravi handa (@ravihanda) march 7, 2014

happiness, joy, & stoke—oh my!

staying stoked

at magoosh, the stoke is so pervasive that sometimes even our negative ratings are positive.

i am pretty certain that this student meant to give us a good rating, but accidentally hit the wrong button. but i think it is an appropriate place to end. i spend a lot of time stoking and talking about all the magoosh goodness. but that doesn’t mean that we are perfect. we are far from done and always investigate our negative ratings to see how we can improve.

we tell our students that they have to dive into their mistakes. if they want to be ready on test day, they have to spend more time looking into the mistakes than the successes. if we want to continue passing the stoke torch, we have to do the same. and we will!

be excellent to the universe, good people! keep the happiness high and the stoke level at eleven.

the post magoosh student happiness report — february 2014 appeared first on magoosh 2022年足球世界杯举办地.

stoke—by the numbers

in past happiness reports, numbers and data weighed heavy on the report, and last month, i realized that i was sacrificing student stoke for data, charts, and tables. that’s not the point of the report. we want to showcase the happiness we feel from our students’ happiness.

to this end, i intend to keep the discussion of data shorter moving forward, only presenting what is essential and related to stoke (perhaps, we’ll begin a support round-up that could dive deeper into the numbers).

we are incredibly stoked to have such a great satisfaction rating over the past 30 days. only 3 unsatisfied ratings in a month is a tremendous accomplishment. in addition, we had our longest streak of consecutive days with 100% ratings—13 days!

in the november report, i mentioned that we don’t have one goal for response time to all questions. some questions need to be answered quickly and with little delay while other questions require thought and care that can only be given over a longer period of time. since then, we have been thinking of ways to improve.

just last month, we averaged over 15 hours for our first reply. after some low-effort tweaks, like adding an “urgent” tag that triggers an email to be sent to magooshers who can resolve the issue and creating a view to see all tickets that have been open for more than 24 hours, we’ve cut our response time by a third!

faster responses, lead to happier students—more students can study and progress toward dominating the gmat, gre, and sat.

this really speaks to the team of people at magoosh. bhavin, our ceo, has pointed this out before: when we collectively focus on something, honing our skills, with a singular purpose, we are an unstoppable force, overcoming any challenge!

stoke—from the students

now for the good stuff! this month the messages are organized around different themes. also, these messages come in through multiple channels, so everyone on the team helps to identify these favorite messages to include in the report. thanks magooshers!

it takes a village

this was such a great message to receive not only because this student said we were “the great elixir for gre,” but also because this student knew so many people on our team! the student mentions 8 of us by name, showing how many people on our team are in contact with our students. it takes a village to stoke out students!

exceeding expectations

helping students everywhere

genuine personal touch

stoked on support

score improvement stoke

staying stoked

feels good to wake up in the morning and go to a place where everything you do is awesome!

be excellent to the universe, good people! keep the happiness high and the stoke level at eleven.

the post magoosh student happiness report — january 2014 appeared first on magoosh 2022年足球世界杯举办地.

the month of december is full of family, holidays, breaks from school, stoke, and for our students, college applications. in the final month of 2013, we finished strong, giving last minute study tips to students trying to get applications in before the deadlines. we were able to hit our goals for the last part of 2013, and we are now set with new goals for the coming year (we’ll talk about those in the next post)!

stoke—by the numbers

we are moving into the low season for us, which we see in our question numbers. last month we were around 2,000 new tickets, now at 1,611, and january will probably be smaller than that. after the blitz of summer and fall, the winter season in test prep slows down, which gives us time to work on projections, experiment, and prepare for the next round of test takers.

as part of our new goals, we are starting to be more granular with some of our numbers. magoosh support encompasses a lot—study help to video hiccups, compound interest questions to extensions and refunds. to learn more about how we perform in these different areas, lucas has been on a tear, making graphs, tables, and charts in gooddata to reveal trends about our content and community support.

the graph below is a perfect example. lucas separated the types of tickets to get a better sense of where our loads are. content tickets refer to help with solving magoosh questions, how to set up a study plan, or how to improve general reading ability. community tickets are everything else from issues with logging in and requests for extensions to questions about magoosh’s resources before purchasing.

one thing that this graph shows us right away is the seasonality of content questions. the green portion of the graph swells during our high season and shrinks as we head out of december and into january. the community tickets are more consistent over the same period, feeling less of the seasonality, but we can see some change in the amount of tickets.

also, you may notice at the far left—the first week given—that the numbers are fairly low for content and community tickets and really high for uncategorized ones. that’s when we first started to categorize the types of questions and learn more about the types of questions we receive—allowing us to have graphs like this one, allowing us to get granular, allowing us to make decisions on data and not mere intuition. hurray for data!

