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Collaborative Overload

Great article posted by Rob Cross, Reb Rebele and Adam Grant

 

EXPLORE THE ARCHIVE
Collaboration is taking over the workplace. As business becomes increasingly global and cross-functional, silos are breaking down, connectivity is increasing, and teamwork is seen as a key to organizational success. According to data we have collected over the past two decades, the time spent by managers and employees in collaborative activities has ballooned by 50% or more.

Certainly, we find much to applaud in these developments. However, when consumption of a valuable resource spikes that dramatically, it should also give us pause. Consider a typical week in your own organization. How much time do people spend in meetings, on the phone, and responding to e-mails? At many companies the proportion hovers around 80%, leaving employees little time for all the critical work they must complete on their own. Performance suffers as they are buried under an avalanche of requests for input or advice, access to resources, or attendance at a meeting. They take assignments home, and soon, according to a large body of evidence on stress, burnout and turnover become real risks.

What’s more, research we’ve done across more than 300 organizations shows that the distribution of collaborative work is often extremely lopsided. In most cases, 20% to 35% of value-added collaborations come from only 3% to 5% of employees. As people become known for being both capable and willing to help, they are drawn into projects and roles of growing importance. Their giving mindset and desire to help others quickly enhances their performance and reputation. As a recent study led by Ning Li, of the University of Iowa, shows, a single “extra miler”—an employee who frequently contributes beyond the scope of his or her role—can drive team performance more than all the other members combined.
But this “escalating citizenship,” as the University of Oklahoma professor Mark Bolino calls it, only further fuels the demands placed on top collaborators. We find that what starts as a virtuous cycle soon turns vicious. Soon helpful employees become institutional bottlenecks: Work doesn’t progress until they’ve weighed in. Worse, they are so overtaxed that they’re no longer personally effective. And more often than not, the volume and diversity of work they do to benefit others goes unnoticed, because the requests are coming from other units, varied offices, or even multiple companies. In fact, when we use network analysis to identify the strongest collaborators in organizations, leaders are typically surprised by at least half the names on their lists. In our quest to reap the rewards of collaboration, we have inadvertently created open markets for it without recognizing the costs. What can leaders do to manage these demands more effectively?

Precious Personal Resources
First, it’s important to distinguish among the three types of “collaborative resources” that individual employees invest in others to create value: informational, social, and personal. Informational resources are knowledge and skills—expertise that can be recorded and passed on. Social resources involve one’s awareness, access, and position in a network, which can be used to help colleagues better collaborate with one another. Personal resources include one’s own time and energy.

These three resource types are not equally efficient. Informational and social resources can be shared—often in a single exchange—without depleting the collaborator’s supply. That is, when I offer you knowledge or network awareness, I also retain it for my own use. But an individual employee’s time and energy are finite, so each request to participate in or approve decisions for a project leaves less available for that person’s own work.

Up to a third of value-added collaborations come from only 3% to 5% of employees.

Unfortunately, personal resources are often the default demand when people want to collaborate. Instead of asking for specific informational or social resources—or better yet, searching in existing repositories such as reports or knowledge libraries—people ask for hands-on assistance they may not even need. An exchange that might have taken five minutes or less turns into a 30-minute calendar invite that strains personal resources on both sides of the request.

Consider a case study from a blue-chip professional services firm. When we helped the organization map the demands facing a group of its key employees, we found that the top collaborator—let’s call him Vernell—had 95 connections based on incoming requests. But only 18% of the requesters said they needed more personal access to him to achieve their business goals; the rest were content with the informational and social resources he was providing. The second most connected person was Sharon, with 89 people in her network, but her situation was markedly different, and more dangerous, because 40% of them wanted more time with her—a significantly greater draw on her personal resources.

We find that as the percentage of requesters seeking more access moves beyond about 25, it hinders the performance of both the individual and the group and becomes a strong predictor of voluntary turnover. As well-regarded collaborators are overloaded with demands, they may find that no good deed goes unpunished.
The exhibit “In Demand, Yet Disengaged,” reflecting data on business unit line leaders across a sample of 20 organizations, illustrates the problem. People at the top center and right of the chart—that is, those seen as the best sources of information and in highest demand as collaborators in their companies—have the lowest engagement and career satisfaction scores, as represented by the size of their bubbles. Our research shows that this ultimately results in their either leaving their organizations (taking valuable knowledge and network resources with them) or staying and spreading their growing apathy to their colleagues.

Leaders can solve this problem in two ways: by streamlining and redistributing responsibilities for collaboration and by rewarding effective contributions.

Redistributing the Work
Any effort to increase your organization’s collaborative efficiency should start with an understanding of the existing supply and demand. Employee surveys, electronic communications tracking, and internal systems such as 360-degree feedback and CRM programs can provide valuable data on the volume, type, origin, and destination of requests, as can more in-depth network analyses and tools. For example, Do.com monitors calendars and provides daily and weekly reports to both individual employees and managers about time spent in meetings versus on solo work. The idea is to identify the people most at risk for collaborative overload. Once that’s been done, you can focus on three levers:

Encourage behavioral change.
Show the most active and overburdened helpers how to filter and prioritize requests; give them permission to say no (or to allocate only half the time requested); and encourage them to make an introduction to someone else when the request doesn’t draw on their own unique contributions. The latest version of the team-collaboration software Basecamp now offers a notification “snooze button” that encourages employees to set stronger boundaries around their incoming information flow. It’s also worth suggesting that when they do invest personal resources, it be in value-added activities that they find energizing rather than exhausting. In studying employees at one Fortune 500 technology company, we found that although 60% wanted to spend less time responding to ad hoc collaboration requests, 40% wanted to spend more time training, coaching, and mentoring. After their contributions were shifted to those activities, employees were less prone to stress and disengagement.

To stem the tide of incoming requests, help seekers, too, must change their behavior. Resetting norms regarding when and how to initiate e-mail requests or meeting invitations can free up a great deal of wasted time. As a step in this direction, managers at Dropbox eliminated all recurring meetings for a two-week period. That forced employees to reassess the necessity of those gatherings and, after the hiatus, helped them become more vigilant about their calendars and making sure each meeting had an owner and an agenda. Rebecca Hinds and Bob Sutton, of Stanford, found that although the company tripled the number of employees at its headquarters over the next two years, its meetings were shorter and more productive.

In addition, requests for time-sapping reviews and approvals can be reduced in many risk-averse cultures by encouraging people to take courageous action on decisions they should be making themselves, rather than constantly checking with leaders or stakeholders.

Leverage technology and physical space to make informational and social resources more accessible and transparent.
Relevant technical tools include Slack and Salesforce.com’s Chatter, with their open discussion threads on various work topics; and Syndio and VoloMetrix (recently acquired by Microsoft), which help individuals assess networks and make informed decisions about collaborative activities. Also rethink desk or office placement. A study led by the Boston University assistant professor Stine Grodal documented the detrimental effects of team meetings and e-mails on the development and maintenance of productive helping relationships. When possible, managers should colocate highly interdependent employees to facilitate brief and impromptu face-to-face collaborations, resulting in a more efficient exchange of resources.

Consider structural changes.
Can you shift decision rights to more-appropriate people in the network? It may seem obvious that support staff or lower-level managers should be authorized to approve small capital expenditures, travel, and some HR activities, but in many organizations they aren’t. Also consider whether you can create a buffer against demands for collaboration. Many hospitals now assign each unit or floor a nurse preceptor, who has no patient care responsibilities and is therefore available to respond to requests as they emerge. The result, according to research that one of us (Adam Grant) conducted with David Hofmann and Zhike Lei, is fewer bottlenecks and quicker connections between nurses and the right experts. Other types of organizations might also benefit from designating “utility players”—which could lessen demand for the busiest employees—and possibly rotating the role among team members while freeing up personal resources by reducing people’s workloads.

Rewarding Effective Collaboration
We typically see an overlap of only about 50% between the top collaborative contributors in an organization and those employees deemed to be the top performers. As we’ve explained, many helpers underperform because they’re overwhelmed; that’s why managers should aim to redistribute work. But we also find that roughly 20% of organizational “stars” don’t help; they hit their numbers (and earn kudos for it) but don’t amplify the success of their colleagues. In these cases, as the former Goldman Sachs and GE chief learning officer Steve Kerr once wrote, leaders are hoping for A (collaboration) while rewarding B (individual achievement). They must instead learn how to spot and reward people who do both.

Why Women Bear More of the Burden
The lion’s share of collaborative work tends to fall on women. They’re stereotyped as communal and caring, so they’re expected to help others with heavy workloads, provide mentoring and training to more-junior colleagues, recruit new hires, and attend optional meetings. As a result, the evidence shows, women experience greater emotional exhaustion than men.

