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I Can't Get No . . . Innovation
219 Plays9 months ago
Phil, Morgan, and Neil address the question of what meaningful innovations are we seeing, mostly in higher education. And after pushing themselves to find solid answers, addressing the question of why there is so little innovation in EdTech right now. Integrating old ideas and established EdTech can be wonderful, but is there anything outside of AI that is new?
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Transcript
Introduction and Topic Overview
00:00:01
Speaker
you
00:00:10
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to Online Education Across the Atlantic. I'm here, as always, with Glenda Morgan and Neil Mosley. It's great to have you all here. So today we're going to be talking, trying to look at innovation. Is anything happening in the ed tech space? What interesting are we seeing? And if not, why not? So that's going to be our main topic today.
UK EdTech News and Concerns
00:00:34
Speaker
But ahead of time, there, as always, over the past two years, quite a bit of ed tech news that we should round up and see what's actually happening. So we'll start out with, there was a report, the Office for Students, around two universities in particular, Neil, that's probably worth mentioning. Can you sort of highlight for our listeners what's happening there? And I'm trying to avoid having to pronounce correctly Buckinghamshire.
00:01:02
Speaker
Yeah, that's a tricky one, isn't it? That's a tricky one. The Shires, yeah. So yeah, basically, this is a report from the Office for Students, which, you know, for American listeners, they're the kind of regulator of universities over here in the UK. So they
00:01:18
Speaker
basically announced last year that they were going to do some assessments of I think eight universities and colleges and it was basically to investigate concerns around the quality of business and management courses and so this is a report that's kind of on the back of some of those assessments and so
00:01:39
Speaker
the University of Wolverhampton, Buckinghamshire, Newham University, and so Buckinghamshire, Newham University, it's catching, it's catching, you got me, was the one that kind of had the worst rap sheet essentially and I guess things that jumped out kind of relevant to the sort of things that we talk about I suppose are things like inconsistent use of the VLE. I mean actually when you read the report around the kind of university
00:02:07
Speaker
It's pretty depressing reading, to be honest, around resources not being up today, inconsistent delivery, delivery that's just really jarring in respect to the types of students and non-traditional types of students that they have with full-time responsibilities.
UK vs US Educational Quality Reports
00:02:25
Speaker
There's a whole bunch of different things. And actually, in a weird way, the kind of inconsistency of resources on the VLE, which one might say is actually a more common occurrence, is the least of the things that get flagged up in that report.
00:02:41
Speaker
Well, for all the other readers, not for us. Morgan went straight to that point. I know. I know she did. Yeah, she did. Yeah. I mean, you know, that's the thing that doesn't massively surprise me. And to a certain extent, some of the things that highlighted don't surprise me like, you know, people using old case studies in business degrees. I've kind of seen that. I remember working with a
00:03:06
Speaker
university on a curriculum transformation project and I remember the university and essentially kind of pointing to one of their business programs and pointing to one of the courses where you know the the the content was just so out of date but they just didn't feel like they could influence the person teaching to make that change and they're waiting for that person to retire so you know some of those things that kind of came out I've kind of experienced but the VLE one
00:03:35
Speaker
I guess because of the world that I operate in isn't hugely surprising to me, although it's the one thing that probably is more of an online education across the Atlantic type story. Yes, I did jump on that. And to his credit, Neil snorted at me across the Atlantic.
The Role of the Office for Students
00:03:54
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That's hardly news. Well, did it hit you, by the way, that like compared to in the US with the creditors and our types of reviews that we do,
00:04:05
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that the report was actually much more meaningful than I'm used to and actually looking at educational quality and focusing on student experience. So maybe a positive way is, my goodness, that was a pretty solid report from what I can tell and I love that it focused on the quality of teaching and student experience.
00:04:26
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Neil is feeling very sorry for us right now and thinking, oh my goodness, how bad must it be in the United States if they're talking positively about OFS reviews, which I mean, the rest of the panned. I know, I know. I mean, I have to kind of agree with Phil. I mean, I like
00:04:44
Speaker
the report, and I like what it covered. But the OFS is not a much-loved institution in the UK, particularly. But if it's going to flag up things like this, then I think that's broadly positive. And I thought it was a decent, decent report. Obviously, with all of these things, there's mitigating factors of institutional context as well. But on the whole, I thought it was a good report, really.
FAFSA Delays and Impact on US Education
00:05:14
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Over here in the U.S., probably, to me, what I think is the biggest news, particularly over the past week, is the yet another delay in the FAFSA. Essentially, and I'm not sure if you're getting that news over in the U.K., but it's essentially saying how you apply for federal student financial aid. There's a common form that students use, and that's how you find out not just can you get a loan, but are you eligible for a Pell grant? Are you eligible for this?
