Since the pandemic, the urgency of designing and scaling evidence-based products to support learning recovery has become more pronounced. Educational institutions are grappling with unprecedented disruptions and widening achievement gaps, making the need for effective, research-backed interventions critical. The focus is not only on creating these products but also ensuring they are adopted and effectively implemented in schools and classrooms across the country.

The Leveraging Evidence to Accelerate Recovery Nationwide (LEARN) Network, funded by the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences, is at the forefront of this effort. Led by SRI International, a nonprofit with a strong track record of bringing innovations to market, the LEARN Network focuses on promoting learning growth by enhancing the use of evidence-based educational products.

The Network also comprises four product teams dedicated to adapting and positioning evidence-based products that boost literacy and math learning to make them more useful and accessible for educators. By providing learning and coaching opportunities, the LEARN Network aims to build the capacity of these teams and others in the field to equitably and sustainably scale educational products. This involves understanding educators’ problems of practice and needs and systems decision-making processes in product procurement, and developing tools for researchers, developers and educators to support the widespread adoption of effective solutions.

Jessica Mislevy
Director of Digital Learning and Technology Policy, SRI Education

Recently, EdSurge spoke with education researchers Kerry Friedman and Jessica Mislevy about the importance of integrating evidence-based practices, educator input and a systems lens from the earliest stages of product development. Friedman, a former teacher with 12 years of experience in research and technical assistance, focuses on strengthening educators' and system leaders' ability to use evidence in practice. As the project director for the LEARN Network, she works with researchers and developers on capacity building and design of evidence-based products and programs. Mislevy is the director of digital learning and technology policy at SRI Education, specializing in mixed-methods evaluations of products designed to improve student outcomes in K-12 and post-secondary education. She is a co-principal investigator with the LEARN Network, focusing on educators’ effective adoption and scaling of evidence-based practices and programs.

EdSurge: Why are evidence-based products and programs so vital, especially at this point in time in America’s schools?

Mislevy: We've all seen how the COVID-19 pandemic upended education systems across the country, interrupting learning for students and exacerbating existing inequalities in education. We're seeing this reflected in the 2022 data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress with the first-ever decline recorded in mathematics and the largest average score decline in reading in decades. Research shows that the quality of learning products and programs matters for student outcomes. Now more than ever, it's important to get those products that can improve education outcomes for all learners and eliminate persistent achievement gaps in districts and schools. Unfortunately, many effective products don't reach educators due to an overwhelming supply of products. It can be hard to select products that are effective and well-matched to students' needs and contexts, as well as affordable and easy to use.

What key considerations should researchers and developers keep in mind while designing and scaling products and programs?

Friedman: When considering scale, researchers often view it as the final step. However, designing a scalable innovation begins with the initial idea. This is where our framework for the LEARN Network starts. We adapted SRI International's Invent-Apply-Transition (I-A-T) framework to better fit the education sector, incorporating Liberatory Design principles focused on equity and systems thinking.

Kerry Friedman
Senior Researcher, SRI Education

Both the I-A-T framework and Liberatory Design emphasize the importance of understanding users' needs from the start. This understanding forms the foundation of the Invent stage of the I-A-T framework. In the Apply stage, you assess the broader market, identifying key players, infrastructure, policies, and competition to refine your innovation. Finally, in the Transition phase, you consider how to scale your product, envisioning it at a systems level and exploring pathways to create a financially viable approach.

We created the Learn to Scale Toolkit to guide researchers through these stages and support the scaling process. We also profiled various products on their journeys from development to scale in our Stories of Scaling.

How is the Network working to increase the use of evidence-based products and programs in schools?

Mislevy: We're coming at it from both the supply and the demand side. On the supply side, the LEARN Network provides capacity building to researchers and developers in scaling their evidence-based products. So we support them in adapting their products while considering educator context, decision-making processes and usability. This has included a mix of one-on-one and cross-team coaching and consultation sessions to provide tools and training while also supporting and promoting team building and collaboration. In addition to SRI scaling experts, we also bring together other expert voices to contribute to these conversations. Then on the demand side, we're working to better understand the needs and barriers that educators face in adopting and scaling evidence-based products. We translate these findings into actionable takeaways for developers to ensure their products are more likely to be adopted and scaled.

Does the Network have any insights into school and district needs or how they select programs and products?