One important solution to this problem is to encourage women to invest different types of resources in collaboration. In a 2013 Huffington Post poll of Americans, men and women estimated how often they contribute to others in a variety of ways. Men were 36% more likely to share knowledge and expertise—an informational resource. Meanwhile, women were 66% more likely to assist others in need—an action that typically costs more time and energy. By making contributions that rely less on personal resources, women can protect themselves against collaboration overload.

Managers must also ensure that men and women get equal credit for collaboration. In an experiment led by the NYU psychologist Madeline Heilman, a man who stayed late to help colleagues earned 14% higher ratings than a woman who did the same. When neither helped, the woman was rated 12% lower than the man. By improving systems for measuring, recognizing, and rewarding collaborative contributions, leaders can shift the focus away from the gender of the employee and toward the value added.

Consider professional basketball, hockey, and soccer teams. They don’t just measure goals; they also track assists. Organizations should do the same, using tools such as network analysis, peer recognition programs, and value-added performance metrics. We helped one life sciences company use these tools to assess its workforce during a multibillion-dollar acquisition. Because the deal involved consolidating facilities around the world and relocating many employees, management was worried about losing talent. A well-known consultancy had recommended retention bonuses for leaders. But this approach failed to consider those very influential employees deep in the acquired company who had broad impact but no formal authority. Network analytics allowed the company to pinpoint those people and distribute bonuses more fairly.

Efficient sharing of informational, social, and personal resources should also be a prerequisite for positive reviews, promotions, and pay raises. At one investment bank, employees’ annual performance reviews include feedback from a diverse group of colleagues, and only those people who are rated as strong collaborators (that is, able to cross-sell and provide unique customer value to transactions) are considered for the best promotions, bonuses, and retention plans. Corning, the glass and ceramics manufacturer, uses similar metrics to decide which of its scientists and engineers will be named fellows—a high honor that guarantees a job and a lab for life. One criterion is to be the first author on a patent that generates at least $100 million in revenue. But another is whether the candidate has worked as a supporting author on colleagues’ patents. Corning grants status and power to those who strike a healthy balance between individual accomplishment and collaborative contribution. (Disclosure: Adam Grant has done consulting work for Corning.)

Collaboration is indeed the answer to many of today’s most pressing business challenges. But more isn’t always better. Leaders must learn to recognize, promote, and efficiently distribute the right kinds of collaborative work, or their teams and top talent will bear the costs of too much demand for too little supply. In fact, we believe that the time may have come for organizations to hire chief collaboration officers. By creating a senior executive position dedicated to collaboration, leaders can send a clear signal about the importance of managing teamwork thoughtfully and provide the resources necessary to do it effectively. That might reduce the odds that the whole becomes far less than the sum of its parts.

A version of this article appeared in the January–February 2016 issue (pp.74–79) of Harvard Business Review.

Rob Cross is a professor of management at the University of Virginia’s McIntire School of Commerce and a coauthor of The Hidden Power of Social Networks.

02
Jan 2016
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How to Score a Meeting with Almost Anyone

Since it’s Thursday, I want to take another look back at a throwback: one of my favorite stories about how it is possible to score a meeting with almost anyone. 

supersuper

When these guys come knocking, who wouldn’t answer the door?

–

Have you ever been desperate to land a meeting with someone – a potential client, investor, mentor, et al. – but just couldn’t get on their radar?

You want nothing more than a few minutes of time with them. You try everything: persistent calls, emails, tweets, carrier pigeon. But nothing works.

I like to think of myself as a fairly successful entrepreneur, but this used to happen to me all the time. Then I discovered a way to reach almost anyone.

A couple of years ago, I was trying to score a meeting with a grand poobah at a bank in Midtown Manhattan. I can’t tell you this gentleman’s name, but trust me, it’s a big name.

Nothing worked. Not the calls. Not the smoke signals. Not even the singing telegram on his birthday. (Okay, I didn’t send him one of those, but I did some similarly desperate things.)

Then I had an idea. Since he’s a New Yorker, I wondered if Mr. Big didn’t idolize a New York Yankees baseball player or two.

I called Mr. Big’s secretary and before she could pass me to his voicemail for the umpteenth time, I said, “No, I need to speak to you.” I asked her if Mr. Big was a Yankees fan and learned he was a huge admirer of Yankees reliever Mariano Rivera. With that news, the heavens parted, the angels started singing and I saw the light.

I immediately had my trusty assistant send Mr. Big a small plastic cube — an empty baseball case — with a note attached.

“I heard you love Mariano Rivera,” it read. “Here’s a case for a Mariano-signed baseball. When you and I meet within the next two weeks, I’ll bring you the ball.”

Wouldn’t you know it? Big called me that day. And we met the next week.

Maybe you’re thinking: “That’s a cute story, Brandon. But what if the person I need to reach doesn’t like the Yankees or even sports? And what if I don’t have any special connections?”

You’re still in luck. The philosopher Joseph Campbell showed us that there’s a bond connecting human beings that’s even stronger than those of death and taxes: hero worship.

Every culture, throughout history, has told its own hero stories — whether they take the form of religion, myth, or, in our society, pop culture. Be it an athlete, actor or singer, every American has a hero. I guarantee you that the big fish you can’t reel in has a hero or two of their own.

Sometimes this hero is relatively easy to identify. For instance, a quick look at Barack Obama’s Facebook page shows that the president loves Bob Dylan. So, if I wanted to land a meeting with him, maybe I’d send him an empty Blood on the Tracks record case, with a note saying I had an original vinyl copy I’d like to give him in person. (Obviously that’s an outlandish hypothetical, but you get the point.)

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Are you there Barack? It’s me, Bob.

Sometimes the hero will be more difficult to find. If a little internet stalking doesn’t turn anything up, do what I did: chat up the personal assistant, or someone else who might know.

Maybe you can’t afford to send a high-end totem. In that case, be creative.

For instance, say the person you’re trying to meet is a fan of the show Mad Men. You probably can’t have Jon Hamm make a phone call for you, but you can send a reasonably-priced and eye-popping photo of the actor (there are great shots available on sites like Crestock.com) with a note saying: “I work as hard as Don Draper and I’m almost always more sober.”

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Who could say no to this face?

The “bait” doesn’t have to be shiny and expensive. It just has to stand out from the dozens of other requests your prospect will receive that day. 

The only necessity, really, is to abandon the business or sales angle and channel a hero’s voice instead. Of course, once you get the attention you’ve worked so hard to score, the rest is up to you.

01
Jan 2016
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US high school grad rate hits unprecedented 82%

  • Newly-released data from the U.S. Department of Education shows that 82% of American high school seniors graduated in 2013-14, a record-breaking high percentage.
  • The percentage has increased steadily over the past four years, with a previous high of 81% reported in February.
  • Additionally, the federal government claims that the achievement gap in graduation rates between racially disparate students is also now decreasing.
29
Dec 2015
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Digital Tools and the Holidays…things parents should know.

December, 2014 Here is a new visual from ISTE on the concept of digital citizenship. The visual outlines some of the features characterizing ‘good’ digital citizens based on attributes of good citizens. The elements of digital citizenship, according to ISTE, “ are not so different from the basic tenets of traditional citizenship: Be kind, respectful and responsible, and just do the right thing”….
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Dec 2015
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The Year’s Best App’s

December 16, 2014 Below is a visual released a few days ago by Google in which it featured some of the most popular games, movies, music, news and books of 2014. In the education section, Duolingo topped the list. This is  a great web tool and mobile app for learning a new language. It  provides a plethora of translation activities  through which learners get to practice their new…
26
Dec 2015
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ISTE Ignite Session STEM

 

ISTE 2013 Ignite Session

 

 

23
Dec 2015
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Game On: An Online Challenge to Gifted Students to Compete Globally

 

About 18 months ago, novice entrepreneur Sue Khim flew to San Francisco from her home in Illinois to take part in an uncommonly public version of a Silicon Valley rite of passage — the pitch. With thousands of other young techies in the audience, she was scheduled to be onstage at the Launch Festival, a showcase for “stealth” startups that have managed to keep their products out of the voracious tech press, or have as-yet-unreleased products to announce.

Launch is more competition than festival. Over two days, tech entrepreneurs pitch to a panel of hotshot technologists who issue on-the-spot critique of products’ market viability and revenue models, and, potentially offer funding.

Khim’s presentation knocked it out of the park, bagging $75,000 for Alltuition, a “TurboTax for student loans.” But within six months, the founders had turned their attention to a new endeavor, entirely fueled by their success at the Launch Festival.

Khim has gone from talking about a potential market of 21 million students to about 20 times that number. And she’s targeting children across the world as young as 11 who are the best among their peer groups at science and math.

It’s called Brilliant.org — an online hub for the world’s most promising young minds to come together, connect, and see how they measure up against one another. Launch judge and former Facebook executive Chamath Palihapitiya helped spark the idea.