00:05:44
Speaker
and it's really used a lot to make sure that students who are low-income or might have opportunities to pay for college that they don't know about, they find it out soon. Normally that form goes out and the information goes to the schools in the October-November timeframe. Then we're redesigning it in the U.S., not we, but
00:06:07
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Department of Education and the idea is to simplify the process and make it much easier. And then it just kept getting delayed and delayed. And then what had been happening is they started a soft rollout at the end of the year instead of actually rolling it out. And there were a lot of problems with it.
00:06:25
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But the data from that was going to get back to schools by the end of January. Well, January, I believe it happened yesterday, maybe it's the 29th or the 30th. So one of the last days of the month.
00:06:39
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The department of ed comes out and says, Oh, by the way, that data getting back to school so that they know who they can apply so that they can help students figure this out, that's going to be in March. And so it's like yet another delay of upwards of two months. And if you read what they're saying, they didn't say everybody will get the data in the March. They'll say, they said, we'll start releasing the data in batches in early March.
00:07:05
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And schools are just shocked right now. It's like, how the heck are we supposed to do this when you're, you know, a thing that's supposed to simplify is actually holding back data. And the students who are going to be hurt by this are the ones that you seem to care about. And so it's a looming disaster over here. So for me, that was the biggest news is what's happening with that. And that's going to harm many things.
00:07:31
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Yeah, people are very, very angry about it. I saw it like a tweet from Michael Sorrell from Paul Smith's college. He was furious about it. And so he should be.
00:07:43
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The Inside Higher Ed article's got some pretty fun quotes in there talking about just how bad it is. So people are, yeah, they're not holding back on how bad. There was this thing about this center of chaos is the way they described it. Oh, and we got the gobsmacked, one of the quotes. I am stunned. Gobsmacked, really, the president of NACAC, an association for college admissions counseling.
00:08:11
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And people are just like, I'm getting this constant message. We don't know what to say. We're just stunned. This is so incompetent and so harmful what's going on. So there's our positive news over here. And now Congress has asked for all manner of information from the Department of Education about their contracts, about things like that. So in some ways, there's a little bit of schadenfreude going on here from some of us. Yeah.
00:08:41
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because they are wanting a lot of transparency into my $5 purchase of some AWS storage if I'm a university and now they're having to produce a lot of that information and probably struggling to do so. They've definitely bit off more than they can chew and they don't seem to care quite honestly.
Issues in Educational Regulation
00:09:05
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In other words, I don't see the record. There should be a panic on their side.
00:09:10
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And this was three years in the making, but I think part of what it represents is not just, hey, you're getting hit with transparency, but it's a sign that the Department of Ed is just throwing everything out there on the regulation front. And people have been saying, well, how would they even go through this data they're trying to collect in an organized manner? And this is just sort of proof that they can't even do their job right now. So to me, it's a huge issue.
00:09:36
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even particular populations of students that they purportedly, purportedly care about. So low income students, you know, and a lot of the focus has been on their regulation has been supposedly to reduce student indebtedness and things like that. But also they made it a glitch and undocumented students cannot actually log into the system.
00:09:57
Speaker
at the moment. And there's no sign of that getting fixed. So it's supposedly one of the groups of students that they're meant to care about more than any other group and are really, you know, something that's really important to many of us. And so it's just infuriating. I'm gobsmacked too. Now I'm in a cranky mood for the rest. So is there a bit of a theme of heavy-handed regulation then? And if so, what's kind of causing it?
00:10:24
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Well, there is a theme of heavy handed regulation and its ideology is what's driving it. There's a view of the department of ed and their allies of we know better what should be done. Everybody is suspect as a bad actor, including regular colleges and universities, not just for profit providers. And we do not see the need to consult them. Yes. People have been working in this field for many years. We do not feel the need to consult them about how things are going.
00:10:53
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But I think in this case, this was a well-intentioned effort to simplify the process and do it, but it was just done incompetently. And so I think you would add to it, they're so busy doing so many other things, yet they can't do their basic job. That's my view.
00:11:13
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Yeah and I guess that's kind of pretty telling isn't it when you're on one hand being quite heavy-handed and I guess kind of reaching out but you can't do the basics. But if you are interested in this theme of heavy-handed regulation I've got a good newsletter to suggest to you that has been covering it in some detail for the last year.