Free LEARN Network resources for researchers, developers and educators:

• The LEARN to Scale Toolkit: a comprehensive resource for researchers and developers based on the Invent-Apply-Transition framework
• Stories of Scaling: a profile series highlighting impactful researchers, entrepreneurs and evidence-based products
• The LEARN Network Blog: articles, podcasts and Q&As featuring experts and thought leaders from across the U.S.
• LEARN Network Research: action-oriented research briefs focused on product development, procurement and more

Mislevy: The LEARN Network conducted a focused study on K-12 education procurement practices to better understand how decision-makers determine which products to adopt in their schools and districts and how evidence is used in those decisions. We conducted in-depth interviews with a broad array of education leaders and other education stakeholders, and also conducted nationally representative surveys of public school and district leaders through the RAND American Educator Panels. We examined what motivates schools and districts to procure products, who is involved in the decision-making process and what sources of information leaders look to when selecting products. For example, we found that routine curriculum review cycles often motivated educators to procure core curriculum materials, whereas reviews of student outcome data more often led to the procurement of supplemental materials.

We also saw that teachers are reported as most involved in identifying and evaluating prospective products for their schools and districts, while school and district leaders are more involved in making final decisions about which products to select. In terms of usage, research and evidence were amongst the more influential sources for informing procurement decisions, though we found that recommendations from fellow education leaders and end users actually ranked higher. Our research has important implications for product developers so they really understand the systemic forces that influence when and why products are procured, as well as who is involved throughout that procurement process to increase the likelihood of product uptake and scale. We recently published on the LEARN Network website the first of several planned research briefs, which features lessons for developers ready to bring their products to market or scale to broader audiences.

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The information reported here was supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Grant R305N220012 to SRI International. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the Institute or the U.S. Department of Education.

© Image Credit: Jacob Lund / Shutterstock

How to scale to new markets using pilots with international school operators.

GUEST COLUMN | by Michael Spencer

It’s hard to ignore the ongoing macro market challenges in edtech right now: venture investing is at just 10% of peak 2021 levels, while K-12 budgets in the U.S. are facing a $65B revenue decline due to the ESSR funding cliff, declining enrollment and increasing labor costs.

At the same time, sales to schools has become ‘noisier’ as there are more and more K-12 startups selling products, while US school districts have cracked down after being inundated with sales offers and phishing scams that lead to ransomware attacks.

Global from the Get-Go

In this climate, the only viable route to success for edtech companies is adopting a global sales strategy from the get-go. 

‘In this climate, the only viable route to success for edtech companies is adopting a global sales strategy from the get-go.’

Over the years, I’ve spoken with many edtech founders about go-to-market and many of them have expressed a reluctance to expand and sell into international markets. They cite long sales cycles, high costs and low success rates among the reasons they don’t want to do it. After all, selling to U.S. schools and districts is challenging in the best of circumstances, so why extend that effort to geographical markets you know even less about? 

To Take Your Startup to the Next Level

However, the reality for many K-12 B2B founders, especially if they sell to U.S. school districts and/or organic growth has reached a saturation point, is that to take your startup to the next level, you need proactive early growth into international markets. As a long-time edtech executive turned early- to mid-stage investor, I believe that using channel partners to facilitate growth into thousands of untapped international school operators can be a highly successful way to scale your sales. Expanding into international markets while you’re trying to establish your company may sound daunting, but it’s often the simplest and fastest way to generate scalable, sustainable recurring revenue growth.

The Key is Pilots

So how do you put this into practice? The key is pilots. 

What are pilots?

Pilot programs aren’t the same as product demonstrations, or even beta tests. Conducted effectively, pilot programs can help schools and companies together weigh the potential value and impact of new education tools in ways that tests alone typically can’t.

This makes pilots a critical part of the K-12 sales process. They are also a common fail-point for vendors, something I call ‘pilot purgatory’ – prolonged pilots with no clearly defined expectations, measure of success or decision points that don’t then convert to paid customers. The majority of schools lack the resources, know-how, tools and processes to conduct effective edtech pilots, so to make this the cornerstone of a successful global growth strategy, you need to be prepared to take the lead.

What does a successful edtech pilot program look like? What pitfalls should you avoid?

Advantages of pilots

‘Fail fast’ is a famous philosophy among startup entrepreneurs. For product developers, this means rapid testing and re-development to find what solves your users’ pain points most effectively. When testing and evaluating edtech solutions, it is most valuable to do it in the classroom with real teachers and students. This enables:

• Feedback loops → the developer gets the most relevant feedback to support feature development by improving their understanding of how schools actually use technology and what the real needs of teachers, students and parents/carers are, as well as identifying potential challenges ahead of technology implementation. (For this reason, the famous accelerator Y-Combinator lists pilots as criteria in their guidelines for edtech products.)
• Educator buy-in → pilot programs increase communication between schools and companies, as teachers can see the tool in action and founders develop a deep understanding of the way schools really work, their challenges and roles. Enhanced communication and collaboration among stakeholders creates a more connected learning community.
• Evidence of efficacy → pilots are best practice to find product-market fit and pave the way to get VC funding. The biggest edtech-focused VCs, such as Reach Capital, guide companies to build their own efficacy portfolio.