“There’s a ton of people outside the U.S. that are trying to get into  U.S. schools that have no path to figure that out,” Palihapitiya told Brilliant founder Khim after her Alltuition presentation. There also seemed to be plenty of offerings for adults and remediation programs for struggling high school students in online education. But not a place to challenge A and B students.

‘Tantalizingly Tricky And Hard’

So Brilliant is designed for talented 11- to 18-year-olds who would probably be “Googling for hard math problems,” Khim said. Brilliant administers a diagnostic exam to new users, and then begins delivering “tantalizingly tricky and hard” questions written by math and physics teachers, she said.

Because Brilliant’s team assumes their users already have a strong foundation in STEM topics (science, technology, engineering and mathematics), the site focuses on measurement, Khim said. She said it considers questions like, “How can we structure practice in such a way that they will understand (a concept) by the end of the practice? And then how do we measure throughout whether they’re on track to understand it or not?”

In many ways, Brilliant mirrors real-world practice settings that high-aptitude kids have flocked to for years: the cram schools where children in India and China prepare for competitive national exams, or Math Circles in the U.S. The idea also emerged from Khim’s own background attending under-resourced schools on Chicago’s South Side.

“My family did not have a lot of money. I grew up in a housing project, and we were on food stamps,” she told me. In third grade, she said, she realized she was smarter than her teachers. Khim figures she wasn’t being stretched intellectually until her family moved and she entered a school with a gifted-and-talented program, allowing her to learn from, and compete with, other smart kids.

Global Competition

On Brilliant, students can participate in this sort of academic socializing on a global scale. The site also brings transparency to global competition. Students can share their answers, and how they devised them, with the Brilliant community — and their social networks. The data can be sifted by geography and age range. In a March demo, six months after launching the site, Khim pulled up a picture of a Filipino student who she says is doing college-level math at age 12, and a 16-year-old in Brazil who she says “probably doesn’t know that he’s in the 50th percentile globally … and that he actually has a lot of work to do.” To date, 90 percent of Brilliant’s users are outside the U.S.

Yong Zhao, associate dean for global education at the University of Oregon, said “globalization has changed a lot of people’s perspectives. Everybody wants to out-educate everyone else. Since we lack good definition of what that means, we think you have to out-score others in some predefined context.”

Zhao said he worries about how American parents might react to international comparisons. But given this rising anxiety, he said, Brilliant’s comparison engine, which allows users to assess their stats against those of peers everywhere, could help to popularize the site.

Brilliant is predicated on the failure of schools to properly stimulate talented students, but one aspect of its revenue model also could be seen as a response to the STEM skills gap, allowing recruiters to tap into a global pool of talent, for a price. A year after Alltuition won funding, Khim was back at the Launch Festival, this time presenting Brilliant. It didn’t take the panel long to make a leap beyond college recruitment. Launch Founder Jason Calcanis asked judge David Cohen, of the TechStars accelerator, to comment on the site’s potential to broker individual sponsorship, like that a Ph.D. student might enjoy.

“Imagine the idea of sort of investing in people,” said Cohen, teasing out the idea of crowdfunding an entire employment trajectory, starting with junior high. “Are the biggest companies interested in doing that? Are there investors interested in doing that?” He mused about having privileged access to the “smartest, most interesting people in the world.”

There are other education sites and initiatives that allow students to publish their results online. The juggernaut online learning site Khan Academy has a system of rewarding badges for a range of accomplishments, from simply watching videos consecutively, to correctly answering problems, and it has a built-in infrastructure for teachers and coaches to view progress. But neither has Brilliant’s focus on top students, key to its appeal for recruiters.

Khim says she’s already hearing that students are listing Brilliant on their college applications. Recruiters say there are many services that purport to increase the flow of talented students, but at some schools, like UC Berkeley, they say they’re already too busy to consider adding new tools.

Brilliant is facing a crowded marketplace amid recruitment-augmenting services. But Khim says colleges, scholarship programs, and corporations have already signaled interest in the access to top-tier talent that her site provides.

Brilliant’s user base is still modest: 120,000, but doubling every eight weeks or so.

“These are the people that tomorrow will be creating the next big tech company, the next great medical breakthrough … that will be sending man to Mars,” Khim said to a crowd assembled at a recent TEDx conference in her hometown of Chicago. Her pitch has evolved, even since March. Now it references a grand theory of massively impacting the economy, and being motivated by the idea of harnessing human capital to notch up an entire country’s GDP. Khim herself is on leave from the University of Chicago to devote more time to building the site.

Meanwhile, the 12-year-old user from the Philippines whom she mentioned back in March won a math competition on Brilliant, beating a 17-year-old who got a perfect score at the International Mathematical Olympiad. Khim says he’s now being privately coached by a math professor who’s taken him on as a mentee.

Nishat Kurwa is a reporter for Turnstyle News, a tech and digital culture site from Youth Radio.

Copyright 2013 Turnstyle. To see more, visit http://turnstylenews.com/.
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Dec 2015
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The Joyful, Illiterate Kindergartners of Finland

Forget the Common Core, Finland’s youngsters are in charge of determining what happens in the classroom.

“The changes to kindergarten make me sick,” a veteran teacher in Arkansas recently admitted to me. “Think about what you did in first grade—that’s what my 5-year-old babies are expected to do.”

The difference between first grade and kindergarten may not seem like much, but what I remember about my first-grade experience in the mid-90s doesn’t match the kindergarten she described in her email: three and a half hours of daily literacy instruction, an hour and a half of daily math instruction, 20 minutes of daily “physical activity time” (officially banned from being called “recess”) and two 56-question standardized tests in literacy and math—on the fourth week of school.

That American friend—who teaches 20 students without an aide—has fought to integrate 30 minutes of “station time” into the literacy block, which includes “blocks, science, magnetic letters, play dough with letter stamps to practice words, books, and storytelling.” But the most controversial area of her classroom isn’t the blocks nor the stamps: Rather, it’s the “house station with dolls and toy food”—items her district tried to remove last year. The implication was clear: There’s no time for play in kindergarten anymore.
A working paper, “Is Kindergarten the New First Grade?,” confirms what many experts have suspected for years: The American kindergarten experience has become much more academic—and at the expense of play. The late psychologist, Bruno Bettelheim, even raised the concern in an article for The Atlantic in 1987.

The American kindergarten experience has become much more academic—and at the expense of play.
Researchers at the University of Virginia, led by the education-policy researcher Daphna Bassok, analyzed survey responses from American kindergarten teachers between 1998 and 2010. “Almost every dimension that we examined,” noted Bassok, “had major shifts over this period towards a heightened focus on academics, and particularly a heightened focus on literacy, and within literacy, a focus on more advanced skills than what had been taught before.”

In the study, the percentage of kindergarten teachers who reported that they agreed (or strongly agreed) that children should learn to read in kindergarten greatly increased from 30 percent in 1998 to 80 percent in 2010.

Bassok and her colleagues found that while time spent on literacy in American kindergarten classrooms went up, time spent on arts, music, and child-selected activities (like station time) significantly dropped. Teacher-directed instruction also increased, revealing what Bassok described as “striking increases in the use of textbooks and worksheets… and very large increases in the use of assessments.”
But Finland—a Nordic nation of 5.5 million people, where I’ve lived and taught fifth and sixth graders over the last two years—appears to be on the other end of the kindergarten spectrum. Before moving to Helsinki, I had heard that most Finnish children start compulsory, government-paid kindergarten—or what Finns call “preschool”—at age 6. And not only that, but I learned through my Finnish mother-in-law—a preschool teacher—that Finland’s kindergartners spend a sizable chunk of each day playing, not filling out worksheets.

Finnish schools have received substantial media attention for years now—largely because of the consistently strong performance of its 15-year-olds on international tests like the PISA. But I haven’t seen much coverage on Finland’s youngest students.

So, a month ago, I scheduled a visit to a Finnish public kindergarten—where a typical school day is just four hours long.

* * *

Approaching the school’s playground that morning, I watched as an army of 5- and 6-year-old boys patrolled a zigzagging stream behind Niirala Preschool in the city of Kuopio, unfazed by the warm August drizzle. When I clumsily unhinged the steel gate to the school’s playground, the young children didn’t even lift their eyes from the ground; they just kept dragging and pushing their tiny shovels through the mud.

At 9:30 a.m., the boys were called to line up for a daily activity called Morning Circle. (The girls were already inside—having chosen to play boardgames indoors.) They trudged across the yard in their rubber boots, pleading with their teachers to play longer—even though they had already been outside for an hour. As they stood in file, I asked them to describe what they’d been doing on the playground.

“Making dams,” sang a chorus of three boys.

“Nothing else?” one of their teachers prodded.

“Nothing else,” they confirmed.

