A New Model for Education
At Parthean, our goal is to fundamentally change the way the world learns. To improve our chances of accomplishing this lofty task, we put structure behind our approach. We’re happy with what we’ve produced. We decided to share our approach to expose problems in education that others may be able to help us solve.
We knew from the beginning that we must fundamentally change the way that we think about education. We must start from the basic building blocks that compose education, identify the strengths and weaknesses in each of those building blocks, and rebuild them from the ground up.
The model that we created is composed of these six building blocks:
- Content (words on the page, images in the video…)
- Medium (textbook, Youtube…)
- Environment (classroom, office, web-forum…)
- Assessments (exam, interview…)
- Teachers (professor, artificial-intelligence tutor…)
- Students (high-school student, new employee…)
Below, we’ll walk through each building block, its current problems and strengths, and the players who are contributing to, or detracting from, the success of that building block.
1. Content
Content refers to the words we read on the page. It’s the videos that we watch on Youtube. It’s the explanation our teacher uses to teach us about mitochondria: “Mitochondria is the power-house of the cell.” It’s the most simple building block, but it has incredible potential for impact.
Why is Khan Academy so successful? Sal Khan uses simple technology to create simple videos — at face value it’s really not anything special. But when you’re a 16-year-old, studying Algebra, and need help with your homework, you’re undoubtedly turning to Khan Academy. Khan Academy is a house-hold name because Sal Khan figured out how to create content that is not only informative, but engaging, well-structured, and fun.
Pearson (self-proclaimed “The World’s Learning Company”) no longer owns the content-creation space because content creators, like Sal Khan, continue making huge changes. Youtube and Udemy are filled with individuals teaching anything from building a toaster to artificial intelligence. These tools have democratized content-creation, leading to far more competition in the space.
The start-up market has also taken a liking to content-creation. Masterclass offers video courses taught by experts in the field — Gordon Ramsay teaches YOU how to cook — bringing luxury product marketing to the education space. There’s also India’s Byju’s, with buildings filled with people pumping out educational content.
Masterclass is relying simply on Aristotle’s definition of ethos while others are approaching this through playful gamification. The different approaches are all leading to a common goal: creating educational content that is effective and engaging. But what’s effective and engaging to one high-schooler might not be to one of her classmates. Furthermore, what’s effective and engaging to that same high-schooler will likely not have the same effects on her parents.
This presents an opportunity for many players in the content-creation space, but it also opens up opportunities in the content-diagnostics space. We think the winners here will be extremely targeted in their efforts (or they’ll be Sal Khan, who can somehow teach algebra to anybody).
2. Medium
The Medium is the means through which the user receives or interacts with the content. It’s the textbook or the Youtube window.
There’s examples of good media and bad media, but there’s not a lot of innovation going on in this space. To prove this, I’ll usually ask people a variation of this question:
If I told you, ‘I’m creating a new website to host a course, but I need to sit down and create the content for it tonight.’ What do you think I’m doing?
Of the hundreds of people I’ve asked, 100% have answered “making videos and writing notes.” Better yet, the vast majority say those two things in that order!
Now, I recognize that this is not a scientific study by any means, but it illustrates the lack of innovation by companies that distribute or host content (Udemy, Coursera, Udacity, Youtube, and most other education platforms are basically just video hosting sites). Sure, people are creating great videos and I still defer to books when I want to learn something new, but the world is changing and the media we use to teach has to catch up.
As the world trends towards the gig-economy and studies show that people are switching their careers more than ever, the ability to rapidly learn practical skills is more useful than ever before. Videos and text are an impractical form of teaching practical skills, and the companies that can create more engaging forms of media will be leaders in the education space.
3. Environment
This is the most vague of the building blocks. For K12, the environment is synonymous with the classroom. As we grow older, the office becomes our environment. With the growth of online courses, MOOCs, and every other edtech tool, we’re seeing the rise of virtual environments. Unfortunately, much of the work being done in learning environments is unintentional.
Despite all of the upstarts focusing on effective classroom design, classrooms around the world are still set up with rows of desks facing a white-board (designed more to keep students from cheating on exams and less for producing an effective learning environment). Many edtech platforms are built with little attention to anything more than watching videos, making for many Youtube replicas without Google’s financial backing.
The winners in learning spaces will be the ones that focus on how physical space and virtual space can work together. The future holds classrooms equipped with smart IoT devices and apps that bring learners the values of in-person learning.
4. Assessments
Assessments are the most important of the six building blocks. They are also in the most unfortunate state (I’ll believe that until there’s evidence that students no longer sit for multiple-choice exams).
Assessments tell us how much students know and provide essential feedback to students so they can improve. They allow us to measure the efficacy of our content, medium, space, and teachers. They give education the benchmarks we need, but it’s 2020 and we still have multiple-choice exams.
The issue is that assessments are time-consuming. They’re extremely time-consuming to run and even more time-consuming to produce. What’s even worse is that the burden of producing and running these assessments is often put on our teachers who are already overworked and underpaid. But there is good news. With new developments in artificial intelligence (more specifically in natural-language processing) assessments are showing early signs of innovation.
Companies like Gradescope (recently acquired by Turnitin) are pioneering this change. Gradescope uses AI to make grading more efficient and accurate. There’s still so much potential here, though. Better assessments means more engaging and personalized traditional education; more effective hiring and promotions; more efficient allocation of resources from government and business; and more effective learning.
5. Teachers
At Carnegie Mellon University, researchers are creating AI tutors, but I consider those programs to be a form of media rather than a teacher. Teachers are the people who teach us. I’m not going to discuss the issues related to this block because they’re so different per country (for a great video on issues in the US, watch this video). Instead, I’ll discuss opportunities in a more abstract way. The real opportunities in this building block lie in where we find teachers, how we train teachers, and how we incent teachers.
Our best teachers are in our workforce because they’re paid and respected more to be there. We need to find ways to recruit people from industry, train them to teach, and offer structure that allows them to continue their work if they so wish. Teaching shouldn’t have to be a life-decision, it should be a fluid role that can be added to or removed from a person’s life (yes, I’m hinting towards the freelance/gig economy).
6. Students
Lastly, we have our students. For decades, we saw graduation from high-school or college as the end of our time as a student. Over time, this sentiment has changed and the term “life-long learner” has become common-place.
To fundamentally change the way the world learns, we must continue to expand our definition of student to not only include a diversity of age, but a diversity of race, gender, geographic location, and financial background. We must continue to redefine who our students are by building content, creating new forms of media, designing spaces, producing assessments, and hiring and training teachers that are universally accessible.
