Mathnasium@Home Update

Hello from the @Home corner of Home Office!

Let me first start by saying that the work of 2018 has paved the way for bringing the Mathnasium experience to the homes of children across North America. The children the program has served included not only those with logistical barriers such as scheduling and travel, but also children and parents with life threatening illnesses which made coming in-center previously impossible. The program is truly life changing for these students and their families!

We have also undergone tremendous change as we gathered valuable data on marketing, technology, and strategy to help make @Home stable and profitable to all. One large change was the introduction of Tiffany Smith, Product Manager, and Desiré Pierce, Project Manager for @Home. Tiffany Smith brings with her over a decade of experience in Educational Technology as a Learning Management Systems Developer and Doctoral Candidate in the field of Educational Leadership. Desiré Pierce brings to the team almost nine years of experience in the Mathnasium family as an Instructor and Center Director in Cypress, TX from John and Cathy Labuda’s centers.

As many of you know, @Home has been in a limited participation pilot program since the summer of 2017. Since then, we have served just under 500 students total in the program among all participating centers. We have overcome many hurdles along the way, some expected and some unexpected. For the remaining hurdles, we have overcome with work arounds.

@Home Today

We are currently in the process of our Small Market Launch with limited participation among 18 franchisees across multiple states. Areas include South Bay, CA, Orlando, FL, Brandon, FL, Manhattan, NY, Las Vegas, NV, Portland, ME, and Saginaw, MI.

Currently, our learning platform remains Blackboard Ultra. Several other platforms have been tested, with one other currently being vetted as a potential replacement later in the year. You may have heard about the limitations and issues surrounding Blackboard Ultra, but we have chosen this platform because it best meets our unique needs. Because of our specific need for mirroring team teaching in the online environment, we must be highly selective in this process and very few competitors offer the individual student experience that Ultra provides with the use of Break Out Rooms. Competitors to Mathnasium@Home focus primarily on technology and ease of use rather than the teaching and methodology itself. Unlike the other competitors in this space that are selling a technology solution first and not a comprehensive education program, we’re selling the education (Mathnasium) first. Because our focus is on the program itself, we have the ability to be more flexible and open-minded about the platform, understanding that Educational Technology is a rapidly evolving field. Research and testing of platforms, tools, and hardware will continuously be evaluated for our needs in order to consistently provide centers with the best tools possible for our program. It is important to note that we must not become married to any one platform, but rather utilize the best option available.

Since our last Blog post update, we have gathered data to help craft our goals for 2019. These goals focus on student enrollment, attrition, pricing, education, marketing, hardware, teaching environment, and ratios. Please read the findings based on formal observations and the feedback collected from our current participants here ^[1].

Over the past several months, in addition to refining Blackboard processes and vendor vetting, we have developed new tools for better digital student management, such as a digital workout plan, rewards, paperless student binders, and training materials. These will be available to our piloting centers for their summer enrollments!

Radius and @Home:

We have also been working closely with IT to develop @Home specific functionality within Radius. For @Home participating centers, Radius now allows for an all-in-one center experience with @Home student reporting capabilities in the Enrollment, Attendance, Payments, and Account Management areas of Radius. This will help with center tracking of @Home students, as well as provide us with better analytics for our @Home program.

Interested in @Home for Your Center?

 While we are currently not adding any other centers to the Small Market Launch through the summer, we encourage centers interested in providing @Home to their students to speak with their FBC. FBCs will advise you on @Home requirements and may provide the @Home team with a referral to add your center to the list of future participants.

Tiffany Smith
Manager of Mathnasium@Home

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