“[Children] learn so well through play,” Anni-Kaisa Osei Ntiamoah, one of the preschool’s “kindergarten” teachers, who’s in her seventh year in the classroom, told me. “They don’t even realize that they are learning because they’re so interested [in what they’re doing].”

“[Children] learn so well through play. They don’t even realize that they are learning because they’re so interested.”
When children play, Osei Ntiamoah continued, they’re developing their language, math, and social-interaction skills. A recent research summary “The Power of Play” supports her findings: “In the short and long term, play benefits cognitive, social, emotional, and physical development…When play is fun and child-directed, children are motivated to engage in opportunities to learn,” the researcher concluded.

Osei Ntiamoah’s colleagues all seemed to share her enthusiasm for play-based learning, as did the school’s director, Maarit Reinikka: “It’s not a natural way for a child to learn when the teacher says, ‘Take this pencil and sit still.’” The school’s kindergarten educators have their students engage in desk work—like handwriting—just one day a week. Reinikka, who directs several preschools in Kuopio, assured me that kindergartners throughout Finland—like the ones at Niirala Preschool—are rarely sitting down to complete traditional paper-and-pencil exercises.
And there’s no such thing as a typical day of kindergarten at the preschool, the teachers said. Instead of a daily itinerary, two of them showed me a weekly schedule with no more than several major activities per day: Mondays, for example, are dedicated to field trips, ballgames, and running, while Fridays—the day I visited—are for songs and stations.

Once, Morning Circle—a communal time of songs and chants—wrapped up, the children disbanded and flocked to the station of their choice: There was one involving fort-making with bed sheets, one for arts and crafts, and one where kids could run a pretend ice-cream shop. “I’ll take two scoops of pear and two scoops of strawberry—in a waffle cone,” I told the two kindergarten girls who had positioned themselves at the ice-cream table; I had a (fake) 10€ bill to spend, courtesy of one of the teachers. As one of the girls served me—using blue tack to stick laminated cutouts of scoops together—I handed the money to her classmate.

Throughout the morning I noticed that the kindergartners played in two different ways: One was spontaneous and free form, while the other was more guided and pedagogical.
With a determined expression reminiscent of the boys in the mud with their shovels, the young cashier stared at the price list. After a long pause, one of her teachers—perhaps sensing a good opportunity to step in—helped her calculate the difference between the price of my order and the 10€. Once I received my change (a few plastic coins), the girls giggled as I pretended to lick my ice cream.
Throughout the morning I noticed that the kindergartners played in two different ways: One was spontaneous and free form (like the boys building dams), while the other was more guided and pedagogical (like the girls selling ice cream).

In fact, Finland requires its kindergarten teachers to offer playful learning opportunities—including both kinds of play—to every kindergartner on a regular basis, according to Arja-Sisko Holappa, a counselor for the Finnish National Board of Education. What’s more, Holappa, who also leads the development of the country’s pre-primary core curriculum, said that play is being emphasized more than ever in latest version of that curriculum, which goes into effect in kindergartens next fall.

“Play is a very efficient way of learning for children,” she told me. “And we can use it in a way that children will learn with joy.”

“Those things you learn without joy you will forget easily.”
The word “joy” caught me off guard—I’m certainly not used to hearing the word in conversations about education in America, where I received my training and taught for several years. But Holappa, detecting my surprise, reiterated that the country’s early-childhood education program indeed places a heavy emphasis on “joy,” which along with play is explicitly written into the curriculum as a learning concept. “There’s an old Finnish saying,” Holappa said. “Those things you learn without joy you will forget easily.”

* * *
After two hours of visiting a Finnish kindergarten, I still hadn’t seen children reading. I was, however, hearing a lot of pre-literacy instruction sprinkled throughout the morning—clapping out syllables and rhyming in Morning Circle, for example. I recalled learning in my master’s degree courses in education that building phonemic awareness—an ability to recognize sounds without involving written language—was viewed as the groundwork of literacy development.

Just before lunch, a kindergarten teacher took out a basket brimming with children’s books. But for these 5- and 6-year-olds, “reading” looked just like how my two toddlers approach their books: The kindergartners, sitting in different corners of the room, flipped through pages, savoring the pictures but, for the most part, not actually deciphering the words. Osei Ntiamoah told me that just one of the 15 students in her class can currently read syllable by syllable. Many of them, she added, will read by the end of the year. “We don’t push them but they learn just because they are ready for it. If the child is willing and interested, we will help the child.”

Nowadays, Finnish teachers are free to teach reading if they determine a child is “willing and interested” to learn.
There was a time in Finland—in the not so distant past—when kindergarten teachers weren’t even allowed to teach reading. This was viewed as the job of the first-grade teacher. But, as with America, things have changed: Nowadays, Finnish teachers are free to teach reading if they determine a child is—just as Osei Ntiamoah put it—“willing and interested” to learn.
Throughout Finland, kindergarten teachers and parents meet during the fall to make an individualized learning plan, shaped by each child’s interests and levels of readiness, which could include the goal of learning how to read. For Finnish kindergartners who seem primed for reading instruction, Holappa told me it’s still possible to teach them in a playful manner. She recommended the work of the Norwegian researcher Arne Trageton—a pioneer in the area of play-based literacy instruction.

Meanwhile across the Atlantic, kindergarten students like that of the Arkansas teacher are generally expected—by the end of the year—to master literacy skills that are far more complex, like reading books with two to three sentences of unpredictable text per page. “These are 5- to 6-year-olds!” the Arkansas teacher wrote in disbelief.

More than 40 states—including Arkansas—have adopted the Common Core State Standards, which contain dozens of reading expectations for kindergartners. In the United States—where 22 percent of the nation’s children live in poverty (more than 16 million in total)—the Common Core’s emphasis on rigorous language-learning in kindergarten could be viewed as a strategy for closing the alarming “Thirty Million Word Gap” between America’s rich and poor—holding schools accountable for having high expectations for their youngest students.

Furthermore, unlike the reality of teaching kindergarten in Finland where the poverty rate is 10 percent and the student-teacher ratio is typically 14:1 (based on national guidelines), most American kindergarten teachers don’t have a choice whether or not they teach reading. Under the Common Core, children should be able to “read emergent-texts with purpose and understanding” by the end of kindergarten. Ultimately, they’re expected to, at the very least, be able to decode basic texts without the support of a teacher.
“But there isn’t any solid evidence that shows that children who are taught to read in kindergarten have any long-term benefit from it,” Nancy Carlsson-Paige, a professor emeritus of early childhood education at Lesley University, explained in a video published by the advocacy group Defending the Early Years.

“But there isn’t any solid evidence that shows that children who are taught to read in kindergarten have any long-term benefit from it.”
Research by Sebastian Suggate, a former Ph.D. candidate at New Zealand’s University of Otago studying educational psychology, confirms Carlsson-Paige’s findings. One of Suggate’s studies compared children from Rudolf Steiner schools—who typically begin to read at the age of seven—with children at state-run schools in New Zealand, who start reading at the age of five. By age 11, students from the former group caught up with their peers in the latter, demonstrating equivalent reading skills.

“This research then raises the question,” he said in an interview published by the University of Otago. “If there aren’t advantages to learning to read from the age of five, could there be disadvantages to starting teaching children to read earlier?”

* * *

At the end of my visit to the Finnish kindergarten, I joined the 22 children and their two teachers for a Friday event that only happens on weeks when children are celebrating their birthdays. The birthday child that week sat at the front of the classroom in a chair facing his peers and teachers, all of whom sat in a semicircle, and a table with a candleholder to his left.

I expected the celebration to end after the lighting of candles and “Happy Birthday” song, but it didn’t. One of the boy’s classmates, donning a hat that looked like a beret and wearing a mail carrier’s sling over his shoulder, took him by the hand, and the two proceeded to dance as we sang the Finnish children’s song, “Little Boy Postman.”

Once the song was complete, the little postman took out a card and handed it to his classmate. “Would you like me to help you read this?” one of the birthday boy’s teachers asked. “You help,” he responded, a hint that hadn’t quite mastered the skill yet. I watched his face carefully, searching for any hint of shame. I found none—but then again, why should he have felt embarrassed?

The flickering six candles reminded me he’s only a little kid.

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Dec 2015
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What Arne Duncan did to American education and whether it will last

US President Barack Obama announces that education Secretary Arne Duncan will step down in December and John King, former State Superintendent in New York, will take his place during a press conference in the State Dining Room of the White House October 2, 2015 in Washington, DC, USA. Photo: Olivier Douliery/Sipa USA

“We can’t wait” was Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s frequent refrain. But as he leaves his post this December, his forceful strategy to push dramatic changes to the U.S education system is being tested.

The aggressiveness and urgency that defined his efforts to transform American schools alienated friends and could, in the end, be what derails his reforms.

