 We're going to Now have our third hack presented by somebody that we've already heard from earlier today agents senior Adrian is here. He is for those of you who were Saw him before already know he's the chief academic tech officer at ASU One of the three partners putting on future tense so agent and the hack is It's too late for me though. I wish I wish somebody done this before how to radically improve math preparedness for college So so I'm taking this hack thing really seriously You know because I'm a former coder and like we mean hack as a thing like it's the thing you do And it's supposed to make something different when you're done And so I know some of you are already at work trying to make sure that the government stops funding education Because that's you know, that's the way this works You know, it's a it's a it's a great opportunity to get a chance to sort of pitch an idea to a set of people and see Can you win somebody over so so um, I there's a detailed description of this hack at my website? It's www dot s a n i e r dot net. That's my last name The test of whether my hack like inspires anybody in this room is whether that gets read whether that gets tweeted So we're going to find out for sure just how flat this pitch falls now Colleague of mine Johnny McCoy. He says it pretty well when he says that In many ways, it's easier to change the course of history than it is to change a history course And and our academic institutions. I mean like we've been talking about it all morning Right sometimes they really feel maddeningly slow to change. There's no doubt about it and and our schools I think because they do so many things well I mean we've had to begrudgingly admit that as good as all these other models are we're still spending our own kids To to the colleges we went to You know, there's a fear that will throw the baby out with the bath water But I mean still right you look at all the amazing things the ways that technology have changed everything else And yet school seems to all of us to be a bit far behind now I work for a very patient very forgiving man Those of you who know michael crow know that that idea that everything has to be done in micro time That's just well. It is true and at last week's ed tech summit What he said Was that the fundamental thing that's that's keeping us from being able to advance the kinds of Improvements that we expect to see the improvements in outcome the the breaking down of credit hours all of the various different things that we've described here They always come down the same thing. Can we or can we not change the culture? Can we change the hiring culture? Can we change the academic culture? Can we do it or not and in many cases The academic culture feels like the The immovable rock and so if that's the test then that's what I want my hack to be about I want it to be about a thing that causes the culture to change in a direction that embraces technology Is there actually a hack to do that? And so The domain that I want to work in is adaptive technology Now a lot of you probably heard about this adaptive technology, right? It's it's all the rage and now I think there's nothing hotter really than adaptive tech and to Somehow get it across the chasm As something more than what we talk about and we invest in companies and we do a know to make it so that like when people go to school That's how they learn That's the the the thing that that a successful hack would do in this domain now tech enthusiasts like me Really expect big things out of the application of machine intelligence and big data to things like computer tutors We really think that You know the stuff we take for granted like you know, you know how now when you go to google it sort of reads your mind You know, you type in bob costus right before the olympics and it goes has pink eye Because it knows that's what you want to know Because it's mining the collective human intelligence of all the people who've been looking right People expect that that's going to make a big difference in math and I could talk about like oh the intricacies of the algorithms and blah blah blah, but at the end of the day It would be about getting instead of six of 10 people to be able to master mathematics to be able to get nine Or even 10 of 10 And that is a tall order since we've been getting about the same success rates since euclid So why math? Okay, so I got to read this because you know, we only have so much time. This is a hack right Math is an important bell weather in in seeing whether adaptive technologies are going to work or not Because if they're going to live up to their promise in any way You'll see it first in mathematics Because math is such an important human capability. It's the gateway to true understanding of a whole host of Knowledge that without understanding of mathematics just inaccessible to you science engineering computing many of the things we require Mathematics is the is the price of entry It's the very basis of rational thinking. It's the one discipline that every people on the earth agrees to the very last letter Is true If you think two and two is something other than four you're irrelevant to me because you'll be extinct So math is also the language that computers speak natively It's the most cut and dried thing on the planet if computers are going to be able to help Score us and guide us and evaluate us mathematics is the place where it will be able to to happen first So if computer tutors are going to help us learn anything we're going to see it first in math So when's that going to happen? Right like we've been doing this for quite a long time. When is that going to happen? And what i'm going to submit to you is it has happened Education has had Its first napster moment That moment where there used to be a way of doing things and now all of a sudden at another level of scale There's a different way to do it And i think the start of that was the release in august Of the con academies learning dashboard now many of you know the con academy as the place where salman con and lots of his Colleagues have created videos to explain the most complicated concepts in mathematics to 21 million learners You can go to the site and these short videos explain these things that baffled you for all of your life You know then i strongly recommend that those how many out there squeeze theorem all you got your squeeze theorem under control Out to the con academy bang no time flat. You'll be up with the rest of us. So That's what the con academy was But what the con academy is now is a place where there is a free adaptive tutor Provided at internet scale to every