At Aquarius we understand the importance of developing a love of learning from an early age. The education we receive at school creates the foundation for later studies and professional development. That’s why we decided to work pro bono with Homework Hotline, an educational charity that provides free after school tutoring to any school aged child in the state of Tennessee, USA.
Staffed by qualified teachers, the Homework Hotline tutors provide learning support to students and their parents/guardians over the telephone and online. Students using the service might be struggling with a particular homework question or topic they’re covering at school – having a tutor talk them through the problem and explain or clarify a question or concept can really help. The subjects covered include Maths, Science, English, and most other core subjects. Tutors can provide support in English as well as five other languages.
Having supported thousands of students over the past few years, the charity wanted to understand how their services had benefited students and where improvements could be made. We used our expertise in survey design and quantitative analysis to address these questions. An online survey was developed for students and parents/guardians who’d used the service in the last year, and we then analysed their responses after a month of data collection. We found vastly positive responses about the service with some great suggestions for new areas to develop.
Homework Hotline is using the results from the survey to develop their services further and to demonstrate their impact and value as they apply for new funding streams.
“We had never done an in-depth user evaluation project like this before, but we knew it was something that we really needed to do to show the impact that our services have on students to find out what is working and what we need to improve. We worked closely with the team at Aquarius, who helped us think through what we wanted to achieve with the survey, using what information we knew would be valuable for us in the future, and they made it happen!
We now have direct feedback from our users, and our Board of Directors were very impressed with the report and high level of attention Aquarius put in. We’re hoping this will help us raise additional funding, allowing us to expand our services based, in part, on the user feedback from the survey.”
Rebekah Vance, Executive Director of Homework Hotline
If you need support in evaluating your services or products and developing evidence to demonstrate their value, get in touch with our team at Aquarius.