During his tenure, one of the longest in President Barack Obama’s cabinet, Duncan made a deep mark on U.S. schools with a series of major efforts stretching from early education to college. The administration promised $1 billion in new spending on preschool; spurred states to adopt controversial K-12 reforms such as performance-based teacher evaluations and the adoption of the Common Core State Standards through its Race to the Top grant program and waivers to the No Child Left Behind law; significantly expanded the federal School Improvement Grant program to turn around low-performing schools; targeted for-profit colleges and attempted to increase accountability in the higher education sector; and pushed a proposal by the president to make community college free.

But Duncan’s resignation comes as Congress is deliberating over reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind law and considering rewrites that would limit the ability of the education department to get involved in state policy, leaving many wondering whether Duncan’s seven years of intense reforms will stick. Politico reported that “just this week, Duncan said he thought the forthcoming resignation of House Speaker John Boehner would make it more difficult to get the law updated.”

“I can only think that our odds of having it pass now are worse, not better, which is really disappointing,” he was quoted as saying.

He’s also leaving as a bipartisan Senate bill and a Republican-backed House bill seek to limit the federal government’s role in public education and to take aim at policies Duncan pushed, such as teacher evaluations based partly on test scores and aggressive school turnaround strategies.

At the same time, many states are facing growing backlash over the increased emphasis on standardized testing and are slowing down plans to revamp teacher evaluation systems or retreating on Common Core (although some have adopted near replicas to replace it). And the data on the effectiveness of some strategies, including the School Improvement Grant program and new teacher evaluation policies, has been mixed.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan, left, speaks during a town hall meeting as President Barack Obama looks on Monday, Sept. 14, 2015, at North High School in Des Moines, Iowa. Photo: AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall

Nevertheless, his supporters are praising him for his sense of urgency and forceful tactics. Purdue University President Mitch Daniels, the former Indiana governor, said he regretted deeply that Duncan is leaving.

“He has placed America’s children and their academic success at the center of his work every day of his tenure, often challenging the most intransigent and powerful special interests in our political system to do so,” Daniels wrote in a statement. “Those who succeed him in this administration and the next would be wise to emulate and extend his example.”

In 2009, Duncan and his department were given access to $100 billion for education in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Often bypassing Congress, Duncan used the money to work directly with states, persuading them to adopt favored policies by providing incentives through Race to the Top, a $4.35 billion competitive grant program in which states were awarded points for adopting ideas such as performance-based teacher and principal evaluations, higher academic standards, and raising charter school caps. Two years later, the administration gave states the opportunity to apply for waivers that exempted them from a federal requirement under No Child Left Behind that 100 percent of American students be proficient in reading and math by 2014.

Most states bowed to the pressure. For example, 44 states and the District of Columbia adopted the Common Core, the “college and career-ready” standards created by states but promoted by Duncan.

But as new policies began rolling out, a backlash grew. Progressives protested the increased emphasis on tests. Conservatives balked at the administration’s role in promoting the Common Core standards, saying it was federal overreach that undermined state and local control of public education. And even supporters worried that tying teacher evaluations to student outcomes while rolling out difficult new standards was ill conceived.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan is introduced by President Barack Obama, before speaking at Miami Central Senior High Friday, March. 4, 2011 in Miami Fla.Photo: AP Photo/Steve Mitchell

Most notably the national teachers unions — a significant force in the Democratic Party — turned on him. But other allies and even some critics say his reforms will last. “Arne Duncan was one of the president’s best appointments. He has a big heart, cares about children, and I have enjoyed working with him,” Senate education committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), one of Duncan’s occasional adversaries, said in a statement. “When we disagree, it is usually because he believes the path to effective teaching, higher standards, and real accountability is through Washington, D.C., and I believe it should be in the hands of states, communities, parents and classroom teachers.”

Nina Rees, president and CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, applauded Duncan for his support of charter schools.

“His leadership on behalf of the federal Charter Schools Program has enabled the dramatic growth in the number of high quality charter schools, ensuring that hundreds of thousands more students now have access to better schools regardless of their family income or zip code,” she wrote in a statement.

Early education advocates were also grateful for the administration’s elevation of early education. “Secretary Duncan’s leadership and unwavering dedication to early childhood education has made an immeasurable difference in the lives of countless young learners,” First Five Years Fund executive director Kris Perry said in a statement. “He has harnessed what all of the research shows about the benefits of investing in early learning, and successfully incorporated it into the everyday mission and policy goals of the Department of Education. We are incredibly grateful to Secretary Duncan for being a champion of American’s greatest resource – its children.”

In higher education, Duncan pushed for income-based repayment of student loans, and recently claimed some success as default rates decreased.

Duncan also sought to protect Americans from for-profit colleges accused of taking advantage of federal funds, with proposed regulations that would stop the flow of funds to low-performing schools whose graduates don’t earn enough to repay their loans.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan (80), of the East team, brings the ball up as West’s Michael B. Jordan (45) trails the play in the first half of the NBA All-Star celebrity basketball game in New Orleans, Friday, Feb. 14, 2014.Photo: AP Photo/Bill Haber

“Higher education should open up doors of opportunity, but students in these low-performing programs often end up worse off than before they enrolled: saddled by debt and with few—if any—options for a career,” Duncan said in a statement last year.

President Obama has appointed John King Jr., a senior official in the education department and previously New York’s education commissioner who oversaw the roll out of Common Core there, to serve as interim education secretary for the duration of Obama’s presidency. King “is no stranger to controversy,” as Alyson Klein of Education Week put it, and will most certainly follow Duncan’s playbook.

Duncan had been widely expected to stay until the end of Obama’s second term and the president expressed his “regret and sorrow” that his friend and basketball partner is leaving. “I’ll be honest. I pushed Arne to stay,” he said in a televised press conference.

Duncan plans to return to Chicago to spend time with his family, according to The Associated Press, which was the first to report his plans to resign. He has not decided what his next move will be, but said he hopes to continue increasing opportunities for children in some capacity.

This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education.

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Dec 2015
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Next Generation and technology Solutions.

Integrated next-generation technologies may equip students to continue their education their entire lives, and can address three goals: fortifying student skills, increasing education’s ROI, and enabling students to be innovative and entrepreneurial. Education technology providers will likely need to shift their focus from content to connections.

Dgital education 2.0 - graphic

The year is 2021, and 14-year-old Anna dreams of becoming an aerospace engineer. From the moment she wakes up, Anna begins communicating with her personal “wizard,” a phablet with advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and cognitive analytics features—both verbally and via smart glasses embedded with AI features such as gesture control, facial expression coding, motion tracking, and speech recognition. Anna’s wizard connects via the Internet to the education coordinator (EC) of a government agency dedicated to researching the universe.

“Without a broader vision of social change, new technologies will only serve to reinforce existing institutional goals and forms of social inequity. Many prior attempts to mobilize technology in the service of educational reform have failed because interventions have focused narrowly on the deployment of particular media or technologies, without considering broader social, political, or economic conditions.

“Connected learning is socially embedded, interest-driven, and oriented toward expanding educational, economic, or political opportunity. It is realized when a young person is able to pursue a personal interest or passion with the support of friends and caring adults, and is in turn able to link this learning and interest to academic achievement, career success, or civic engagement. Unlike efforts at educational change that focus on technology deployment or institutional reform, connected learning takes a networked approach to social change that aligns with our ecological perspective.”

– Mizuko Ito, professor in residence, University of California, Irvine.1

The EC is a computerized virtual assistant that helps groom prospective candidates such as Anna by providing job-readiness skills. The wizard shares Anna’s performance dashboard with the EC to create an individualized learning plan encompassing digital content and virtual reality games, experiential learning exercises, and interactive opportunities with professional aerospace engineers in her approved network. Anna’s parents are contacted by the wizard to approve the lesson plan and make any purchases and agreements for Anna to proceed.

Anna carries her wizard to a virtual learning center at her high school. There she works with other students on a two-hour spacecraft modeling simulation in a cloud-based environment, in which students learn by virtually building a life-scale model. This approach allows students globally to both compete and collaborate with each other at different phases, receiving points for speed, accuracy, and teamwork. When Anna has completed the spacecraft modeling simulation, the 3D printer at the learning center produces a miniature model for her. Anna’s science teacher, stationed at another learning center in the school, is connected to the wizard and has automated access to Anna’s work, scores, and activity patterns to offer feedback and guidance on the spacecraft model. Based on Anna’s eye movements, as tracked by her smart glasses, the wizard gauges and communicates interest level and focus to her teacher, who dynamically changes content and delivery depending on where Anna needs guidance. Leveraging the learning center’s adaptive learning system and the learning plan designed by the EC, Anna’s teacher reconfigures her performance dashboard on the wizard to reflect her progress.

Anna can change her learning objectives anytime, and her wizard’s dashboard will dynamically account for all prior work done and align with her new learning objectives. Anna can also share her learning progress with her friends and family via several social media interfaces. The wizard maps her progress and will continue to evolve throughout her journey from primary to secondary school to corporate learning.

