As a faculty member at Kansas State University, I have the privilege of teaching Specialization and Leadership, a class for PhD students in which they develop a “program of impact,” or a project that helps to initiate change on issues they care about.

I teach this class every two years and have always been able to advise my students from an academic perspective—but this year, my perspective has grown due to my time participating in Launch with the #RelationshipGoals team. I’m now taking learnings from Launch, implementing them to advance our innovation, and sharing them in nearly real time with my class to help them advance their own innovations.

Using A/B Testing in the Real World  

During our time with Launch, we have discussed audiences that would benefit from implementing our research-based relationship education program for teens ages 13 to 19. We hypothesize that two audiences who would find value in the program are mental health therapists and family life educators, but we don’t yet know enough about their motivations to understand the most effective way to communicate how our program would add value to their work—in other words, the value proposition.

As a team, we created different flyers for testing—each with a different value proposition. At a conference, I conducted A/B testing, or testing different versions of a similar message. I asked therapists to rank each value proposition statement on a 0 to 5 scale and offer brief feedback about why they chose that ranking. This testing gave us valuable insights on what therapists value in providing relationship education to youth.

We refined our messaging and, at a different conference 2 months later, were able to conduct the test again with a similar audience of therapists. Our results showed higher scores on our refined value proposition messaging, which showed us that we’d successfully improved how we communicate the value of our program to therapists.

Taking A/B Testing to the Classroom 

Once I saw the success of our A/B testing efforts and how much we learned from it, I implemented a similar A/B testing assignment in my classroom. I asked students to develop two different “hooks” meant to drive a specific action (such as a click to visit a website, a sign-up for an email newsletter, etc.). Then, during class, I sent them out to campus to test these ideas and ask strangers which hook would be more likely to persuade them to take the action.

Some of my students were hesitant about this activity—how could they ask a total stranger about their ideas? However, they came back to class confident and pleased with how many people were willing to talk to them and surprised by the learning they’d gained just by soliciting feedback on two different options. At a subsequent national conference, students from my class shone as they implemented what they had learned from their A/B testing to communicate their ideas effectively with scholars and practitioners from around the country.

The students who take this class want to see change in the world. In this way, they’re already oriented toward innovation. I am so pleased that because of my time in Launch, I’m able to both advance my own innovation and educate my students about business plans, market research, and other concepts that will help them grow exponentially and make the positive impact they envision.