AI in Education: Innovations and Challenges
00:11:33
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It's you know what I not I went and gifted him a premium subscription on that as well I'll have to go look to see how many he's reading I Have no idea who you're referring to yeah But I hope you find that he's read a lot. Yes So there's a one other I mean there is a lot of news but one other I want to highlight It's sort of a transition if you will into our main topic, which is about a tech innovation if you will
00:12:03
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And there was a news release, it was PR, from Google about Google Classroom and a lot of new tool additions, including a lot of AI-powered tool additions. And let's admit, that's one of the few companies that can actually say, well, we know what we're talking about, about embedding AI within our tools. But they're really doing, I mean, they continue to keep improving Google Classroom, which is perennially within higher education.
00:12:32
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And certainly in outside of Asia, you know, viewed as that's not really an LMS. But one thing that keeps hitting me is they keep putting new features into Google Classroom and it keeps getting better and better. And ironically, it's sort of under under the radar. I don't think people realize how many improvements are going at. So that's, I think, welcome news. I don't know how much it impacts higher education, but it's certainly welcome news.
00:13:00
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But Morgan, you would really notice that as well. What was your impression of it? Yeah, I think I was impressed by that. You know, it was like, I remember one one time you and Michael in the earlier version of the
00:13:14
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of the newsletter described a Blackboard conference as like carpet bombing of new features. And it felt a bit like that, you know, just boom, boom, boom. There were so many, I could barely wrap my head around. And there was a time I think around about late 2022, I was talking to a lot of folks who
00:13:33
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deeply follow and support Google Classroom. So mostly K-12 folks here in the US, and they've been talking about how innovation had really slowed at that point. But that seems to have really been turned around in the last year or so, you know, because we've had two really big tranches of, of improvements. So, you know, I think it's, it's significant, and it'll be interesting to see how folks respond to that.
00:14:01
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Yeah, and it's interesting how it is sort of largely disregarded in higher education. I think I know of one UK university who uses Google Classroom, a very small one, but it's not really on the table. I think it has a strong association with schools over here, and I think maybe there's that kind of
00:14:26
Speaker
Google, Microsoft, dichotomy and, you know, Microsoft is the one of choice and therefore that feels like that inhibits the even consideration of, of Google really here. But yeah, I mean, it's one to watch, I guess, but it still feels like it's not really on the minds of higher education as a potential product.
00:14:47
Speaker
Well, let's get to an important question. What is it with the UK and Microsoft? Do they just have one of the world's best sales teams over there? I mean, the software, yeah, they've got some interesting things, but it's so hard to use and cumbersome. Maybe the security is the reason, but why has the UK gone all in on Microsoft? I mean, I'm speaking in general here.
00:15:11
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Yeah, no, it's a really good question. And I think probably, as we talked about last week, I think it was around teams and security. That's one factor. I think there is a sense of following one another, I think, in UK higher education. And so Microsoft had just got this kind of
00:15:37
Speaker
you know, ridiculous position of kind of dominating the kind of sphere. And I think because universities see other universities doing something, they kind of tend to follow. And so I think that has a part to play. Yeah, I'm not 100% sure. I mean, those are two factors that kind of spring to my mind as to why that is the case. But yeah, it really dominates in a similar way to things like turn it in, where there's no real, you know, turn it in equally dominates
00:16:06
Speaker
kind of UK landscape around that kind of tool. Well, not only does Turnitin dominate in the UK for plagiarism detection, but in the US, primarily Turnitin is known for plagiarism detection. But my experience in the UK is it's much deeper usage, such as providing feedback on assignments and markup tools. And there's like a deeper usage that goes well beyond plagiarism over there that you just don't see in the US that much.
00:16:36
Speaker
Yeah, it's certainly not limited to plagiarism kind of checker, you know, it's used as a feedback studio and it uses a digital assessment tool. So it's definitely used more comprehensively. But yeah, you know, going back to the original point, I mean, it is strange how Microsoft has kind of got to that position. But then I think once you get to that position,
00:16:57
Speaker
you know, it's difficult to turn back. I mean, I'm not sure that, you know, I, similar to you, I'm not a huge lover of things like Microsoft Teams, but I'm not sure that there's voices raised loud enough around any deficiencies that, you know, that would lead universities to seriously consider an alternative for that kind of, for that type of thing really.