THE IMPETUS FOR CHANGE

The “first wave” of digital education—almost 10 years in the making—focused on creating, sharing, and accessing instructional content in digital forms, including online courses, digital libraries, games, and apps. Digitizing educational content, bringing devices to school, and one-off stand-alone learning apps were basic steps in the drive toward bringing technology into classrooms.2 Despite the initial efforts to digitalize education, K-12 (elementary schools), higher education, and beyond still face three key issues: skills gaps; low return on investment (ROI); and the need for innovation, entrepreneurship, and job creation.

1. Enhancing student job readiness and addressing skill shortages:

Graduating students increasingly find themselves underprepared to take on corporate positions. Emphasis on conventional methods of book learning and didactic lectures has resulted in a lack of practical and applied knowledge.3 The needs and requirements of employers are ever changing, further shortening the half-life of skills—acquired through primary, secondary, and graduate education—to five years, and schools and colleges find it challenging to keep pace.4,5 One solution developed has been the Common Core State Standards in the United States, expected to help raise student skill levels in foundational subjects such as basic math and English language.6 Though some schools have adopted Common Core standards, there is less certainty about the actual implementation across all schools by the end of 2015.7

2. Increasing ROI from K-12 and higher education:

Though the United States spends a greater proportion of its GDP on education than other OECD countries, it does not rank among the top 10 in terms of reaping the rewards of that investment.8 Research also shows that 80 percent of adults in the United States consider college education to have poor ROI.9 Rising education fees and the resulting student debt, coupled with the declining quality of graduates’ job readiness, undermine the perceived value of education in the United States.10 Personalizing learning more to the specific needs of each student will likely help generate better ROI from education.11

3. The innovation imperative in a global and competitive workplace:

Macroeconomic conditions have led to a decline in jobs and new firm growth, especially in high-wage industries in the United States.12 These trends are exacerbated by the competitive effects of a global workplace. Innovation and entrepreneurship are vital to driving job creation and economic growth, as exemplified by the life sciences industry.13 In this context, K-12 schools can design specialized education programs to help foster innovation and entrepreneurship at an early age, which in turn will help students create new jobs and carve their own career paths.14

MOVING DIGITAL EDUCATION FROM CONTENT (1.0) TO CONNECTIONS (2.0)

Is technology the answer, or at least part of the answer, to these problems? Many certainly seem to think it is, judging by the investment in educational technologies (“ed-tech”). US education spending doubled over the past 20 years to $1.17 trillion in 2013, and the fastest-growing segment of spending is digital education technologies, which is expected to rise from $23.6 billion in 2014 to $26.8 billion in 2018.15, 16, 17 Since the advent of the computer 35 years ago, learning across schools, colleges, and universities has systematically incorporated technology into the classroom. Businesses, especially, have embraced technology for employee training and development.

Ubiquitous access to learning content has only intensified the need for effective, efficient methods of delivery and utilization.18 Thanks to advanced technologies available today, it is possible to personalize and securely deliver instructional content. As a case in point, Khan Academy’s “anytime, anywhere” educational model delivers personalized learning to students worldwide and even provides diagnostics and dashboards to teachers.19 Some technologies can design adaptive learning methods to offer differentiated learning experiences.20 Nonetheless, merely adding technology to the classroom—which we saw in the first wave of digital education—is not enough to address the impetus for change.

With government, schools, and businesses now demanding connected learning, there will likely be a second wave of digital education.21Participants in the education ecosystem—school administrations, teachers, students, parents, ed-tech solution providers, and government educational agencies—will need to build stronger relationships to create learning environments like Anna’s. Integrated next-generation technologies will likely make it easier for students of all ages and backgrounds to continue their education their entire lives, both inside and outside the classroom.

These technologies can address the three drivers of change: fortifying student skills, increasing education’s ROI, and enabling students to be more innovative and entrepreneurial. To address these challenges, ed-tech solution providers will likely need to shift focus from content to connections.

SHIFTING GEARS: THE THREE CONNECTORS THAT DEFINE DIGITAL EDUCATION 2.0

Three “connectors” are widely viewed as fundamental to digital education:

Connector 1. An integrated digital education ecosystem: Parents, teachers, peers, and administrators, as well as individuals outside the formal educational system such as mentors and potential employers, form a collaborative network to deliver instruction to and guide the student at the center of the ecosystem.

Connector 2. An integrated student learning life cycle: To offer a continuous learning experience—right from K-12 to the workplace—educators and trainers should connect in-classroom and real-world learning in a way that is tailored to the needs, learning styles, passion, and potential of each student.

Connector 3. Integrated technology solutions: Ed-tech solution providers can draw upon their individual technology strengths and competencies to partner and offer integrated solutions.

Through specific case studies and examples, we present how the three connectors can transform the complete learning experience, with ed-tech solution providers acting as enablers.

Connector 1: Integrated digital education ecosystem

In Anna’s learning environment, her teacher, peers, parents, and real-world experts come together to provide a holistic learning experience. Similarly, the digital education model is rapidly evolving from transaction-based relationships to an integrated value chain (figure 1). With digital education 2.0, the education ecosystem continues to evolve around students, with their passions and interests at the center. Classrooms may extend virtually to encompass relationships with real-world experts in areas aligned with student interests; with the corporate world through internships and business-based projects; and external innovation hubs such as maker movement spaces, research labs, and business incubators and accelerators. The new ecosystem may also include peer-to-peer social learning platforms that promote open learning and enhance collaboration between students. For example, edX, a joint nonprofit online learning initiative by Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, connects like-minded individuals through the latest peer-to-peer social learning tools; Udacity, a provider of online education courses, enables individuals of all ages to collaborate on projects and receive feedback from real-world experts.22

Digital education 2.0 - figure 1

CASE STUDY: HIGH TECH HIGH CHARTER SCHOOLS

Strong partnerships between education ecosystem participants augments student performance

High Tech High (HTH) operates 12 charter schools in San Diego and Chula Vista counties, including three elementary schools, four middle schools, and five high schools. The first charter school was founded in 1998 when top tech company executives partnered with civic authorities to address the skills gap in science, technology, engineering, and math.

HTH schools bring together students, teachers, administrators, and parents through “practical hands-on training, experiential learning, coupled with traditional academic education to prepare students for college in both technical fields and liberal arts,” says Ben Daley, chief academic officer and chief operating officer of the HTH Graduate School of Education.23 Each student is paired with a faculty advisor whose responsibility includes ensuring continuous interaction, monitoring academic progress, and facilitating career planning. The advisor also stays in close touch with the student’s family. To maximize connectivity, HTH employs PowerSchool, a web-based student information portal that allows teachers to record attendance and grades. Parents and students use PowerSchool to access real-time learning and performance information, communicate with teachers, and track assignments. Administrators interface with PowerSchool to create an efficient school schedule that accounts for multiple constraints such as room capacity, teacher preparation periods, and student scheduling priority.24 Another tool HTH uses is Naviance, which helps bring together core ecosystem participants.25

HTH’s connected learning initiatives showed positive results in student performance. HTH students have completed more than 1,000 experiential learning projects in over 300 community businesses and organizations, including Qualcomm and Fox News. Of HTH’s high school graduates, 98 percent attended college, while over 30 percent entered science or math fields.26

Connector 2: The student learning life cycle

For students like Anna, technology can play a role in integrating all the aspects of their learning life cycle. Connecting learning activities across the various stages of their schooling and careers can help students continually track their learning progress, receive real-time or longitudinal feedback, identify learning needs and gaps, reach out for assistance in a more risk-free environment, and ultimately build their competencies. Technology can help build and annotate an education history based on an individual’s competencies, using different heuristics at different life stages across various subjects and modules. This history can then be used to connect the student to meaningful real-world opportunities.

As students work on real-life projects and link this learning to their formal institutional education, they can earn badges that become competency-based credentials. Personalized tools and techniques, such as PathSource and Pathbrite, can further help a learner manage the various types of content within a lesson plan and across one’s career.27

CASE STUDY: THE MET

Connected learning bolsters classroom learning with outside experience for school-to-career transitions

Big Picture Learning (BPL) envisions redesigning K-12 to adult education in the United States through the innovative use of personalized learning. The Metropolitan Regional Career and Technical Center (MET), the first BPL school, opened in 1996 in Rhode Island under the guidance of experienced educators Dennis Littky and Elliot Washor. They were given a mandate to design a ‘school for the 21st century’ that would impact the community by producing skilled graduates, lifelong learners, and responsible citizens.