 

Overcoming challenges for a successful pilot

1. Identify need – Clearly articulate the specific challenge your solution is trying to address so you can clearly communicate the value you will add to a school’s day-to-day operations. Exploring international markets doesn’t require a shift in mission, values, or approach. Students globally all face the same challenges – all that’s required to succeed in the international market is a strategic channel partner or school operator who knows what works and what they need to maximize your impact, to do your due diligence, and to ensure solutions are presented in a manner that the local market needs.

2. Plan – Agree with the school upon specific pilot objectives to ensure a shared vision and identify data that will be used to determine success. Set agreements with the school that outline roles and responsibilities, timelines and how results will be used.

3. Train and implement – Ensure teachers have training and tech support to enable strong implementation of your solution. Take a high-touch approach to onboarding students.

4. Collect data – Collect quantitative and qualitative data so you can determine whether the pilot objectives are being met. Create formal opportunities (such as surveys, focus groups and post-pilot debriefs) for teachers and students to give feedback. Send usage updates to the school regularly throughout the pilot.

5. Analyze and decide – Analyze collected data to evaluate whether the edtech tool met the pilot objectives.You can pilot something, but without a benchmark and post-pilot review, it is useless. Work with the school to understand and negotiate the total cost of implementing the edtech tool. (Consider ongoing costs for licensing, installation, training and tech support.)

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Michael E. Spencer is founder and CEO of Global Expansion Strategies supporting founders and schools with all aspects of the pilot process. To date, 100% of GES pilots have gone on to full implementation, with significant impacts on student outcomes. Connect with Michael on LinkedIn. 

The post Supercharge Your Edtech Startup appeared first on EdTech Digest.

Tech giants Google, Microsoft and OpenAI have unintentionally assigned educators around the world major homework for the summer: Adjusting their assignments and teaching methods to adapt to a fresh batch of AI features that students will enter classrooms with in the fall.

Educators at both schools and colleges were already struggling to keep up with ChatGPT and other AI tools during this academic year, but a fresh round of announcements last month by major AI companies may require even greater adjustments by educators to preserve academic integrity and to accurately assess student learning, teaching experts say.

Meanwhile, educators also have scores of new edtech products to review that promise to save them time on lesson planning and administrative tasks thanks to AI.

One of the most significant changes was OpenAI’s announcement that it would make its latest generation of chatbot, which it dubbed GPT-4o, free to anyone. Previously, only an older version of the tool, GPT-3.5, was free, and people had to pay at least $20 a month to get access to the state-of-the-art model. The new model can also accept not just text, but spoken voice inputs and visual inputs, so that users can do things like share a still photo or image of their screen with the chatbot to get feedback.

“It’s a game-changing shift,” says Marc Watkins, a lecturer of writing and rhetoric at the University of Mississippi and director of the university’s AI Summer Institute for Teachers of Writing. He says that when many educators experimented with the previous free version of ChatGPT, many came away unimpressed, but the new version will be a “huge wake-up call” for how powerful the technology is, he adds.

And now that students and professors can talk to these next-generation chatbots instead of just type, there’s fresh concern that the so-called “homework apocalypse” unleashed by earlier versions of ChatGPT will get worse, as professors may find it even harder to design assignments that students can’t just have these AI bots complete for them.

“I think that’s going to really challenge what it means to be an educator this fall,” Watkins adds, noting that the changes mean that professors and teachers may not only need to change the kind of assignments they give, but they may need to rethink how they deliver material as well now that students can use AI tools to do things like summarize lecture videos for them.

And education appears to be an area identified by tech companies as a “killer application” of AI chatbots, a use case that helps drive adoption of the technology. Several demos last month by OpenAI, Google, and other companies honed in on educational uses of their latest chatbots. And just last week OpenAI unveiled a new partnership program aimed at colleges called ChatGPT Edu.

“Both Google and OpenAI are gunning for education,” says José Bowen, a longtime higher ed leader and consultant who co-wrote a new book called “Teaching with AI.” “They see this both as a great use case and also as a tremendous market.”

Changing Classes

Tech giants aren’t the only ones changing the equation for educators.

Many smaller companies have put out tools in recent months targeted at educational uses, and they are marketing them heavily on TikTok, Instagram and other social media platforms to students and teachers.