00:17:23
Speaker
So understated politeness is the cause for Microsoft's continued dominance. That's what I took out of this conversation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's fine. It's fine. No, it's fine. It's fine. Yeah, we don't want to upset the Apple car. That would be very impolite. So with that in mind, let's talk about innovation. And part of the setup for this, Morgan and I had a call with one of our market analyst clients or
00:17:49
Speaker
You know, we have an hour talk to them. They ask us questions and quite often we're acting as a proxy for the market. Here's what we're seeing and, or they might say, we're seeing this. Can you help explain it? And there was just a really interesting question. It sounds simple, but it led to a confusing answer, which is what innovation are you seeing? What new things in the ed tech space are you seeing that might be taking hold? Not just that a feature exists, but it has real potential.
00:18:19
Speaker
And our initial answer was, well, that's hard to know. It was a difficult but actually profound question, if you ask me. So that's what we'd like to sort of go into, is what are we seeing new? So I guess the field is in educational technology. It's in edtech.
00:18:40
Speaker
And I guess the other qualifier I would say is something that's not just, Oh, what a cool feature. I have no idea if anybody's ever going to use it, but something that in your opinion really has potential to get real adoption and make changes in the environment, help schools out with what they do.
00:19:00
Speaker
And, you know, I sort of thought about think talking about this in three different sections. First one is let's go with the obvious about generative AI in particular, AI generative AI, but then elsewhere and then.
00:19:16
Speaker
get into, well, then why are we seeing what we're seeing? So let's start off with this. From an AI perspective, are you guys seeing any meaningful features and innovation happening that you think will be around for a while and get meaningful adoption?
00:19:35
Speaker
I am not. So I'm hoping that Neil will jump in here and say, yes, they're all these ones. But I am not. I'm seeing lots of things. So increasingly, I'm seeing more and more things around efficiency, so about doing things quicker. But in a meaningful way?
00:19:55
Speaker
Not really, no, it's more like floating proofs of concept or things like that. So I've been following marketing a lot as I try to wrap my head around that. And so folks are using it to craft email campaigns and things like that. But not seeing a lot of really things making a massive difference at the moment.
00:20:16
Speaker
All right, Neil, you're here to save us with a positive message. I know, I know. I wish I could, I wish I could, but I share a similar view to Morgan because it's a question that I get asked and it's a question that I ask around kind of AI and kind of what's happening. And it was interesting, I think it was this week, the QAA Quality Assurance Agency in the UK kind of published some resources and I had a look at the kind of resources that they had on and they were predominantly around kind of an assessment, which kind of tells you
00:20:46
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the sort of defensive position that UK higher education probably has on that side of things. But I guess I tend to think about universities in edtech in the sense of what
00:20:58
Speaker
what maybe standalone product would kind of be becoming an accepted part of the suite. And I don't really see a particular AI-focused product that's going to become, in the short term anyway, an accepted part of that suite. The main thing that I see is the kind of AI features that are becoming embedded within the tools that already exist. And I think that's the kind of one viable route in which
00:21:27
Speaker
higher education starts to adopt AI tools for teaching and learning, but I don't see a kind of compelling product that's going to upset the apple cart and suddenly become this kind of key part of what universities ed tech kind of stack
Experimentation with AI in Teaching Methods
00:21:44
Speaker
looks like. I mean there's been
00:21:46
Speaker
I think University of London had a chatbot for there. They've got a big distance learning program. So there's that that's gone on, although that's not necessarily new. It's been done before by people. But it is a question that I think gets asked, and I think a lot of people as kind of
00:22:09
Speaker
doing what I'm doing, which is basically faffing around and not answering the question. Well, I do think you have a good point that's worth considering, at least in the near term. And that is that the best route for adoption is going to be within established providers, so features, not new products. And so within, hey, everything comes back to the VLE or LMS.
00:22:33
Speaker
I think that we do have, we saw this and I would highlight, I think Anthology has a stronger story where they did do a little bit of carpet bombing this summer with AI information, but they also are getting some non-trivial adoption. I can't share numbers from what I know, not without permission, but they're getting some non-trivial adoption of their course design AI tool.
00:23:03
Speaker
I think D2L, I don't know their numbers, but I actually think their formative assessment creation tool where you can use, you know, within the flow of course design, you can highlight a section and use an AI tool to help create formative assessment around there. And on the Instructure, the most meaningful canvas, most meaningful one is their ConMigo, you know, Khan Academy's AI tool, their integration there.
00:23:33
Speaker
what they're doing, but more their integration.
00:23:36
Speaker
So I definitely see that's the most near-term route to get some of this into education. The vendor I'm the most impressed with, quite honestly, doesn't operate in higher ed. It's PowerSchool. I had a pretty good briefing with them looking at a comprehensive suite of tools. And it's important to know they consolidate multiple functional systems into one architecture. They've successfully acquired companies and integrated them is another way of saying it.