person on the planet that can get connected And that scale changes everything in just eight months Millions of people have been drawn to this capability and that has strong implications not only for how good it is now But for how good it can become So This tutor what's it like? Well, it poses problem after problem to you patiently It'll pose problems to you till you get sick and tired and when you come back again It will pose them to you again and while it does it explores the depth of your understanding It incrementally challenges you along a path that's specific to you It patiently watches you do every problem. It keeps track of how many attempts you make How many you get right how many you get wrong how many times you say i don't know this is too easy It's it tracks how many minutes you spend it tracks the periods of your inactivity And gradually student by student problem by problem day by day the con dashboard is learning About every aspect of how people interact with mathematics And it is building the most It's building the largest most detailed database of learning activity that's ever been assembled And they've only been doing it for eight months So what I suggest to you is that that database Properly mined becomes a an enormous resource for us to understand how to accelerate the teaching of mathematics Okay, so great Why do I think that it's on such an incredible trajectory? It's because I think that the con academy is on its way to becoming one of the great internet utilities One in a family of unbelievably valuable Yet often technically complex and seemingly massively expensive tools That are nevertheless provided to every citizen of the internet for free Think about wikipedia google search facebook youtube All of these tools that do things that could never have been done before done for more or less a central place For free along a variety of different funding models Now the con academy is based on the donation model. It's very similar to what wikipedia is based on And it's backed by some of the largest educational foundations in the world the bill melinda gates foundation being principal among them The con academy is uniquely positioned. I think to provide this internet scale utility this thing that we all agree on All of math is well understood the ability to continue to pose those problems and gather The behavior habits of humans and use those behavior habits to encourage personalized paths in the future This is a unique capability that con can provide at this moment in time not as not as a future thing Not maybe we could do it right this minute. Just go there now if you're bored It's very important to understand that as an internet utility. It's not only how that thing behaves today But the development trajectory that it can be on because It doesn't have to spend any time selling anybody. It doesn't have to spend any time lobbying anybody It doesn't have to spend any time convincing legislators or boards All you got to do to use the con academy is decide to do it So What's the hack? Well, if we accept for a minute that the con Tudor could make the kind of difference that I'm sketching out and lots of other people believe adaptive technologies could do What's in the way? Of seeing that happen right now like how come everybody isn't already doing it What will it take to move it and this is where our president crow? Is the man with the answer? It's a culture change A fundamental shift in the way we decide to teach math and the core of that shift is a change in approach that acknowledges That explanations of complex concepts are no longer scarce They are plentiful And so a math teacher's value Lies much more in them being a guide Through material a person who can untangle knots a person who can help you understand how to move forward for yourself Then it is to be a provider of explanations a lecturer And our experience at asu is that changing that culture Is very very difficult but It's a very rewarding change And it's a change that both has room but promise for continuous improvement In a way that the lone eagle model never had So if only there was some hack Some vector some magic spell that we all could do To cause in our states in our local areas This new method of teaching to come about Some way to organically spread these best practices In a kind of grassroots way form a coalition of people who are interested and willing and able To do these things if only there was a way to do that You guys are in such luck Because there is a way to do it There's a there is a model and my only hack Is simply to copy this model 49 more times The model is something called the con academy in Idaho And it's an initiative that was sponsored by the j.a. and katherin albertson's foundation in conjunction with the con academy The hack's really simple That's really what makes it feasible All we have to do is replicate con academy in Idaho in every other state in the union Con in coneticut con in colorado con in california con in other states that don't begin with kuh sounds like Arizona To combine in every state A local university That's committed to this mode of pedagogy But has a strong method of outreach to k-12 teachers to combine that with a sponsoring agency a local foundation a foundation In the state that's interested in seeing The willing the able Advance those ideas to be able to spawn Excuse me sponsor some of those initial implementations as the con academy in Idaho does That Federated across the nation So that every new person that comes to that to that Decision point of trying to use the con academy can find the story of someone some team An administrator a technical person a team of teachers who tackled a problem very similar to their own already And was able to achieve results using these technologies. This is the Dynamic that con academy in Idaho is set up and it could work in the states that you come from too And the result would be a national guild a national guild of educators That have learned how to effectively use the growing body of machine intelligence To help more students succeed at mathematics A guild that would introduce a culture of personalized adaptive learning that could help it spread to the limits Not only in terms of say upgrades and downgrades from the first place that it comes in but also into other subjects to the extent that those things are applicable This idea of establishing a culture of personal Of continuous improvement around the teaching of mathematics to go from six and ten to seven and ten to eight and ten Nine and ten to finally even the last person in the math class Can get across that thing which all of us know to be very