The Knewton Blog


Why the time to “disrupt class” is now

Posted on May 22, 2012 by

6

bored-student

Clayton Christensen’s “Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns” was a Knewton Book Club pick this month.

When it comes to the intersection of technology and education reform, Christensen’s “Disrupting Class” is a virtual crystal ball for our educational system trajectory.

The theories and prognostications contained in this book represent many of the reasons I decided to work for Knewton. I believe Knewton is standing at the precipice of what will be transformative change in how education is delivered to the world.By using technology to personalize learning, and eliminating the “one size fits all” model that exists today, we can bridge the gap between the way students live and the way they learn.

Students today have come to expect personalization in all aspects of their lives, whether it’s a song recommendation on Pandora, ads targeted just for them on Google and Facebook, or a movie recommendation on Netflix. Young people have come to expect the data mining that makes future experiences more targeted and meaningful.

To illustrate this point, let’s think of an average teenager: “Mary.” 

For Mary, a typical morning before school might look like this:

6:00 am: Mary’s alarm on her cell phone goes off (she doesn’t own an actual alarm clock. Why should she? Her phone has a clock and an alarm!).

6:10 am: Quick login to Facebook to see what’s going on with her friends. Mary updates her status and has a brief chat with a friend about a homework assignment due later that day. She also sees an ad for flowers from a site she frequents and remembers Mothers Day is coming. She orders the flowers quickly.

6:30 am: After a quick shower, Mary texts two friends to tell them to save a few seats on the bus so they can work together on the math homework that was due today. Mary is weak in math so this collaboration will help. She tried using the textbook, but she couldn’t find the content she needed to complete the homework (however, the book has been a great doorstop to keep her little brother out of her room).

6:45 am: Mary walks to the bus listening to Spotify on her phone. Three new songs are queued up for her. She shares one of them with her friends on Facebook.

7:00 am: Mary is on the bus. Turns out she and her friends couldn’t get seats together. Not to worry! Mary’s phone has a wifi hub built in, so they fire it up, open a Google doc and work collaboratively on the homework from opposite ends of the bus. Together they successfully complete the work.

7:20 am: Mary arrives at school. She posts a final Tweet and one last status update on Facebook. She notices that she has an email from the flower store: the flowers she ordered will be ready by the end of the day. They also included a box of chocolates free of charge. (Every time Mary has ordered flowers in the past, she’s also bought chocolate. She wasn’t planning to do so this time, but she’s happy to hear the company included the box! Her Mom loves chocolate.)

7:30 am: Mary’s school day begins. She has to turn off and store her cell phone, as they’re not allowed in the classroom (ugh). Next up — 7 hours of boring lectures in the same classroom, most of them on topics she already understands.  She really wishes she could spend less time listening to lectures on history and science topics she already understands, and work more on math where she is struggling.

This is a made up scenario, of course, but it illustrates the stark contrast between the way a student like Mary lives her daily life, and what happens when she steps into a classroom. It’s as if students are living in the future –- using technology to collaborate, communicate, and consume –- until they get to school. Too often, when they walk through the school doors, they step back 50+ years into a one-size-fits-all factory-model educational system that, for the majority of learners, is both inefficient and ineffective.

Changing the Paradigm

At Knewton we’re working hard to help change this paradigm. We believe that we can provide a better and more personalized educational experience for all learners.  By using the vast amounts of data that an individual student creates when working online, and by harnessing the combined data power of thousands of learners, Knewton can make a precise recommendation on what a student should work on next, and even the best format (modality) for that student to consume it most effectively.

In “Disrupting Class,” Christensen asserts that the problem in American education is that schools, curriculum, and pedagogy are monolithic.  He says that in order to cultivate multiple intelligences, we need to move past the monolithic textbook experience.  He goes on to say that schools, by offering more student-centric curriculum, will see increased student interest and motivation, and learning as a whole will dramatically improve.

“Student-centric learning opens doors for students to learn in ways that match their intelligence types in places and at the paces they prefer by combining content in customized sequences.” Christensen goes on to point out that, “Student-centric learning is the escape hatch from the temporal, lateral, physical, and hierarchical cells of standardization.“

Think about how Mary’s world changes with more student-centric learning. Her educational experience will more closely mirror the way she lives, and will help her engage in her learning. Instead of helping students “get through a textbook,” Mary’s teachers and school will start thinking more about how to make the most of school time by providing the exact content Mary needs at that moment in order to get the maximize learning gain.