00:24:04
Speaker
But the one that really strikes me is a natural language processing way to get analytics reports out of the system. Being able to say, I think part of the thing was show me all the students in this major that are missing a course or are doing poorly on courses this term.
00:24:26
Speaker
And that sounds simple. It's really a user interface is one way to do it. But I think it's meaningful. It means that you can democratize accessed analytics and maybe
00:24:40
Speaker
that will actually accelerate the use of analytics to provide meaningful data to educators. So I can't say it is getting adopted meaningfully, but from my perception of what's out there, it's one of the most interesting approaches I've seen. So I think it's gonna be meaningful down the road.
00:24:59
Speaker
Yeah, and I guess I think as well, I mean, maybe I framed it slightly narrowly in that I've kind of talked about maybe universities procuring something that they would then use, but actually, you know, the extent to which people are experimenting with, you know, things like chat GPT and all the array of different products that aren't necessarily pitched as a kind of for education for universities to purchase. Like that's harder to
00:25:26
Speaker
harder to glean I suppose maybe we're thinking about it a little bit in terms of you know university procured kind of technologies that then are kind of mainly used by students and I know there are you know there are kind of writing tools and things out there so I think there'll be some scope for that but I kind of come back to a point I made I think on one of the other podcasts which was
00:25:47
Speaker
He's kind of disposition. I think we even talked about this when we're talking about the different VL ease Approaches and how they've been quite conservative around their ethical policies and you know very Intermentioned that you know This doesn't replace a teacher and things like that So I think that's one of the you know, one of the one of the reasons but it would be interesting to know that
00:26:12
Speaker
And it probably impossible to know the extent to which academics and instructors are kind of experimenting with the array of tools that are out there that don't, you know, that might influence the way that they lesson plan or whatever it might be, or, you know, construct slides. But it's going to be hard to get a barometer of that, but there's plenty of things out there that it can use.
00:26:34
Speaker
I am looking forward to just before the ASU GSB conference, there is that sort of demo of some AI kinds of tools. I'm looking forward to maybe finding some individual standalone tools there that may be promising at least in terms of the future.
00:26:51
Speaker
Yeah. So it seems to me, if you go just post-secondary, the biggest adoption we've seen so far is chat GPT and primarily in the hands of students, as you said. It's not really a procurement, but that is changing how they're doing research, how they're responding to writing prompts and stuff like that.
00:27:11
Speaker
It gets portrayed quite often in the terms of cheating, as opposed to thinking through what that means and how you can use this in a constructive way. But I think that's the biggest impact. But unfortunately, the second is more of the, hey, we're big and we're going to think about it vain. So you mentioned ASU-GSV. It's not just a conference. It's the chat GPT, open AI partnership with ASU.
00:27:39
Speaker
And that's some of our big news right now. Hey, these two companies or organizations known for innovation, they're going to start looking at this. Likewise, Southern New Hampshire and Paul LeBlanc leaving the president's job and really focusing on AI. That gets some news. So it's sort of in the vein of
00:27:59
Speaker
Hey, we're big and we're going to start thinking about this. You might even throw in to a lesser degree, Moodle, Martin Dugayamas, no longer being CEO and focusing on research, particularly around AI. But that's what I see is talking about talking about it, which I don't think that's going to last long. I think AI is going to have an impact whether or not we take it seriously. It's going to hit in different ways and we're just not quite ready for it.
00:28:28
Speaker
All right, so what about outside of AI? I thought this would be the challenging portion of the conversation. So outside of AI, what are you seeing? And it doesn't have to just be new technologies being procured. What new innovations? And it could be new features or it could be a similar feature, but it's getting used in a meaningful way for the first time. What innovations are you seeing outside of AI?
00:28:57
Speaker
Yeah, I think one of the things that I've seen is around technologies like Miro, more of those kind of collaborative whiteboard technologies being adopted. I mean, I think Padlet was a kind of a fringe tool that more universities have now kind of properly brought into this kind of stable, if I can put it like that. But Miro is the one that I think is interesting. I think I heard of a course recently that
00:29:27
Speaker
was kind of trying to run the course. It was kind of an uncredited short course exclusively on Miro, which is an interesting approach for a kind of an asynchronous course. But I've also seen things like asynchronous crits being conducted on Miro, which I think is really, really interesting thinking about kind of art and design and architecture and things like that.