difficult That's really what the mission of a math teacher has to be Now we've seen this model of a public utility spreading very rapidly work in education before When google apps for education came out in like around 2005 or six It was like anathema to use it It was crazy talk to think that you would outsource your homegrown email system the underpinnings of your campus's communication system To an outside internet agency It's now du regur and that was a very short period of time to change an entire culture and it put enormous pressure on other providers To create similar offerings to make it possible for that progress to to to proceed The rate at which those tools improved Once replaced was dramatic and continues to be dramatic And so this culture change can happen now It's much more complicated to do it inside the classroom And that's the reason that we've got to have some way to do it locally state by state in a coordinated effort that tears down the barriers between Oh, well, this is university math As though the algebra that we teach in university particularly to our developmental math students is in some way Fundamentally different from what we would have taught you in ninth grade if we could have got hold of you then So now's the time for the altar call folks, right every pitch got its altar call And so either This was something worth ignoring and if it was you should just keep ignoring it because there's plenty of things to do But if they found this interesting in some way I need you to go to that website www.senior.net And I need you to tweet that website to some people And I need some of you to find a foundation in your state and say hey I heard about this idea you should go and visit the Albertsons people because they could explain to you how we might Be able to do this in our state because what i'm telling you is four years from now If 27 28 30 states we're doing this at a level that was being able to show where this was working and where it wasn't This will become the culture of teaching math and from it we will learn how to teach all the other things So, uh, can we teach everybody math? Yes, we con Thank you, adrian And for those of you who are going to be in our our last conversation if you could Come on stage and get mic'd up Adrian I felt really bad The first time you mentioned the squeeze theorem and I was sitting in the audience not knowing quite what it is And then you brought it up again. So I'm going to spend some of my afternoon On con academy. I think you asked if people understood it and I don't even know what it is So, uh, maybe I understand it without knowing what it is We are now going to have a conversation On the timely subject of can tech Fix the inequalities of higher ed Earlier brian postulated in his non-controversial doesn't want to offend anybody Sort of way that the whole idea of higher ed itself Creates inequalities that the government is subsidizing by Creating a class of people who are left behind by virtue of the fact that they're not going to college while everybody going to college Is being subsidized Which is I thought a very provocative Theme that this conversation might want to take on in addition to the Related question of the inequalities that exist within the higher education system So to help us navigate these waters. Kevin carry is back the director of our education policy program here at new america Thank you Thanks. It's been a great conversation this morning. Thanks to all of you for sticking with us without a break I think we'll Finish strong with a good group of panelists who I'm going to introduce briefly We have uh, greg wrackliffe who is a senior program officer in the post-secondary success program At the bill of melinda gates foundation How plotkin senior policy advisor in the office of under the under secretary of education At the u.s. Department of education Um, Naomi davidson. Naomi. Sorry Bad moderator Who works on education partnerships At the con academy Feel free to make more con jokes The more the better And tammy wing cup who is the chief operating officer of ever fi, which is an education technology company Focused on teaching assessing badging and certifying students and critical skills So we've got great representation from actually a lot of the issues that we've already touched on this morning And when it comes to this question of inequality, I want to sort of start by Maybe asking you to reflect on two dimensions of inequality one is inequality of access which we can define as either ability to engage on some level with education but also To pay for it since education remains not free for in most cases And then the second dimension that I think is important to keep distinct is Inequality of quality Are people Not only getting access to some education that they can afford But are they getting access to The the right kind of education given who they are and what their particular challenges and needs are Is education is information technology going to Help hinder or complicate that challenge greg So part of our hope at the gates foundation is that technology will help And picking up on the last conversation We're piloting a set of adaptive learning engines And I think that the promise they are particularly in higher ed is that you can reduce the size of that 200 person lecture hall to Individual one-to-one tutoring that can accelerate both learning and knowledge acquisition As well as provide a more equitable set of supports for low-income students You know if you're upper or middle income you have Household wealth that can pay for private tutors If you're lower income you can't and I think that this adaptive learning engine is one way that you can provide that kind of access Yes, um Gee, there's so much I could say it's what a stimulating conversation. It's been this morning But let me since I'm from the department of education focus on the role of public policy vis-a-vis technology And and that is and it's one of the reasons that I gravitated into it You know I spent 25 years as a technology reporter in silicon valley And I saw the gap between what was and what could be And the and and the missing ingredient was often public policy. Let me just tell you quickly kevin Gee it's about six seven years ago now when I was chairman of the board of the foothill de ends a community college district in silicon valley And I was visited by a major education technology publisher And uh, he wanted to tell me how excited they were about new developments in The internet and in digitization because it meant that for his company They would finally be able to get rid of the used textbook market And every student