Out of the Box App

Software Development

The Institute of Excellence and Education partnered with Mutually Human to create a digital coaching platform offering micro content. The Out of the Box App allowed educators to meet students where they were – immersed in a digital world.

Business Needs

When the Institute of Excellence and Education wanted to expand their pro-development courses and coaching into a steady drip of content daily intended to improve skills, they decided to create an application that would deliver the content directly to educators that would be available on their smartphones. The application would overcome the barriers of in-person training – costs and visitors in the classroom. Particular to their situation is that they are a non-profit and needed the application to pay for itself.

Approach

STEP 1: Free Consultation

The initial step was sitting down with the IEE for a free consultation to identify the goals for the app as well as determine what was needed to truly provide a pleasurable user experience for the users.

STEP 2: Create a Custom Plan

Mutually Human created a custom plan, knowing that this would be the foundation of the entire project and having this in place would ensure the success of the app. The plan focused on having the app ready for use by educators and that the app would be able to build into bigger services. Mutually Human and IEE worked together to build a framework that included the content required and how the app would fit in with the organizations standards and practices.

STEP 3: Build Software

Once the plan was securely in place, Mutually Human designed and built the app using Ionic, Rails and Reach, while using feedback from IEE that was regularly collected. IEE provided the continuing education contact needed and what educators would need on their end to use this application successfully. The Mutually Human team utilized this content to create an app that is in-depth, intuitive and easy to navigate.

STEP 4: Support

Mutually Human continues to provide support and maintenance to the app, ensuring that educators and coaches are able to fully utilize the app.

Solution and Results

Micro-Content

The app allowed educators to complete professional development requirements by investing ten minutes per day throughout the school year. On-demand and relevant teaching strategies are used to maximize their professional development investment. This unique app offers what no other application is able to at this time.

Coaching & Reflection

The Out of the Box app not only provided the content relevant to the educators using it, there were components of the app that enhanced the experience of the educator. The content library offered suggestions via push notifications. Users were then asked to write a reflection based on the content. They were then matched with a coach and onboarding questions were initiated. Educators then simply paid for access and began the work. The coach would assign work and evaluate and respond to responses daily.