00:29:52
Speaker
not just in terms of the technology, but actually just that approach of doing a crit kind of asynchronously rather than. Well, you're going to have to help me with the language of nobody else. So this is kind of a common assessment method in art and design courses where you might like a critical review, you might bring your work and people kind of come and make comments, give feedback.
00:30:13
Speaker
for critical a crit. Yeah, a crit. Okay. Me. Yeah, yeah. Sorry. Sorry. I should have translated or you'd have explained but yeah, just that that's just been an interesting one for me. And I definitely seen Mira use a lot in kind of art and design contexts. And I think, I think maybe I've said this before, but I find it interesting when you find areas like that, that maybe aren't you know, they're not business and management, they're not the kind of
00:30:40
Speaker
you know, ones that you associate with online, but they're kind of increasingly going online and figuring out different ways and kind of landing on different technologies. So I think there's a bit of a broader acceptance of those kinds of tools and a few interesting examples of that.
00:30:58
Speaker
I think one other thing that I want to mention was something that I kind of came across, which I haven't seen adopted, but I think it's just an interesting element for online. And it's an area that I've kind of thought about for a while. But I think around the time of the pandemic, and I think it still happens, is that kind of, I don't know if you've come across a kind of co-working online. I don't know if you've come across that at all. My wife does it sometimes where you're kind of working, you're online, and other people, you're in a room with other people, and you kind of may take a pause and kind of engage
00:31:27
Speaker
them. But I think it's a really interesting concept and I think there's a I think there's a company called I think it's called StudyStream where it's co-working online and I think one of the things that we talk about around online education is maybe
00:31:41
Speaker
that sense of isolation or the sense of having to be more self-motivated. So I think that's an interesting thing that I'd really be interested to see being trialed on online programs, kind of co-working online.
00:31:59
Speaker
as a potential innovation so i've just thrown it out there if people are doing it or people are considering it but it is one thing that came to mind thinking about innovations or you know where where might go but what about what about you guys what if what have you seen what's happening in the us
00:32:17
Speaker
One thing I'll say is the reference I have in my mind is like, is there anything like piazza? Because when that came out, it was a different type of discussion, threaded, wiki, things combined. And when it first came out, I saw some very meaningful adoption. This completely changed our University of Michigan and this
00:32:40
Speaker
engineering course, people were working out complex problems and the instructor could jump in and give nudges, but then they were collectively working together. Their business model really proved their undoing, at least in terms of significant adoption. But at least at the time, I really think that was very innovative and some meaningful adoption, but it didn't prove long lasting.
AI Initiative for Skills-Based Learning
00:33:07
Speaker
I looked to today
00:33:09
Speaker
Boy, it's hard to find something even at that level that's being done. I see some solid, we're getting the job done, but I don't see much innovation. I'll add one that I really should have mentioned in the previous one. We'll see how meaningful it is, but in full disclosure, I'm advising a company on this, but they're using AI to build out sort of a skills-based, here's what skills are needed by an organization.
00:33:37
Speaker
And here's the content that's associated with the skills. Anytime you get into skills-based learning, one of the most common problems is, well, what's the framework you're using for the competency or the skills and how do you organize things?
00:33:50
Speaker
And it tends to be hierarchical and very manual to get that set up. The idea is to use AI to automate that process and discover what the skills and how things should be organized. We'll see if it's meaningful, but at least it's a really interesting new approach to a real problem.
00:34:11
Speaker
Unfortunately, it's primarily in corporate learning that it's focused, but there is some work that's being done in U
Scarcity of EdTech Innovation
00:34:20
Speaker
.S. with universities as well. But I've given my try, Morgan.
00:34:25
Speaker
Yeah, and, and I similarly don't have a lot and you know, it's like all of you, it's a question I get often, you know, it was what what's being done out there and I've gotten it for years and I was like, um, um, and partly I'm just such a cynic that I'm skeptical of people saying this is this awesome thing that we're doing because often when I dig into it, there's a lot of PR like the people who are good at PR are not necessarily good at follow through or
00:34:50
Speaker
big impact or things like that, and I'm a bit skeptical of that. I also, you know, on a regular basis, look at some of the major venture capital folks who invest in higher ed or invest in education generally. And I think for the past few years, every time I look at what they're investing in, I'm always struck by how little of it is connected to teaching and learning. You know, there's a lot of K-12, there's a lot of
00:35:18
Speaker
workforce kinds of things, a lot of mental health things now, but not a lot related to teaching and learning. So I think there is a bit of a darth of things out there to invest in. Before I go on, I didn't want to
00:35:33
Speaker
carry on of something that Neil said about the Miro and using it. One of the most innovative uses of technology I've ever seen in my life that has stuck with me for 20 years now. And it involved overhead projectors, which even at the time were really out of date. But there was a biology professor at the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse, who was using
00:35:56
Speaker
Overhead projectors in class to have students draw what are the what are the maps of species and things like that? Anyway, I know what you're talking about don't know the name. Yeah, it's escaping me but students would come down to the front of the class and there was 600 students.