would be required to pay full price every time Um, and that was what got him excited and this is a very major company Um, and and I don't know from a public policy standpoint that that's what many of us look at when we see what technology the opportunities the technology affords That it affords the ability to create a kill switch to meter students ability to access learning materials and to charge them for every sentence they read you know We can come to a different set of opportunities by focusing on Approaches epitomized by what the con Academy is doing and the crucial ingredient here for how that $150 billion a year that Amy Leighton was talking about is spent is what are the public policies that we implement that govern How we take advantage of the technology opportunity. So I guess my answer is that by itself Technology is just a tool. It's just a hammer. You can use a hammer to build a house or you can use a hammer to knock a house down and the critical thing here is Developing understanding and support for the appropriate public policies which ensure that we use technology Just like we use technology a hundred years ago when the technology were bricklayers and architects The goal was to use technology to create the greatest number of High quality opportunities for the greatest number of people at the lowest possible cost So now we have a new set of of hammers new set of technologies And the challenge in public policy where the lag time has been appallingly long is to Refine our public policies so that we're making the most effective use of these tools to create the the highest quality Opportunities for the greatest number of people at the lowest possible cost So I think at ever if I we look at This issue of inequality very seriously around The access issue and where technology has the ability to play a role So if you think about you know our conversation today has been very much about a transfer of knowledge game whether it's with math or with buddhist buddhism through that MOOC and We at ever fire really focused on those non curricular non academic drivers that actually you really need to be able to support students If we are going to actually make education attainable to them. So for example We focus with 500 colleges across the nation about 7 million students on the non academic drivers That research has shown will hinder particularly first generation students from actually getting through college Issues like financial wellness understanding student loans career success All the way over to alcohol and substance abuse sexual assault prevention so all of those non academic drivers that when you look at Why students particularly first generation students tend not to actually when they actually get into college Are successful there is how are we actually using technology not just to support students on The knowledge transfer right did they know what a fraction was or a linear equation was going in and going out? And I think that there's some great as we've heard today Some great organizations out there that are working on that but I think that it's only half the picture of this issue around ensuring that tech can actually help on this inequality piece and so the if the two biggest drivers are Their access to be able to get there, you know So part of what technology is doing is taking the access to knowledge gain out But what it has not yet done and what we are very focused on is ensuring that all of those other non academic drivers to achievement Are actually happening as well And I think that that has got to be then not just the algorithm of how we look at tech and how we build our platform That's around. Did you know something going in and did you know it going out? But are we actively looking at changing attitudes and behaviors on this issue as well I So I would say that That that yes that technology can absolutely Help on the quality and cost dimensions and I think that they're actually related And one way in which I think that that occurs is that for example on this learning dashboard that Adrienne Saini I really got into Explaining on my behalf So I feel I feel lucky because I can kind of start from a different level in the conversation is that What what that gives you is a kind of discretized understanding of where a student is And it can track the student through their own learning progress and pathway in a way that's tailored to that student So there's a an inherent efficiency or almost like a leaning out of the educational process You don't have to spend the same amount of energy talking everybody through stuff that they may already know and You know to the example of the economics class where we're all sort of spending the same amount of time and energy When you may already understand the concept and I don't So there's a kind of there's a kind of inherent efficiency associated with what technology or efficiencies That can be gained by what technology can do in terms of the insight and the the ability to kind of modularize Concepts into into discrete pieces of information that can be served up really easily to students But I don't think that technology really has much domain over the ideas of You know the socioeconomic factors that we've talked about today And I think that that's something that's outside of that and that that technology Is going to participate in that and going to have effects on that, but it's not necessarily a driver Let me offer a Little more of a kind of sharper critique of the interaction between technology and equality there's a A scenario or a critique that that is part of this conversation that goes something like this First Access to information technology is unequal We at new america have through our open technology initiative are working very hard to try to solve that problem But it remains not fully solved And particularly as long as there is a active and in many ways growing participation of private sector organizations, which is where we find a lot of the ferment and entrepreneurialism Um that energy almost inevitably is focused toward people with resources because there's got to be some sort of Revenue model and whether it's anything from baseline broadband Access to computer technology to probably the more important level of advanced technological literacies that allow people to engage fully with Um information technology that those are currently Unequal in a way that is highly correlated with class and opportunity um and that kind of Following up on that the danger then um as we move forward in more fully integrating technology into education Is that uh, it actually has a magnifying effect An existing inequality that