Quality Doesn’t Happen by Accident: Lessons from Building Online, On-Demand Relationship Education

By Samuel Phelps

When I was eight years old, I walked into a local dairy and asked the owner for a job. Looking back, I can't imagine why he hired me. I was about four feet tall, weighed sixty pounds, and knew absolutely nothing about dairy farming. Yet he decided to give me a chance. He didn't hand me the keys to a tractor on my first day. Instead, he started me where I was. I learned to feed calves. As I gained experience, I was trusted with more responsibility. Eventually I was driving tractors, milking cows, and years later, running the dairy by myself.

I've thought about that experience many times over the years because it illustrates something important about learning. People don't become capable all at once. Growth happens through intentionally designed experiences that build one upon another until knowledge becomes confidence and confidence becomes capability.

That lesson has stayed with me throughout my career, especially during the past several years as I've helped oversee the development and evaluation of relationship education delivered through in-person, live virtual, and on-demand formats.

One of the questions I hear most often is, “Can on-demand relationship education be as effective as an in-person class?" It's a fair question. After working on both, I've come to believe we're asking the wrong one. The better question is: “How do we make high-quality relationship education accessible to people who otherwise might never receive it?”

That question matters because many individuals and families who could benefit from relationship education never attend a class. Busy work schedules, childcare responsibilities, transportation challenges, military relocations, long distances rural communities, and personal discomfort with group settings create barriers that many programs simply can't overcome. Expanding access, however, should never mean lowering standards.

One of the biggest surprises during this journey was discovering just how much work goes into creating effective on-demand relationship education. Before we began our work, I assumed the challenge would be converting a classroom curriculum into an online course. I quickly learned that successful on-demand learning requires much more than moving content from one format to another.

Every decision, from the sequence of the lessons to the reflection questions, practice activities, assessments, animations, and opportunities for application, had to be intentionally designed to help learners engage with and apply the material. It became clear very early that we couldn't simply record a facilitator teaching a class and upload the videos. While that approach would certainly have been faster and less expensive, we knew it wouldn't create the kind of learning experience we hoped to achieve.

Instead, our team spent more than two years designing, testing, revising, and rebuilding courses. We partnered with relationship education experts, curriculum specialists, instructional designers, researchers, evaluators, media professionals, and software developers. Every decision centered on one question: “How can we present relevant information in an engaging way that can encourage change?”

That experience fundamentally changed how I interpret the outcomes we've observed. I don't believe our results occurred simply because the courses were online. If that were true, every online course would produce similar outcomes. Instead, I believe our results reflect the time, expertise, collaboration, and intentional instructional design that shaped every aspect of the learner experience.

Technology expanded access. But quality learning came from design.

Rather than asking participants to passively watch content, the courses intentionally encourage them to reflect, practice, answer questions, apply new skills, revisit important concepts, and receive meaningful feedback. Those decisions weren't accidental. They were grounded in decades of research on adult learning and behavior change.

One of the most important lessons I've taken away is that the principles of effective learning don't change simply because the delivery method changes. Whether someone participates in an in-person class, joins a live virtual session, or completes a self-paced e-course, people learn best when they're actively engaged in the learning process.

Those aren't principles of online learning. They're principles of good teaching.

The difference is that in an on-demand environment, every one of those learning experiences must be intentionally designed before the learner ever begins the course. There isn't a facilitator standing in front of the room who can adjust the lesson, ask another question, or respond to confusion. The instructional design must anticipate those needs in advance.

One concern I have is that our field sometimes talks about online learning as though it's one thing. It isn't. Some online courses are little more than recorded presentations. Others are carefully designed learning experiences developed through collaboration among relationship education experts, instructional designers, researchers, evaluators, and multimedia professionals. Those experiences shouldn't be judged as though they're the same.

Just as we wouldn't evaluate every classroom by observing a single facilitator, we shouldn't evaluate every online course as though all were built with the same level of expertise and intentionality.

From my perspective, one of the greatest opportunities facing relationship education is expanding access without compromising quality. Achieving both requires recognizing that high-quality on-demand learning is neither quick nor inexpensive to develop. It demands the same commitment to excellence that we expect from outstanding relationship educators in the classroom.

As we continue exploring new ways to reach individuals and families, I hope we'll continue asking, "Who still isn't being reached?" But I also hope we'll ask another question: Are we willing to invest the same level of expertise – or even more – into designing on-demand learning that we've invested in developing excellent in-person relationship education programs?

If the answer is yes, I believe we can expand access without sacrificing quality—not because technology changes people, but because thoughtful instructional design can bring high-quality relationship education to individuals and families who otherwise might never have the opportunity to experience it.

And if your organization is exploring ways to expand access to relationship education, I invite you to visit www.RelationshipREADY.org. We have invested years developing researched-based, on-demand relationship education that organizations can use immediately rather than starting from scratch. My hope is that these resources help more individuals and families receive high-quality relationship education wherever they are.