Since its inception, the MET school has adopted Learning Through Interest (LTI) in which students spend two days per week engaged in learning outside of the classroom with a mentor, who is an expert in the students’ field of interest. Advisors meet with students and mentors at the LTI site, to help students develop real-world projects and build long-term personal relationships with their mentors—paving the way for lifelong learning. “The students don’t get credit necessarily for being in an internship, but they get credit for what they create while at an internship and how they present,” says David Berg, vice principal at the MET Sacramento High School in Sacramento, CA.28 With LTI, the MET gives academic credit for technology use, both inside and outside the classroom. “Students can develop deeper understanding by actually doing and making things and applying their knowledge rather than just gathering information online,” says Elliot Washor, codirector of Big Picture Learning.29

The LTI-driven personalized and connected learning approach has equipped MET’s students to transition from school to a career. The school has maintained a 98 percent college acceptance rate.30 As Elliot Washor highlights, a Big Picture alumni survey31 revealed that for over two-thirds of MET graduates, work-based learning and the opportunity to work with advisors at internship sites were important aspects that contributed to success in life after high school.32

Connector 3: Integrated technology solutions

Underlying both connector 1 and 2 is the third type of connector, the integration between diverse technology solutions to create better learning experiences for students—similar to Anna’s wizard. As a case in point, consider the customizable “toolkit,” a type of universal remote for the digitalization of education.

“Toolkits should allow teachers to address not just what is being taught but how it is being taught—which is different from class to class, from school to school, and from community to community,” says Antero Garcia, assistant professor at Colorado State University.33 “Teachers can use toolkits to cocreate and adapt content real-time to either bolster existing curricula or design a course from scratch, offering an enriched learning experience to students.” With toolkits, students can engage in blended learning: face-to-face classroom methods combined with computer-mediated activities that help students discover and pursue interests at their own pace.

As described by Philipp Schmidt, MIT Media Lab director’s fellow and cofounder of Peer 2 Peer University, “Technology does not replace the teacher but is the glue to connect isolated experiences in support of core values of learning: project-based, peer-supported, passion/purpose-centric, and play-oriented.”34 To that effect, ed-tech companies are collaborating (figure 2) to integrate elements of game-based learning and simulation, experiential learning, augmented reality, and interactive tools as part of their offerings.35 Some partnerships aim to improve the integrity, security, and flow of data between products.36 Others bundle hardware and software designed to help manage a “classroom of devices.”37 Many partnerships offer personalized learning experiences for students and assist in managing their learning goals.38 In addition, infrastructure providers play an important role in facilitating connections among core education ecosystem participants: students, teachers, administrators, and parents. For example, partnerships between cloud companies and learning management system (LMS) providers are helping students and teachers access and supervise learning content virtually anytime, anywhere, on any platform.39

Digital education 2.0 - figure 2

As our case studies have shown, the three connectors address the impetus for change: bridging the skills gaps, increasing ROI from education, and enabling students to be innovative and entrepreneurial. By adopting unique strategic positions with varying depth and breadth across the three connectors, ed-tech solution providers can become catalysts of change for students.

BRINGING IT TOGETHER FOR DIGITAL EDUCATION 2.0

Many educational institutions that benefit most from digital learning solutions are starting to move toward the cloud, upgrading their LMS, investing in network infrastructure, and leveraging social networks for education support and training—all to improve connections across education. In order to capitalize on building and supporting the integrated education ecosystem, executives—including CEOs, CTOs, and product and R&D heads at ed-tech solution providers—should choose a strategic position that captures the broadest possible role in the value chain while exploiting internal competencies or easily acquirable assets.

Ed-tech solution providers should consider the three core needs of an integrated education ecosystem:

  1. Infrastructure to provide the underlying foundation for connectors
  2. Content that is engaging and based on students’ passions and interests
  3. Evaluation and assessment tools to build personalized learning journeys

Ed-tech companies can consider three strategic positions that meet each of these needs, depending on their solution offerings, competencies, and role in the ecosystem. For each of the three strategic positions, we have identified specific strategic choices that companies can adopt to create value, as well as questions that executives should consider while selecting and implementing a chosen strategy. Our goal herein is to illustrate potential strategic options and related questions rather than providing definitive recommendations and an exhaustive survey, because each company will need to find its own highest-value strategic position.

Foundation builder

The foundation builder provides core technology infrastructure and services—the building blocks of next-generation education solutions. The role involves developing next-generation LMS and cloud-based services for efficient data storage, information retrieval, accessibility, and security, by integrating discrete elements such as core technology infrastructure, student information, instructional content, and learning technologies. Cloud technologies can be used dually: to create the base infrastructure and to enable connections. Foundation builders can also use virtual learning spaces, which facilitate the shift from a unidirectional education value chain to an integrated education ecosystem.

As you consider a strategic position within the foundation builder category, here are a few questions to consider:

  • What can foundation builders do to provide “anytime, anywhere” courses to students? For example, they may consider creating select connectivity solutions in partnership with learning analytics or content solution providers.
  • How can virtual learning spaces be used to provide a connected learning experience for students? Examples of infrastructure for such spaces include existing business incubators, innovation hubs, and maker spaces.

Content specialist

The content specialist delivers a combination of content creation, content aggregation, and customized delivery solutions on learning devices to ecosystem participants. Traditional content can be transformed into interactive, visualization-rich content to enable learning through experience, discovery, and exploration. Wearable devices can capture eye and body movement to facilitate cognitive learning. Cloud technologies can be used to pull content from diverse sources, curate it, and present it to students in a real-time and engaging way.

As you consider a strategic position within the content specialist category, here are a few questions to consider:

  • What are the opportunities for integrating wearables with health applications into classroom learning? For example, digital health data such as circadian rhythms can be used to determine “learning blocks,” or focused learning times when an individual is at his or her most productive both physically and mentally.
  • How can content weave practical and creative problem-solving aspects with existing learning solutions such as educational devices and digital classrooms to better cater to the individual needs of students and teachers? For example, in the Faulkes Telescope Project, students use real science data and reach out to astronomers, other scientists, and fellow students for advice when carrying out an experiment to solve real-world problems.40

Digital education 2.0 - figure 3

Learning customization provider

The learning customization provider focuses primarily on providing students and teachers with analytics, advanced learning, and assessment solutions. In the United States, venture capitalists are actively investing in ed-tech companies that offer analytics and LMS solutions, presenting a significant opportunity for these companies. An LMS solution can capture students’ competencies and help them manage their career paths over time in line with their lifelong learning needs. Personalized and adaptive learning solutions can humanize collaboration among ecosystem participants. Technology can be used to “gamify” the learning experience, with badges to reward interest-based learning. Next-generation technologies such as semantic analytics can be used to more closely understand student and teacher preferences, interests, and inhibitions.

As you consider a strategic position within the learning customization provider category, here are a few questions to consider:

  • How can existing analytics and data mining capabilities incorporate predictive analytics solutions? For instance, gamification and badging could be standardized to complement existing certifications and become part of next-generation analytics and assessment solutions.
  • What technologies can humanize assessment solutions? As an example, holographic technology—such as the recreation of Michael Jackson at the 2014 Billboards Music Awards—can create “avatars” of teachers, mentors, and real-world experts.

Connectors can enable individuals, organizations, and technologies to meet the dynamic needs of new-generation students like Anna. In the coming wave of digital education 2.0, ed-tech solution providers can transform their roles in the value chain from technology providers to solution partners who can help create and foster an integrated education ecosystem. Ed-tech solution providers looking to establish a differentiated position should consider factors such as the standardization of learning platforms, technology security, data privacy, content life-cycle management, and a changing education ecosystem. The choice of a company’s strategic position depends on its role in the ecosystem, core competencies, and optimal business model. Solution providers who consider all these and explore the latest technology trends can capitalize on the imminent wave of digital education 2.0.