the people who already have the literacies and the money Will learn even more because we're creating even better tools for them Um while the people who Are already behind will be left either with nothing or with sort of substandard versions of we have now Is that a danger and if so, how do we solve it? Of course, it's a danger throughout history in any time new tools. I mean the first people to have chariots We're not the peasants And uh, and you know the first people with uh, uh fully interactive three dimensional rendering systems for biological sciences Are not going to be the community college students in appalachia But again, that's where I come back to the role of public policy here because the Exciting thing about these technologies is that they can deliver and especially the personalization technologies that gates Gates foundation has been supporting I saw another one that's built on top of con academy that you folks have been developed called the ed ready Which is just I don't know if anybody's taken a look at that, but my goodness It's startling. Um, the uh, what's what the capacities that it creates right now But the the critical role for public policy is to take Uh, some small fraction of the money that's wasted on inefficient approaches and redirected into more efficient approaches And to close that gap The fact that that gap exists when a new tool is created It's just the nature of what happens when new tools are created in human civilization The wealthy and powerful Always get access to new tools before the poor and powerless But the goal of government and the goal of public policy is to close that gap And uh, there's a huge opportunity for policy entrepreneurs in this room and and elsewhere to modernize the policies that govern the Operation of our education systems so that More people in need get access to the technologies that could change their lives Can I add to that from the Perspective of operating on the ground in a lot of these places. I mean, I actually do think that that is one of the The beauties of where policy has led right is the ability to kind of focus on You know getting the pipe to all of the places that that is needed But I actually think that you know, I'm much more optimistic than I was even six years ago when we began This company where and can you just walk us through because I think people are a little bit less familiar with number five And the other three absolutely. Absolutely. So ever files an education technology company We focus in k-12 and in higher ed And we focus on all of those critical skills that have tended not to find their way into the core curriculum Either in k-12 and particularly in higher ed But put huge pressure on students to be able to be successful. So if you think about Topics like student loan management financial wellness health and wellness civic engagement all of these topics that when you leave either k-12 or you leave higher ed That the signal to the noise ratio of demand driven education is demanding that you actually know these types of skills We use adaptive pathing platforms That all along the way are measuring not just knowledge gain but attitudes and behaviors And I think that that's one of the differences where I disagree a little bit with Naomi around The idea that I actually believe that technology will play a role and we're already showing it In terms of being able to not just serve up content that has a right or wrong answer But to be able to interact with a student in a one-to-one environment on topics that are tricky On topics that they may not actually want to interact in a class setting on But like sexual assault prevention like alcohol abuse on campus all of these regulatory issues that campus is and deans of students are grappling with um, and so You know we quietly were We're you know venture backed and we quietly sit behind our partners in thousands and thousands with seven million students Not just having registered. So I think that you know part of what I hope we get into here Is I actually think that we Disagree earlier that if we set the bar low that we should watch the curve go like this that it's okay Um, we fundamentally don't believe in that We actually think that you should hold this accountable not just to the number of students that register But the number of students that actually get fully through our course Which on our platform is about 68 percent And so we know that Yeah, yeah, and and and so you know that's a different topic But to go back so I want to have that debate because I think that part of this is on the policy side Huge believer that policy can help but I also think it's holding us The private sector innovators in the economy to actually helping to get to those communities that Have not have gotten the short end of the stick And so just one example last week we were in a Native American reservation in Utah where they are actively using our financial literacy platform in a in a college and I think that what we have seen is that the technology is going to come the pipe is going to come But it's our responsibility I believe not just to lob over a login and say good luck to not just make it available But to actually help figure out how to operationalize in these places that has not necessarily gotten In the past and so I'm optimistic But I also think that the bar needs to be high To ensure that there's not just a lot of creation of good content But there's actually the systems in place to ensure that that content gets utilized and and there's efficacy around it No, I wanted to just clarify one point if I may have it You know when I meant what I when I said that you know the you know The piece about being able to engage on kind of discrete simple, you know Parts of a concept I actually wasn't referring to the idea that we wouldn't be engaging on very complex ideas I think the burden is on the educators to take a really complex idea break it down into its sort of simple simple chunks of Of sort of elemental particles and then figure out how those map together and then be able to kind of Provide that pathway for a student to navigate on their own rather than You know kind of saying like, uh, you know Here's a here's a sort of large curriculum And I expect you to get through it in the way that I intend for you to get through it But that you have the opportunity to navigate that on your own So so I guess that's what I meant when I just just as a clarifying point And I just want to reiterate that I think it's a really complicated issue and needless to say we worry about it a lot at the Gates Foundation And one of the things that we do because we are investing both