another great example of granularity in the numbers is our first reply time. i’ve shared this graph in the past, which shows our average response time. but as i have said in a previous report, some students need help faster than others. if a student has their test in 48 hours and they can’t access their account, we need to jump on that issue while other tickets don’t need such a speedy response time. so, on top of looking at the numbers for community and content tickets, we looked at the response times during the week and weekend.

in the graph above, we can see that our response time during business hours (green line) is much faster than on the weekends (blue line). but this was to be expected. something that becomes apparent, and one of the reasons that it is great to have this data, is that we can see the effects of decisions we made to increase magoosh stoke. one person was responsible for a majority these tickets, and she was not always stoked. to increase her happiness, and other’s happiness on the team, we made a decision to slow down responses on the weekend as well as hire people that could also help with more of these tickets.

our decision has a clear impact on our response time, and now with the data in place, we can track the effects. and we will be keeping an eye on our student’s satisfaction ratings to see if this decision lowers their satisfaction. if so, we can make the appropriate changes to address the issue and find a balance where everyone is stoked!

on the content side, we see the same difference between the work week and the weekend. these lines are a bit different because of seasonality. with more requests, it takes us more time to respond, especially on the weekend, but with less requests we can respond faster. ideally, we would like to be prepared for this next year, and try to see less of an increase in reply time during the peak season—that’s when our students need us the most. we are already in a better position to keep our reply times down. we now have remote tutors that help answer content questions! thanks carolyn, jonathan, kalpesh, and chris! you guys and gals rock!

student stoke

now to see the human element of all these numbers. i just read in wired, “why the nate silvers of the world don’t know everything,” about the disruption of data and the stages an industry goes through when data becomes a part of decision-making. the final stage and the most successful one is when data is married to human intuition and judgement. so i feel even stronger about connecting these charts and numbers to the actual interactions with students.

when a student is stoked that stokes us out, which we in turn use to stoke out other students, and that student becomes stoked and…well i think you see what i am getting at. it’s a cycle of stoke—a cycle of stoke karma!

one major theme of december was awesome! no, literally. it was “awesome.”

this exchange came in 2 parts with rachel. there is no denying the student’s stoke level.

part 1:

part 2:

after a couple of exchanges with margarette (she definitely brings the stoke level up), the student sent in this response!

nothing wrong with some friendly competition to improve scores. this instance definitely made me smile. hopefully, it doesn’t strain the relationship, though.

@magooshgmat i like kevin's videos on the magoosh blog. always sounds so excited about studying when i am not

— wall-e (@whatwallesaid) december 13, 2013

@magooshgmat power is out and i am still studying #icestorm2013 #gmat pic.twitter.com/tskl3gixcx

— kevin wong (@kwong483) december 23, 2013

three weeks, and my total score was 8 points better–my goal was reached. thank you, @magooshgre

— jeffrey miessau (@miessau0) december 24, 2013

hey @magooshgre kicked the pants off that dang gre today thanks to ya'll!

— jamie stark (@jamiestark) december 14, 2013

staying stoked

i’d like to conclude with this last screenshot. this was especially awesome because we can see the ripple effects of providing the best support possible for our students. they carry the torch on to other students. here one of our students is passing the stoke along and answering questions for other students just embarking on the test prep journey. how awesome, right?

be excellent to the universe, good people! keep the happiness high and the stoke level at eleven.

the post december 2013 happiness report appeared first on magoosh 2022年足球世界杯举办地.

stoke—by the numbers

we are an ambitious bunch here at magoosh. our goals are big and are dreams even bigger. whether we set our sights on building content for new flashcard apps, on expanding the magoosh community in social networks and face-to-face networks, or on aiming for a revenue goal, our diverse set of interests and skills helps us get there.

when it comes to helping our students, we set a high bar for success. we aren’t satisfied unless 98% of magooshers are happy. this month we missed our goal, which means that next month, if we don’t want coal in our stockings, we need to double down and make an effort to be better (and we are on track. we had 10 days straight of 100% satisfaction in december! but i am getting ahead of myself. that’s for next month).

with every project and task, we have to consider trade-offs—quality vs. quantity, effort vs. benefit. our goal is helping students improve their score, and this is a task that we do not take lightly. that said, we aren’t rushing to answer each question at break neck speed (unless someone can’t access their account or it’s thanksgiving and you’re our founder…more on this later). we are happy to reply to 86% of our student’s questions, coming in from around the globe, within 24 hours. but we’ll keep looking for ways to improve.

comparing us with other education companies is not quite honest. the type of support that we provide goes beyond technical bugs and errors, which is the general rule for other education companies. we offer our students support on how to study and prepare for the test. a person takes the time to understand the student’s issue with a practice problem or to analyze the student’s account to think of ways they can improve in reading comprehension. that’s why we have so many more requests than other companies (1,823 vs. 305). again, just another way to keep the stoke high and help students reach their goals.