 

Endnotes

  1. Mizuko Ito (professor in residence, University of California, Irvine), interview with the authors, September 23, 2014.
  2. Kirsten Edwards and Ryan Mahoney, New rules, new schools, new market, ThinkEquity Partners LLC, May 26, 2005, <http://www.educationindustry.org/assets/thinkequity-k12-report.pdf>.
  3. Out of 1.8 million high school graduates who took the ACT in 2013, only 26 percent reached the college readiness benchmarks in all four subjects—meaning roughly only one in four was academically capable to take up college coursework in the four key subject areas. Source: “ACT, The condition of college and career readiness 2013,” 2013, <http://www.act.org/research/policymakers/cccr13/pdf/CCCR13-NationalReadinessRpt.pdf>; William D. Eggers and John Hagel III, Brawn from brains: Talent, policy and the future of American competitiveness, Deloitte University Press, September 27, 2012, <http://52.7.214.27/articles/brawn-from-brains-talent-policy-and-the-future-of-american-competitiveness/> Nancy Hellmich, “Survey: More employers plan to hire new college grads,” USA Today, April 30,2014, <http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2014/04/24/college-graduates-jobs-careerbuilder/8017155/>.
  4. Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Ltd., “Massive open online courses (MOOCs): Not disruptive yet, but the future looks bright,” 2014, <http://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/global/Documents/Technology-Media-Telecommunications/gx-tmt-2014prediction-MOOCs.pdf>; Marie Bjerede, “The dilemma of authentic learning: Do you destroy what you measure?,” O’Reilly Radar, March 7, 2012, <http://radar.oreilly.com/2012/03/education-making-testing.html>.
  5. National Center for Education Statistics’ June 2012 issue of Digest of Education Statisticsnoted that more than 1 million children drop out of US schools every year. The percentage of 16–24-year-olds who were not enrolled in a school and have not earned a high school credential was reported to be 7.1 percent in 2011.
  6. Developed by education chiefs and governors in 48 states, Common Core State Standards were designed to help students prepare for the demanding needs of colleges and businesses. These standards offer a set of clear guidelines for K-12 math and English language proficiency requirements, as well as critical thinking, problem-solving, and analytical skills needed for entry-level careers and corporate training programs. Using the standards, teachers can more easily track and assess student progress throughout their school years and academic careers. Source:  Common Core State Standards Initiative, “What parents should know,” <http://www.corestandards.org/what-parents-should-know/>, accessed October 17, 2014.
  7. Roberto M. Robledo, “Test expert: Most schools not ready,” Californian, May 7, 2014, <http://www.thecalifornian.com/story/news/education/2014/05/14/not-ready-common-core/9085155/>, accessed June 3, 2014.
  8. US higher education spending, as percentage of total spending, increased from 1 percent in 1962 to 3 percent in 2012, according to “Not what it used to be: American universities represent declining value for money to their students,” The Economist, December 1, 2012; Associated Press, “U.S. education spending tops global list, study shows,” CBS News, June 25, 2013, <http://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-education-spending-tops-global-list-study-shows/>.
  9. Lawlor Group, Ten trends for 2013: How marketplace conditions will influence private higher education enrollment—and how colleges can respond, 2013, <http://www.sumsem.com/testing/2013_trends.pdf>.
  10. “Not what it used to be,” The Economist.
  11. Darby Carr, “Online school perspective: Student focused learning,” AdvanceEd, October 7, 2013, <http://www.advanc-ed.org/perspectives/online-school-perspective-student-focused-learning>.
  12. Annie Lowrey, “Recovery has created far more low-wage jobs than better-paid ones,”The New York Times, April 27, 2014, <http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/28/business/economy/recovery-has-created-far-more-low-wage-jobs-than-better-paid-ones.html?_r=0>; MaryBeth Matzek, “Fewer businesses get out of the starting gates,” WisBusiness, May 16, 2014, <http://bizopinion.wisbusiness.com/2014/05/marybeth-matzek-fewer-businesses-get.html>.
  13. Ian Hathaway and Robert E. Litan, Entrepreneurship and job creation in the U.S. life sciences sector, Brookings Institution, June 11, 2014, <http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2014/06/entrepreneurship-job-creation-life-sciences-sector-litan>.
  14. For example, see Blue Valley School District’s CAPS program, which helps high school students to become next-generation scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs. Source: Blue Valley Schools, “Blue Valley’s CAPS program announces new Executive Director,” August 12, 2014, <http://www.bluevalleyk12schools.org/assets/files/2014/CAPS%20announces%20ED.pdf>.
  15. National Center for Education Statistics, “Table 106.10. Expenditures of educational institutions related to the gross domestic product, by level of institution: Selected years, 1929–30 through 2012–13,” Digest of Education Statistics, February 2014, <http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d13/tables/dt13_106.10.asp>.
  16. The segment includes educational devices, software, games, and apps; and related IT services, connectivity, and data center solutions.
  17. Rishi Sood, Rika Narisawa, Anurag Gupta, and Katell Thielemann, Forecast: Enterprise IT spending for the government and education markets, worldwide, 2012–2018, 2Q14 update, Gartner, July 18, 2014.
  18. The Deloitte-Brandeis University joint survey conducted in November 2013 focused on understanding demographic preferences regarding learning: how students and professionals absorb, retain, and use knowledge. The survey aimed to ascertain interest in prospects of individualized learning, experiential learning, online learning, collaborative learning spaces, and game-based learning. It covered a total of 130 students and working professionals globally.
  19. Peter High, “Salman Khan, the most influential person in education technology,” Forbes, June 1, 2014, <http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterhigh/2014/01/06/salman-khan-the-most-influential-person-in-education-technology/>.
  20. Phil Hill, “Differentiated, personalized and adaptive learning: Some clarity for EDUCAUSE,” e-Literate, October 15, 2013, <http://mfeldstein.com/differentiated-personalized-adaptive-learning-clarity-educause/>.
  21. For example, in June 2013, President Obama launched the ConnectED initiative to provide high-speed broadband and wireless connectivity to all schools within five years. Besides providing connectivity, he emphasized bringing educational technology into classrooms, into the hands of teachers, and training them on using ed-tech solutions. See White House, “President Obama unveils ConnectED initiative to bring America’s students into digital age,” June 6, 2013, <http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/06/06/president-obama-unveils-connected-initiative-bring-america-s-students-di>.
  22. edX, “How it works,” <https://www.edx.org/how-it-works>, accessed October 17, 2014; Udacity, “The Udacity course experience,” <https://www.udacity.com/course-experience>, accessed October 17, 2014.
  23. Ben Daley (chief academic officer and chief operating officer, High Tech High Graduate School of Education), interview with the authors, August 15, 2014.
  24. High Tech High, “Parent/student access in PowerSchool,” <http://dp.hightechhigh.org/~jwade/syllabus/Parent%20PS%20Instructions2.pdf>, accessed October 17, 2014.
  25. Naviance, “Case study: High Tech High,” <http://www.naviance.com/resources/case-studies/high-tech-high>, accessed October 17, 2014.
  26. High Tech High, “Results,” <http://www.hightechhigh.org/about/results.php>, accessed October 17, 2014.
  27. PathSource, “What we do,” <http://www.pathsource.com/about>, accessed October 17, 2014; Pathbrite, “About us,” <http://pathbrite.com/about-us/>, accessed October 17, 2014.
  28. David Berg (vice principal, The Met Sacramento High School), interview with the authors, August 21, 2014.
  29. Elliot Washor (cofounder and codirector of Big Picture Learning), interview with the authors, August 19, 2014.
  30. The Metropolitan Regional Career and Technical Center, “College transition,” <http://metcenter.org/about-us/one-student-at-a-time/college-transition/>.
  31. Survey conducted by third-party evaluator.
  32. Elliot Washor (cofounder and codirector of Big Picture Learning), interview with the authors, August 19, 2014.
  33. Antero Garcia (assistant professor at Colorado State University), interview with the authors, August 25, 2014.
  34. J. Philipp Schmidt (MIT Media Lab director’s fellow and cofounder of Peer 2 Peer University), interview with the authors, August 19, 2014.
  35. Pearson announced a partnership with GlassLab, a group of institutions focused on game- and simulation-based learning and assessment. (Source: Pearson, “Pearson and GlassLab: Game on!” December 2012.) In March 2013, McGraw-Hill Education launched the McGraw-Hill Practice, a suite of hands-on, experiential learning games that provides digital and personalized learning experiences. Government in Action is one such game, which McGraw-Hill Education developed in conjunction with Muzzy Lane Software. (Source: McGraw Hill Education, “McGraw-Hill Education enters higher education gaming market with launch of McGraw-Hill Practice line of simulations at SXSWedu,” March 2013.) Pearson collaborated with augmented reality provider Layar to allow parents, teachers, and students to instantly launch interactive instructional content directly from a textbook page. (Source: Pearson, “New app makes print textbook pages come to life on a mobile device,” October 2013.)
  36. PRWeb, “Blackboard and Pearson collaborate in effort to better support K-12 schools,” February 12, 2014, <http://www.blackboard.com/news-and-events/Press-Releases.aspx?releaseid=122714>.
  37. D. Frank Smith, “Samsung’s first K–12 tablet strikes the right balance for the classroom,”EdTech, May 16, 2014, <http://www.edtechmagazine.com/k12/article/2014/05/samsungs-first-k-12-tablet-strikes-right-balance-classroom>.
  38. Knewton, “Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Knewton announce pioneering partnership to deliver adaptive learning solutions to K–12 students,” June 6, 2013, <http://www.knewton.com/about/press/houghton-mifflin-harcourt-and-knewton-announce-pioneering-partnership/>.
  39. Canvas Network, “Box builds ecosystem to modernize collaboration in education,” August 8, 2013, <http://www.instructure.com/news/press-releases/box-builds-ecosystem-to-modernize-collaboration-in-education>.
  40. Faulkes Telescope Project, “Research-based learning,” <http://www.faulkes-telescope.com/education/rbl_approaches> accessed October 17, 2014.
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Dec 2015
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