Three Startups That are Transforming Our Approach to Education: Designtrack, VerdantLearn and Workplus
Note from Ignite NI — We’re in the midst of changing in the way we approach education. Niamh Crawford-Walker spoke to 3 of the current Propel 2020 cohort that are driving this change. Designtrack, VerdantLearn and Workplus.
Propel has a particular superpower that no one completely understands until they’re in it — the power of the Propel cohort. The ability to bring together a group of ambitious, creative and driven founders who won’t realise how much they have in common until day one of the programme when they’re sat across the desk from one another. They may discover that they share similar frustrations within similar sectors. For example, designtrack, VerdantLearn and Workplus — three founders determined to disrupt the education industry.
As the working world is changing, our approach to education fails to adapt at the same pace — the shared frustration among our three founders. But how do they propose we solve this?
Christopher Murphy, founder of designtrack is supercharging UX careers and enabling passionate individuals to design their futures.
With VerdantLearn Dr Lucy Tallents is developing powerful learning opportunities for environmental conservation.
While Richard Kirk challenges the education system by developing talent through apprenticeships with his platform, Workplus.
One industry.
Three founders.
Three problems.
Three shared values.
Accessibility
First up, looking at the financial side of accessing education, “I think what ties together what Richard and I are doing is that we’re both concerned about the amount of debt that students are taking on when they go to university,” Chris explains.
“My daughter is at university in Glasgow and she’s going to leave with £60,000 of debt. That’s shocking from a parent’s point of view and from a society and culture point of view. What I think we should be doing is embracing technology to drive down the cost of delivery of education. That’s what I’m focused on, taking everything I’ve taught over the last 20 years and compressing that into a package that people can access for a lot less than going to university. For the £60,000 that my daughter is paying, she could have 30 of our modules at designtrack and she could have those modules over the next 30 years of her life.”
For Richard, “The whole culture of apprenticeships is that you get a job at the start, not the end, that you get a free degree and avoid student fees because it’s paid for by the government. Really it’s about trying to help young people get into work, find purpose in that and avoid student fees. All of that benefits them and their parents but ultimately the benefit is for the economy because sectors experiencing a constriction in supply of graduates will be able to use apprenticeships as a way to bring talent in earlier.”
The mission at VerdantLearn is “to empower people to tackle environmental challenges using a combination of e-learning and interactive data visualisation combined with the latest advances in AI and the availability of environmental big data. Furthermore, we bring environmental skills training into the 21st century.”
Founder, Dr Lucy Tallents came up with the idea following the completion of her PhD at Oxford University, when she was asked to put together a proposal for a new course which she was then asked to teach. “I very quickly realised that there was no point doing it face to face. Most of the people we wanted to reach couldn’t afford to come to Oxford, they didn’t have the qualification to get in but they really needed the skills.” So she took things a step further and started developing VerdantLearn.
Accountability
Alongside improving financial access to education, both designtrack and VerdantLearn are removing geographical restraints by primarily focusing on online learning. In the process, they’re determined to improve the community and accountability element of online education.
Lucy believes, “There is very much the mindset that you cannot replace any of the face to face online. There’s the risk that online is going to be missing some of the dynamism and energy that you get from other people but I was amazed when I started teaching online how personal it is and how quickly you get to know people, how their personality shines through.”
At VerdantLearn teaching is done through discussion forums, diagrams and soon interactive data visualisation along with assignments and quizzes to test knowledge. Students are then given collaborative assignments to encourage mentorship and community building. “The aim is to get them learning from each other so I try and get them to do as much together as I can.”
“Accountability is our superpower,” Chris explains. “For me when I’m teaching, it’s not the content but actually working with the person and holding them accountable that really matters. I tell my students that I’m the voice of their conscience, making sure they do things. I need that too and getting on Propel has been great. I’ve achieved so much more in the first week than I have in months, I would say years because I feel a sense of accountability not only to the team teaching it but to everyone else who is on the programme.”
“The community and accountability part is really important. One of the big things with designtrack is the Slack learning community where the students as peers can teach each other and we’re just guiding them.” In developing student accountability further, Chris is working on building a pool of mentors for the designtrack users, something that stands strong at the heart of Richard’s mission with Workplus.
Mentorship
“What’s important to think about with apprenticeships is that right from the beginning, the dynamic has always been the master and the apprentice, the mentor and the mentee and that’s what I love about the apprenticeship approach. We’re working with companies to try and create a culture that provides fertile ground for an apprenticeship to flourish because four years ago these companies weren’t taking on apprentices. We’re working hard with the mentors because they play such a pivotal role. We get these companies working together on the application and efficiency side of things but also the apprentice experience. We want to get all the mentors from the companies to get together to work out how we make our companies great places for our apprentices to work. Then on the flip side, get the apprentices together to share their experience. There’s real knowledge sharing around that, which comes back to one of my deepest passions — community. It’s about people coming together to do things that are remarkable.”
At this point in the conversation, I’m brought back to the power of cohort that exists within the Ignite network. The founders break into a conversation among themselves, offering feedback and suggesting solutions to problems the other is facing, supporting one another and genuinely championing the businesses and concepts each is working hard to build.
And yet this is only the second week of the programme. Where will the next 6 months take these three founders and their startups?
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