Synthesis School and my reflection from an educational perspective

Up-to-date educational theories and the development of education can be summarized as finding a way to tackle the ever-increasing complexity of our informational world. Today’s education, more than ever, requires empowering individual learners in their learning journeys, focusing on collaboration and dealing with information overload effectively. I recently came across an after-school tutoring startup called Synthesis School. Synthesis got my attention because they aim to fill the educational gap we talk so much about and they do so focusing on K12, thus for kids in their early phase of life, between the ages of 8 and 14. I wasn’t able to take a look at their actual classes or study materials, but I tried to map it a little bit. Here I jot down what I found most interesting.

Synthesis School is a de-facto spin-off from an internal educational project designed for SpaceX workers’ families founded by Chrisman Frank and Joshua Dah. They describe their offering as an enrichment program that teaches “important skills for the current world, that is working with teams to solve complex problems”. According to their materials, their study programmes consist of 13 weeks, on which the students attend online classes each week with the same, relatively small, group of students in which they often form teams. While their learning design relies on e-learning, they remain focused on the needed social aspect of learning as well as their model focuses on small-class tutoring.

Global after-school community building

Global online learning communities as an excellent opportunity for worldwide educational systems. There is little reason for traditional schools to act as an isolated learning environments except for some special cases and scenarios. As far as I know, this is a gap for most traditional schools and in all levels of education. At the same time, online learning communities that are built with very little design and with no dedicated teams are unlikely going to be beneficial beyond broadening the worldview of their participants who are more likely to lurk instead of actively engage.

For the communities to be truly working, the members must regularly engage actively in meaningful activities to be fully immersed and build companionship and a sense of belonging. Being a member of such communities must be absorbing and meaningful. Organizations such as Synthesis that can create the necessary infrastructure to lift up online engagement and support engagement around meaningful activities and deep experiences are onto something interesting.

Applied pedagogy of uncertainty

The students in teams are encouraged to engage in simulations of complex scenarios that are specifically designed to convey key concepts of today’s work such as risk, the tragedy of the commons and so on. What is interesting is that they should not be taught how to deal with the situation, they should be provided little or no information about the simulation and even its goal. There is a lecturer who observes the teams and asks them open “Socratic” questions such as “How do you understand what you are looking at?”. The learning design is therefore designed for the students to experience working under uncertainty in complex environments with often no clear solution, in a social constructivist manner.

Example game designed by the Synthesis team.

Consider the game called Rubicon from the above screenshot. The company released the game which was initially designed for students as part of their marketing and hiring process. When you visit the game’s link, you will get very little prior information about what to do or even why to engage with it or whats the goal. It’s up to you to play with the game a little bit and give it a few tries to explore what is the game about. See what is the goal of its players and what strategies might work to reach the goal. In such a learning design, failure is not only understood positively, it’s the only effective way to succeed, even though success may have no strict definition.

Conclusion

Teaching with tech

Developing social and technological infrastructure for learning and teaching blends in the data-driven world. Since the company combines their own educational games and simulations with learning in a social environment, it can leverage both approaches to deliver and continually iterate its learning experience delivery for the better. Stating that every company is now a technological company is a common trope of the last decade. It seems to me there is still very little understanding of what it truly means for the traditional sector such as education. Organisations with truly technological backgrounds have different intuitions of what teaching with tech means. They are likely to promote data-driven decisions from day one in every new product feature, but at the same time, it doesn’t necessarily mean they have to be rigid over the learning design.

Used literature

1. Videla-Reyes, R., & Aguayo, C. (2022). Pedagogy of uncertainty: Laying down a path in walking with STEAM. Pacific Journal of Technology Enhanced Learning, 4(1), 29–30. https://doi.org/10.24135/pjtel.v4i1.147