Why we're building Virtually - Our Mission Statement
When we started Virtually, our goal was to help accelerate the creation of online schools.
We knew that if you could make online education feel like in-person education, you could make education 10x more accessible and 100x more affordable.
It’s still early… but I’m excited to share that today online learning programs are growing faster than ever before.
While I could say that we were responsible for this change- ultimately, it was just a bit of luck.
One year after we began building, the pandemic took hold, forcing every educator on the planet to adopt remote learning. The challenge then became not moving educators online but rather empowering them to build a transformational student experience in a virtual environment.
Without an in-person element, a huge divide appeared between educators and students. Educators couldn’t seem to engage their students in the same way as before.
This is when we discovered an even bigger problem to solve in the space.
With education moving online, it has become harder than ever for educators to maintain a deep relationship with their students. This gap makes it impossible to know which students need additional support and guidance leading to low engagement and ultimately student drop-off.
Furthermore- educators are still using lagging indicators of student success (grades, assignment scores, etc…) rather than leading indicators (attendance, community engagement, and course activity).
Having spent nearly three years in the space, we realized that we were uniquely equipped to help solve this problem.
We had already dedicated an enormous amount of time to building tools to track student engagement in a virtual environment. We just needed a way to package it to best serve the educators who needed it the most.
That’s why I’m here to share the company’s new mission for the future: “To empower educators to build a closer relationship with their student community.”
We know this is a worthy mission to solve as it has plagued every education institution since the beginning of time.
For the first time, we can enable educators with technology to show them the holistic picture of the student journey. With these insights, educators can build a more personalized learning experience tailored to the needs of their student community.
The journey is just getting started. Stay tuned for what’s next…