The technology to make this happen is available today. However, in order to make this a reality there needs to be large-scale reform in how we think about and define school and learning.  We need to move closer to a proficiency-based model that is based on outcomes — and away from a model that is based on a student being in a seat for 8 hours a day – in order to improve learning effectiveness in a meaningful, long-lasting way. Christensen seems to agree.

 

Posted in Education & Technology, Knewton | 6 comments



  • Roya Rsghi

    Aren’t you replacing the “monolithic” textbook with the “monolithic” computer? Why is a computer where we read (see), listen and do, different than a class where we read (see), listen and do? What happens to projects and collaboration–such as what your “Mary” did on the bus with her friends? Collaborative, project-based models are just as multiple-intelligences centered and student-centric as a computer program. What happens to a society that raises children to believe that life is only about them?
    Additionally, the model you have above seems to me a upper middle-class model? I doubt that my students coming out of section-eight housing have days like Mary’s nor access or knowledge of technology to as laid out in your Mary scenario.

    • jp

      Agree with Roya. Target should be get help from technology, instead of looking technology as replacement for manual process. The example looks far away from real world common case. Though it was good reading.

  • Chris

    Great article!  I
    would just like to add that there are many great games out there that take
    advantage of their ability to engage children by providing learning
    environments that kids voluntarily participate in.  It is my firm believe that without
    technology, the quest for customized education will be lost.  Technology enables both a greater insight
    into a child’s skill level and the ability to adapt instruction to suit each
    child’s particular learning needs and development curve. 

     

    That is why we have designed a personalized learning
    tool that is not only tailored to each individual, but is also incredibly fun
    for kids.  This isn’t like any other
    learning game out there – it uses principles present in adult games to keep
    children engaged longer.  Additionally,
    using adaptive algorithms in the game and an external wrist sensor, we are able
    to monitor a child’s level of engagement, and adapt the game to keep them
    learning longer.  If that isn’t enough,
    results have shown a 20% average increase in skill level over 4 weeks.  Currently the game is focused on math skills
    for grades 1-5 (ages 6-11), but we hope to add a literacy module soon.  Check it out here.

  • Ken Goldstein

    Roya and JP-

    First of all, thank you for taking the time to read my post and to comment on it.  A few things to say based on your thoughtful comments:

    -Christensen (and Knewton for that matter) does not wish to just use the computer to take what can be done with a textbook and move it onto a computer.  I am reminded of many bad online courses that popped up with the rise of the LMS. The LMS and the online course provided teachers with a new way to deliver materials.  However, instead of using this new medium to create next generation, learning and collaborative environments, many just took their physical materials and moved them to a digital format and said they had an “online course”.  The teachers that used this new model to create a different way to deliver learning really were able to harness the power of this new technology.  We need to use today’s emerging technology (like our adaptive software) to change the way people teach and learn, not just use it to do the same thing we have always done.

    -Technology like Knewton are not meant to replace the teacher, nor are they meant to replace the human interaction that occurs with students like Mary.  Good technologies are built to enhance these interactions, not replace them.  Using Knewton as an example, we identify where students are proficient and where they are not to inform instruction and “smart” collaboration.  The reporting of this manifests itself by allowing the teacher to break students into groups (based on proficiency and pace)- to teach certain groups a topic in a laser like way (avoiding the dreaded “teaching to the middle”) and can help to form groups that encourage peer to peer teaching.

    -As far as the model and my example focusing on those that have access.  You make a very fair and salient point.  The digital divide is real, and this is something as a society that we need to continue to try to address.  There are many folks that have opinions on how to do this- but I guess I would say that as cost of bandwidth and devices continues to fall, that this gap will continue to narrow, but yes this is a valid equity issue that we will need to continue to try to solve as a society.

  • Bill

    My school tried “individualized instruction” in the 60s.   The teachers killed it.

  • nigel

    I think we could go on for days debating how we learn and more importantly the reasons why we don’t learn!But after years of experience in the classroom, in content development, running schools and now heavily involved in e-learning and ‘social learning’ trying to create communities I do know one thing; we all learn and engage in different ways and at different moments, so any steps towards adapting the learning experience and process to the individual can only be positive steps. It actually seems that this is where technology in learning can really help as we all can’t have one-to-one teachers or coaches!