SCHOLASTIC

Senior Product Manager, Educational Technology Group

Brief

iRead is an adaptive reading software for students in grades K-2. Placement, pacing, and content selection are dynamically personalized student by student. iRead was the first of its kind for Scholastic, with original songs, an original cast of animated characters — 5 teachers representing the 5 strands of reading — over 50 activities, and 3 grades' of content presented inside the game world of Beastie Hall. iRead's unique student motivation system was based on best practices from educational gaming theory and the Universal Design for Learning. As Senior Product Manager for the student experience, I managed a large multi-city, cross-functional team on a two-year project which included a 3-month field test, and a successful launch to schools nationwide.

Objectives

  • To help reduce the literacy gap for low income American students

  • To help the product group transition to a fully Agile process management system

Deliverables

  • Product Management: served as the glue, bringing together stakeholders from design, engineering, and education to define our MVP, map a 3-year student experience, and deliver in time to lead a field test in 4 key states; collaborated with the Directors of Product, Design, Engineering, and Education to create a shared product vision through consensus-building and extensive workshopping

  • Product Roadmap: collaborated with engineering to deliver an iterative rollout strategy; classified 50 activities into ~7 core types; designed one prototype per activity type, tested it, refined it, and then built out versions of each of the 7 core game engines

  • Agile Process Management: supported the team in transitioning to an Agile workflow

  • Storyboard Creation & Game Experience Mapping: led group journey mapping sessions; created storyboards for the design team, dialogue scripts for the recording team, and user flow diagrams, storyboards, and user stories with acceptance criteria/game logic for engineering and QA

  • Reward System & Data Dashboard Creation: worked closely with advisors from CAST and internal design, education, engineering, and product advisors to design a highly intricate student avatar creation, badge earning, and achievement dashboard; the avatar followed the student throughout the application, celebrating the students’ unique achievements, persistence, and skill mastery

  • Field Testing & Implementation: collaborated with the Research & Implementation teams to observe the software in use in classrooms, collate notes, and provide recommendations and a prioritized backlog of enhancements; provided application documentation

  • UAT and Deployment Planning: worked closely with the QA and Release teams to road test deployment to our pilot schools, delivering a field test and bi-monthly updates, leading to an on-time, successful launch to schools nationwide