stoked customers

phew! we are through the numbers and now on to the good stuff.

as a teacher, i was always able to make micro-adjustments to explanations on the fly. by watching student reactions, reading confused looks, or just by prompting students, i was able to give a better explanation than i could have by myself. now that my teaching takes place in front of a computer, it’s a challenge to predict what the best explanation will be, to know exactly what the student needs. same goes for building a product. you never know if it really will help until it is released into the wild and students start using it.

that’s why i love seeing all the feedback that comes in. it’s a reminder that things are working, or are not working! nothing quite stokes us like these messages.

i mentioned our founder earlier as an example of someone who is eager to reply to a student’s question. definitely a case of passion > balance. here is a perfect example from thanksgiving day. it turned into quite a fun interaction.

initial request

rating with comment

after the rating

stoked customers on twitter

we find stoked students all over the place

gre = defeated! thanks #magoosh!

— sarah evans (@clout_control) november 6, 2013

the rigor of @magooshgre and @magooshgmat math prep is tremendous. covered trig and stats over one week and seeing the gains i needed. #ff

— rich richards ii (@rich_richards) october 11, 2013

if you’re an #slp2b and studying for the #gre, i highly recommend magoosh. silly name, seriously awesome. http://t.co/97afjss3xc

— sara f. pool (@leraininspain) october 7, 2013

the app for magoosh gre flash cards is my new bff

— rouge l. salvatore (@rougette66) october 18, 2013

staying stoked

satisfaciton is ephemeral. it can’t be sustained forever and requires hard work. we are looking forward to the hard work of keeping magooshers happy in the coming year! i’ll leave you with a quote from gandhi to ponder until next month:

“satisfaction lies in the effort, not the attainment. full effort is full victory.”

the post happiness of magooshers in november appeared first on magoosh 2022年足球世界杯举办地.

so, we don’t just measure our success by the number of new sign ups or profits for the month. instead we often talk about the wow moments—opportunities to step out from the rest of the pack, and do something completely unexpected. this is even more true with the support that we provide.

i’d like to share some of these moments with you—moments that made us smile and laugh, and the moments when students felt the magoosh wow.

but first, the numbers.

standard metrics

satisfaction remains high. students rate their satisfaction with our responses after every response we answer. some respond and some don’t. but considering that we responded to 2,421 tickets in october, this makes use pretty stoked.

we definitely don’t want to keep people waiting so we strive to respond to questions as fast as we can. but we are answering questions about how to boost a score 10 points on the gre, trying to explain when to use the fundamental counting principle or the combination formula, or soothing a stressed out student. these responses take time. we can’t use a cookie-cutter response, so we spend time looking at the student’s profile and determining what the best advice is for the student.

but we are still above the industry average.

now that we have that out of the way, let’s dive into the stuff that makes us stoked to come to “work” everyday.

student satisfaction

students can leave comments when they rate our support, and these are some of the gems from october.

one of our values is that friendliness is more important than formality. great to see that we live up to our values.

as a teacher, i knew that sometimes my job was to listen and empathize. even though we aren’t face-to-face with our students, we are still able to help students through those bumps during their studies.

we haven’t had any marriage proposals yet, but this is as close as it gets for rachel.

our first goal is our student’s success. that’s it. and when we put that above all else, the students can tell.

what about when you are 64?

favorite messages

every employee of magoosh, except for perhaps our engineer, has contact with our students. whether they answer questions about how to use magoosh, trouble shoot video errors, or point out the subtleties of english grammar, we all find moments in these interactions that make us smile. here’s a splattering of some of them. enjoy! (note: student names have been blotted out in purple. if you are having trouble reading the image, you can click on it to make it bigger.)

the post october happiness report appeared first on magoosh 2022年足球世界杯举办地.

very true, dalai lama, very true. this past month, our “own actions” have kept our customer satisfaction rating at 98%. we’ve also seen a 49% increase in the volume of support requests from april to may (!). so, what actions did we take to achieve this?

1. add more cooks to the kitchen (but only if they’re already great at cooking)! this month, we added lucas to the team, and he arrived just in time. lucas is a natural, and he’s already off to a great start:

2. response time matters to customers (and to everyone, i suppose, because who likes to wait for things these days?). our average response time this month was 9 hours. although it’s not our best response time ever, we’d call it a success considering the number of questions we received from users this month:

3. understand the problem, don’t just try to fix it. customers (like all of us) like to be understood, and not lectured.

(good job, margarette!)

all in all, our customers’ happiness is certainly not “ready made.” but with some hard work, understanding, and patience, we were able to keep ’em satisfied in the month of may.

the post happiness report, may 2013: how to keep ’em satisfied appeared first on magoosh 2022年足球世界杯举办地.