in sort of the creation of these kinds of tools But we're also trying to evaluate the effectiveness And what you want to do when evaluating the effectiveness is making sure that they're working for All student populations and I think a lot of times when products are developed It's for the middle class So we spend a lot of time thinking through the partnerships with the right set of institutions that are serving Low-income students that are our target population And assessing how effective the whether it's a student support and student retention Advising system whether it's adaptive learning technologies and ever files or coaching advising It's you know making sure that these technologies Are presented in a language and in a way that resonates with the particular population That engages them in a way that they want to go deeper into the product rather than just sort of Flip to the next page and that's all as much art as it is science But I think it's a really critical component of sort of how do you make it better? We tend to often frame our inequality discussion domestically But I know one of the interesting things about a lot of the new Education technology providers is that their audience is very much not domestic naming Can you talk a little bit about the international dimension to the students who? Engage with Khan Khan Academy Absolutely. So we are in 200 countries at this point in the World so that means there's five countries that we're not in and I can't remember all of them off the top of my head But I know North Korea is one of them and there's a few in Africa. So I think that that one of the exciting things about About the access question and and the cost and quality dimension is that the barrier to entry For utilizing Khan Academy or some kind of tool like Khan Academy Is is is much lower than if you use the the chariot example That you just used that at that time the amount of the the incremental amount of Resources that you needed to be able to gain in order to get a chariot. It's much lower now for You know for for technology and while it's true, there's still a barrier You know we have examples of you know Children in orphanages in Mongolia using Khan Academy to study math and actually to create content And these that kind of You know seeing that kind of access and seeing that kind of like ability for students with very little Extraordinarily little Be able to engage at a similar level as a student with a lot of resources Is really exciting and we're definitely seeing that it's um, it's the the responsiveness of that international community I mean all of our content is is translated by volunteers and it's translated You know entirely in in Spanish and Portuguese and Turkish in in whole versions of our site And it's also, you know 30 languages across our videos So the desire to go out and do that and translate that content into You know their native languages is is obviously there and I think that it shows that You know a little bit goes a long way in Yeah, Mongolia is interesting. It's one of those countries that uh, I think it has the lowest population density of any country on earth So they just they didn't wire anything because that would be crazy They just skipped right to wireless and they and so it's actually Their their communications infrastructure is pretty good. Yeah, particularly compared to a lot of other infrastructures that they continue to work with So Greg, I wanted to talk a little bit You as you said the foundations Uh, main focus is on the education of traditionally underserved students And so there's kind of a there's there's sort of two dynamics that seem to be going on simultaneously with respect to technology Um, that may not always complement one another exactly on the one hand There's all this concern about the cost of higher education as a barrier um and rising prices and the inability of uh financial aid to kind of keep up with that and So inevitably you get into some discussions around Labor productivity and trying to you know use technology to substitute for labor in smart ways The danger that people then kind of point out is oh, well, are we headed toward a future where um only the elite get interpersonal interaction And everyone else is just kind of left with a mook even a good mook of some kind Which will never sort of fully substitute for that person again based on my remarks this morning I'm a little more skeptical of that critique, but it's certainly an open question I think that's it's all remained to be figured out Is the adaptive learning that you talked about the solution to sort of squaring that circle so I think that that um It's a complicated question I get asked a lot and I think that that the philosophy of the foundation is I borrow the tagline from e-surance technology when you want it people when you don't And I think that there are always going to be limits to how much technology can replace A teacher or a faculty member an instructor and that's not our long term goal I think that technology can bring a lot of efficiency To the education process in the way that Naomi was saying around For those students who are More knowledgeable about a particular piece of content they can sort of move on their own for those students who are struggling You can provide more individual support and I think the struggling student can be rich or poor It's just it's really about Accelerating learning and knowledge acquisition And I forgot the rest of your question. No, I think that was that was that was good. Okay. So yeah, I think I think that our hope is to Make institutions more efficient By allowing them to educate more students through the use of technology and provide more personalized time for those students Who need it much So how do we and maybe this is maybe a question to you and how you're looking at the institution level Making these investments how you're talking about public policy How do we ensure quality then and and to be clear It's a bit of an unfair question because we don't ensure quality now I thought it was interesting that we heard from the professor from George Mason Who said basically our service is terrible and doesn't work and no one learns anything And what's most interesting about that is not so much that The fact of it because I think a lot of people know that's true. It's that And I'll say this because he's joined us right in front He can go back to his college today and say this on the record and no one cares, right? It's not like it's going to change. It's not going to be a newspaper article George Mason professor says no one learns in our classes. They forget everything because so But nonetheless