A company called Turbolearn, for instance, has pushed out a video on TikTok titled “Why I stopped taking notes during class,” which has been viewed more than 100,000 times. In it, a young woman says that she discovered a “trick” when she was a student at Harvard University. She describes opening up the company’s tool on her laptop during class and clicking a record button. “The software will automatically use your recording to make notes, flashcards and quiz questions,” she says in the promotional video.

New AI tools can make audio recordings of lectures and automatically create summaries and flashcards of the material. Some educators worry that it will keep students from paying attention.

While the company markets this as a way to free students so they can focus on listening in class, Watkins worries that skipping notetaking will mean students will tune out and not do the work of processing what they hear in a lecture.

Now that such tools are out there, Watkins suggests that professors look for more ways to do active learning in their classes, and to put more of what he called “intentional friction” in student learning so that students are forced to stop and participate or to reflect on what is being said.

“Try pausing your lecture and start having debates with your students — get into small group discussions,” he says. “Encourage students to do annotations — to read with pen or pencil or highlighter. We want to slow things down and make sure they’re pausing for a little while,” even as the advertisements for AI tools promise a way to make learning speedier and more efficient.

Slowing down is the advice that Bonni Stachowiak has for educators as well. Stachowiak, who is dean of teaching and learning at Vanguard University, points to recent advice by teaching guru James Lang to “slow walk” the use of AI in classrooms, by keeping in mind fundamental principles of teaching as educators experiment with new AI tools.

“I don’t mean resisting — I don’t think we should stick our head in the sand,” says Stachowiak. “But it’s OK to be slowly reflecting and slowly experimenting” with these new tools in classrooms, she adds. That’s especially true because keeping up with all the new AI announcements is not realistic considering all the other demands of teaching jobs.

The tools are coming fast, though.

“The maddening thing about all of this is that these tools are being deployed publicly in a grand experiment nobody asked for,” says Watkins, of the University of Mississippi. “And I know how hard it is for faculty to carve out time for anything outside of their workload.”

For that reason, he says college and school leaders need to be driving efforts to make more systematic changes in teaching and assessment. “We’re going to have to really dig in and start thinking about how we approach teaching and how students approach learning. It’s something that the entire university is going to have to think about.”

The new tools will likely mean new financial investments for schools and colleges as well.

“At some point AI is going to become the next big expense,” Bowen, the education consultant, told EdSurge.

Even though many tools are free at the moment, Bowen predicts these tools will end up costing colleges at a time when budgets are already tight.

Saving Time?

Plenty of the newest AI tools for education are aimed at educators, promising to save them time.

Several new products, for instance, allow teachers to use AI to quickly recraft worksheets, test questions and other teaching materials to change the reading level, so that a teacher could take an article from a newspaper and quickly have it revised so that younger students can better understand it.

“They will literally rewrite your words to that audience or that purpose,” says Watkins.

Such features are in several commercial products, as well as in free AI tools — just last month, the nonprofit Khan Academy announced that it would make its AI tools for teachers free to all educators.

“There’s good and bad with these things,” Watkins adds. On a positive note, such tools could greatly assist students with learning disabilities. “But the problem is when we tested this,” he adds, “it helped those students, but it got to the point where other students said, ‘I don’t have to read anything ever again,’ because the tool could also summarize and turn any text into a series of bullet points.”

Another popular feature with new AI services is to try to personalize assignments by adapting educational materials to a student’s interest, says Dan Meyer, vice president of user growth at Amplify, a curriculum and assessment company, who writes a newsletter about teaching mathematics.

Meyer worries that such tools are being overhyped, and that they may have limited effectiveness in classrooms.

“You just can't take the same dull word problems that students are doing every day and change them all to be about baseball,” he says. “Kids will wind up hating baseball, not loving math.”

He summed up his view in a recent post he titled, “Generative AI is Best at Something Teachers Need Least.”

Meyer worries that many new products start with what generative AI can do and try to push out products based on that, rather than starting with what educators need and designing tools to address those challenges.

At the college level, Bowen sees potential wins for faculty in the near future, if, say, tools like learning management systems add AI features that can do tasks like build a course website after the instructor feeds it a syllabus. “That’s going to be a real time saver for faculty,” he predicts.

But teaching experts note that the biggest challenges will be finding ways to keep students learning while also preparing them for a workplace that seems to be rapidly adopting AI tools.

Bowen hopes that colleges can find a way to focus on teaching students the skills that make us most human, as AI takes over routine tasks in many white-collar industries.

“Maybe,” he says, “this time we’ll realize that the liberal arts really do matter.”

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