00:36:13
Speaker
They would draw what they thought that the map would look like and then the rest of the class would discuss it and then and why it was wrong or why it was right and what it might look like. And so it was this very interactive use of a very simple technology that was really powerful in its learning outcome. And I think, you know, we're probably missing some of those kinds of things. And the mirror thing reminded me of that. So I hope we'll see.
00:36:39
Speaker
more of those kinds of things. On a really small scale, I did see a cool tool, a startup from the Netherlands, that is using VR to get students interested in more vocational careers, because there's a big problem students aren't interested in becoming plumbers or whatever. But as they integrate more,
00:37:02
Speaker
least even showing them what a plumber does in VR, it actually ups interest in them and ups increases uptake of those kind of courses. But carry on, Phil. Well, that actually, well, you directed me a different direction. I should have mentioned it, because I've even written about it, the AR, the ASU usage of virtual reality, and that I looked at the way they'd redesigned their intro to biology courses. And
00:37:28
Speaker
Just in that school, it is actually scaled in a meaningful way. And so I have a couple of posts about that. But the thing that was interesting is the VR, the headsets, the virtual worlds they built to navigate through as part of the course.
00:37:44
Speaker
The main purpose I saw it doing was it kept your interest. You weren't on, I'm showing my age, you weren't on Twitter. You weren't on social media. You weren't getting distracted. You weren't just skimming through to try to find the answer. You were there.
00:38:00
Speaker
And then the majority of the course had nothing to do with VR. The majority of the course was just really solid course design and lab work after the VR setup of like, I think a 15 minute session each week was all it was, but you were fully mentally there. And then that led to a really good course design and they were getting such good results. They completely switched over to the new method and that's like 6,000
00:38:27
Speaker
students each term. So it has its own scale just based on how big ASU is. That is a true innovation. It's having a meaningful impact, at least for thousands of students at a single school. What's unknown is whether you can extrapolate that innovation to other schools. They're trying to license it. And it's not just a matter of money.
00:38:50
Speaker
I'm worried that you might have a lot of schools and even getting grant funding to go do the same virtual world's dreamscape, I think they called it, approach that ASU did. But if they don't understand how it fits within a solid pedagogy, I don't think they'll get the same benefits that ASU is getting. It's not just money. It's understanding the role of technology and how it supports the pedagogy. But there, that's probably my biggest non-AI
00:39:19
Speaker
innovation that I've seen in the past few years. Well, all of this, and that's not necessarily a bad thing what you two were talking about, that using even old tools are not that sexy of tools, but in really solid ways that helps students. There's nothing wrong with that.
00:39:37
Speaker
But I think it is worth asking, why are we in a position where there's so little pure ed tech innovation that's going on out there?
Cultural Disconnect in EdTech Development
00:39:47
Speaker
What's the cause of that right now? Is it we already have all we need or disappointment or like, if you guys had to pick something, what would you say is the biggest one or two reasons why we have so little we can think of?
00:40:00
Speaker
I mean, I think there are things happening in the product space, but I think the challenges of translating that into kind of what happens within universities and the sort of way I think about it is kind of like hitting a bullseye on a dartboard. It's really hard to identify a product that's going to get a significant traction to kind of establish itself within higher education. And I have to confess that I find
00:40:29
Speaker
some of the products out there and I occasionally engage with startups around edtech products and I think there's a real lack of understanding of the kind of realities of higher education and so it's those products that really get the problems
00:40:45
Speaker
and the challenges and the needs that are kind of more likely to succeed. And I think there is a bit of disconnect, even though there's many people setting up products and developing products out there. I think that's where the disconnect often lies. I think on the university side, I think
00:41:04
Speaker
to my mind things just run a lot slower than people in the kind of ed tech world understand and so I kind of see maybe the next kind of phase is more universities having a polling tool or having a padlet tool and those aren't necessarily particularly new things but I think it works at that sort of pace in terms of bringing things into the stable so you know that's another challenge. I think it's something about
00:41:34
Speaker
universities culture and propensity to take on new things but I think there's not necessarily a lack of product development but it's that product development that really hits you between the eyes in terms of it's really fulfilling a need and I think in order to get there
00:41:54
Speaker
ed tech startups or whatever it might be need to really understand the realities of higher education in a way that they don't often do. I think that's my take anyway.