the burden is always higher When we're doing new things and the burden needs to be higher if we really have want people to learn So how do we make sure or or try to sort of move in that direction? Well two two thoughts on that quickly One of the more hopeful trends is this whole area of open educational resources and the in the con academy and what it represents and the And mooks are part of that but the more that What people learn in Academic institutions is made transparent and people can see what the courses are and what the learning outcomes are and What the competencies that can be achieved and verified through the exposure Then we at least get away from some of the the black box of you know I gave you a degree trust me. There's quality to it And so I think transparency is always a is is always a great way I mean, it's how most other industries do it is is you have You know, you have a jd power in the automotive industry, which is looking at And creating transparent measures of every factor involved in an automobile and then people can make better decisions So transparency is part of it and the other thing is is just the first part of your question about how people learn and whether or not Some people are going to be just doing this technology mediated learning and what's the impact of quality on that Versus others who get hands on instruction one of the things that i'm seeing as we shift from the old model where the To the teacher was the provider of content And and the student was supposed to sit there and listen and absorb it is now that that is being Sort of outsourced to these different delivery methods School and education is a lot Much more often as certainly in the hands of the most gifted educators that I get a chance to visit with around the country Turning into a more project-based more about what students can do together They can attack a problem and in order to attack this problem whether it's figuring out a new protein folding sequence or Trying to figure out less expensive ways to desalinate Seawater or whatever the real Social economic business problems that we confront as schools begin to organize themselves as places where problems get solved And as those problems get solved students learn what they need to learn in order to be effective participants In the problem-solving process then then people can learn from teachers But they can learn from each other look I I still remember I learned how to write in seventh grade from my seventh grade girlfriend I wasn't really very much Interested in writing or school and didn't see the point of it Until I had a girlfriend who thought it was really important that I not embarrass myself in english class because she was dating me And so she taught me how to write And and honestly, I mean I I think a lot of us learn from peers If the peers are well equipped to to guide us And what's important for an instructional environment is to is to structure those opportunities So that so that learning can take place. So I think those are my two answers more transparency promotes quality and then changing the idea that We can only learn from someone who's called a teacher a teacher can structure a learning Opportunity from which Many to which many people can contribute only some of whom might be called teachers So the only thing I'd add to that is the um I think we need better forms of assessment and you you've got this whole competency-based education Movement that's sort of out there floating and I think the assessment piece of that is what's really interesting to me Because it's really building on your point about demonstrating the application of the knowledge And the acquisition of the skills As a result sort of having those competencies and I think that's the other piece I would add kind of one other piece to to what you've discussed which is actually The student voice In this conversation. I think that you know the whole time today We've been listening to kind of where we think higher ed should be but I think that there's a signal to noise Disconnect in terms of the student voice in this equation of where higher ed is going and I think that you know Actually one of you know another organization that's been disrupting in higher ed came out with research in company by the name of chegg Last week came out with a really interesting research piece that showed that The expectations of the learner of a student in higher ed And the academic and then the employer are totally mismatched, right? So if you look at where students particularly again first generation students coming in They they are seeking demand generated, you know demand driven higher education They their expectation is that we are going to teach them the skills that they need to go out and be successful At their first job to go get that first job So if you look at the marketplace the market is saying I want my expectation is when I come to your campus You're going to teach me what I need for my first job when they went out and surveyed all the academics They believed that their job was to educate them for the long-term skills that they need Over the course of a career critical thinking skills, you know all of those and then they surveyed the employers And the employer said We need both But what we don't have right now is we've got four million open jobs and two point You know 2.5 million people to fill them and so there's a disconnect in terms of what demand driven higher education Is going to be and I think that that part of that is Filling that void not just what with what professors think that they can stand in front of a camera and Suddenly continue to teach But also looking at what is being demanded by the actual consumer of higher ed which is students And I think that that voice In this debate is really really important and I think that that alone will change. I think how higher education Looks with technology I think the only thing that I would add would be along the kind of adaptive learning Element of it, which is that I think that because of the scale that You know the adaptive learning platforms are able to operate at I mean we we just passed the two billion math problems practiced on con academy marked about a week ago and Because of that we're able to and and not just us but other Environments as well to evaluate the efficacy of the learning pathways that we're creating very quickly and run You know, you know very involved tests on you know based on on on the types of students the environments and other things So I think somebody said it earlier It's just sort of the the machine learning is is only going to advance So the more that we the