00:42:05
Speaker
As an American, I appreciate the violent imagery of bull's eyes and hitting you between the eyes and everything else. I really appreciate that. Good, good. I've been working on it. I immediately went back to the Dart scene in Ted Lasso, the first season or whatever. So that's where I was. But I also wonder whether we really have a sense of what are the problems to be solved in EdTech. You know, as Neil was talking, I was sitting here trying to think, like, what are the big pain points?
00:42:34
Speaker
And I've never seen a sort of clear enunciation of those, you know, maybe tutoring, you know, in a sense of that sort of one-on-one. Couldn't you say that in terms of retention rates? That's a simple- Oh, yeah. Yeah. We need better retention rates, period. Yep. Yep. Well-defined, very important problem. But in that case, I think there was way too much black box magic thinking and
00:42:58
Speaker
too little understanding of what it would take to move the needle on retention. And I'm speaking of Civitas. Let's get that out in the open. It sucked out so much of the oxygen in the room, but it really didn't make impacts at universities in any big scale. I would add two others on why we're in the place that we're at. One is the whole, you know, now that Morgan's fully into this zerp,
00:43:27
Speaker
the end of free money, zero interest rates. And that does change the investing environment, which is so many startups, they're focused on survival right now, not trying new things, learning.
00:43:39
Speaker
being challenging. It's a survival mode or extinction mode for a lot of startups, but it also shifts the priority towards away from a story and potential and towards you got to be profitable and standalone right now. So I think that whole change over the past two to three years in the investment environment is part of it.
00:44:02
Speaker
And then the other part, at least in the U.S., is the regulatory environment. I mean, you get slapped down for trying new things. Right now, all of our regulations are aimed at gotcha.
00:44:15
Speaker
let's find evil doers and punish them. And there's nothing being done that supports innovation.
Financial Challenges and Innovation Stagnation
00:44:24
Speaker
So I go back to the Obama administration and I'm not, I think this had an impact. At least then we had like pilot programs to encourage competency-based education. We'll streamline the approvals and do, put out things to share information and let's encourage innovation around competency-based education.
00:44:45
Speaker
We don't see anything like that right now. So I think I would say the investment environment and the regulatory environment is a big part of the problem right now. And what about universities financial standing, Phil? Because I think cost control is probably an element here. No, you're exactly. Yeah, it's not just vendors. You're exactly right. It's yeah. Every day we're getting new stories about massive budget cuts, restructuring of budgets, or in the case of Arizona,
00:45:12
Speaker
preserving the president's job while talking about budget cuts. But you're right. I don't think it's a lack of funding for education. It's a chaos where people are hunkered down, or fearful of losing their jobs, or they're not quite sure what they're permitted to do. I get so many times now, hey, we're thinking about doing this, but we have an interim provost. So we know it's not going to get approved until we have a full-time provost.
00:45:39
Speaker
So there's a lot of stagnation because of that. So no, I think you're right. I think university financials is another major factor. Yeah. You kind of say to your finance director, Hey, I've got this new fancy AI tool. What do you reckon we're willing to invest? Yeah. Well,
00:45:59
Speaker
Going back to it, we don't know how much longer it will survive, but that was sort of the basis, at least on the enrollment side, for the OPM market revenue share, finding another source saying we're willing to invest. They've got their own problems right now. But so that's where we are. I would say we are seeing a lack of innovation in a meaningful way in higher education.
00:46:22
Speaker
Some of that can be thought of as good. It's an opportunity to say we'll use existing technologies but do it and it's almost discipline specific. In this discipline or in this department find a new way to solve a particular problem. I don't know that I would advocate the overhead projectors but
00:46:40
Speaker
But, you know, I think that's where the real opportunity is right now is the usage that's well-designed to a clear academic context, even if it's old technology.
Conclusion and Future Topics
00:46:51
Speaker
That seems to be the majority of it. But I think generative AI is going to have a big impact. It's just education hasn't got there yet.
00:47:01
Speaker
So that's the way I would sum it up, what I'm hearing from the conversation. Any last thoughts before we sign off? Well, I mean, if I can tie this back to the first story around inconsistent usage of a very old or traditional EdTech tool, then to your point about there's still distance to travel within the existing technology, then I think that highlights that as well. So I'd echo that.
00:47:25
Speaker
Oh great. Hey, great conversation and we will talk to you all in the next week. We'll have to figure out the topic that we're doing.