more that we get the more we're able to give And that's an element. I think when you combine that with that transparency and the personalization The student is then walking around with a kind of a viable platform that they can kind of trust Is is a tested it's a truly like it's a it's a tire that's been kicked a lot and And they can show their progress within it and that follows them no matter where they are And that's something that has to kind of you know Speak to the general community You know We're catching up on our schedule a little bit. So I think we'll go to questions now from the audience Same same rules as before. Please wait for the mic and identify yourself Hi, this is on okay. I'm Lindsay Saranen from the University of Maryland And I'm going to admit bias that I'm a librarian and so my Ilk is towards digital literacy and instruction And I've heard a lot today We've kind of gotten to to where we're talking about access and ability to use technology But we just got to it and it's only been brought up briefly I would love to hear more about how we deal with the fact that there are a lot of students Even in the united states even in you know wealthy areas Who don't have digital literacy skills and can't use the kinds of technologies that you guys are talking about And especially in the context of public policy I mean we have the FCC right now who's essentially Deregulating net neutrality and that's going to make broadband more expensive. It's going to make technology access more expensive What do we do about that and how does that play into what the work that you guys are all doing? Um So I switched my careers from writing about uh technology to trying to impact Public policy around technology in in part because I think we have a crisis there are you could 80 percent everybody remembers net day remember net day and everybody made a big deal about wiring the schools Um and what people don't know who were not in the schools that almost all of those efforts stopped at the school front office And that 80 percent of our k-12 schools have no broadband access in the classroom I mean dozens of countries are ahead of us our under investment and and lack of focus on Developing applying and insisting on the appropriate public policies to close these gaps is appalling And it's and it's one of the reasons that that I I switched professions and And I would encourage people to take a look at what are the public policies that govern how technology is used in your local school district Uh, there is opportunities to create new policy approaches at every level of our participatory democracy whether it's the school district level the state level the regional level and certainly at the federal level and um and we're very far behind in harmonizing public policies with the opportunities that these technologies create so I I don't think the right approach is to Denigrate the opportunities, but the right approach is to insist As we've been trying to do in the department of education and as secretary duncan has been trying to do by leading The effort to reconfigure how federal funds are used to support Broadband in the schools that we get those classrooms wired That we get them wired as quickly as we can and that we put available tools and technologies in the hands of every student Who could benefit from them? That's it the short the problem in this country is not resources at the higher ed side We have 150 billion dollars some tiny fraction of that could close many of these gaps The problem is paralysis on the public policy side and and So I would uh, I commend your question and I think it deserves Even more outrage than you expressed I think it's also going to come to a head this year because all of status at the k-12 level right because so many state assessments now You're having to take online. It's not going to be con and ever five that are forcing this conversation It's going to be state assessments at the k-12 level Because you as parents are going to see that your students now have to take All of their state assessments and common core assessments online And when your principal is suddenly trying to figure out how they rotate that that laptop cart to 12 different classrooms That is where I think the outrage is going to come in my sense Is that's actually going to help all of us in this industry to figure it out much quicker than money have hoped Yes Yeah, I'll brand capitol and george mason university So i'm wondering are there any countries on earth where new high tech alternatives to traditional education are actually winning Where they actually where actually Traditional brick and brick the brick traditional brick and mortar colleges have lower status and where the elites don't go there And instead they do something like conic anabee like anywhere anywhere the um He's from peru and i'm blanking on his name right now, but he has developed a school outside of the Outside of the the classic You know brick and mortar it is he uses con academy and several other kind of these more competency based It's a for-profit school I think he charges something like a hundred dollars a year and In the status of that school is actually considered to be pretty high It's not a it's not a country that's doing very well in terms of their education overall So i'm not you know, so I think that he's kind of a big fish in a little pond in some ways But I but because maybe that there isn't a lot of pre-existing Infrastructure that he has to battle. He's kind of got a faster. It's kind of like the cell phone in asia or something You know, it's like a faster adoption than you might experience here where we're very accustomed to the idea of uh, you know That college means stage on a stage and that's you know a mindset shift that we are grappling with I think I mean just a sort of like large observation in response to that is that Yeah, as we all know the last 30 years has been have seen A tremendous change in the reduction of the percent of all people on earth who are impoverished, right? So we have an absolute reduction in the number of people in poverty even as the size of the you know We the overall population grew the next phase of that Is according to the oacd like their mid-range projection The number of people in the global middle class is going to grow by three billion From today until 15 or 20 years from now There's no way that we're going to build colleges as we know them to educate those three billion people Because education is what you want when you get in the middle class It's the first thing you want it means you've got a roof over your head food in your stomach Maybe some access to health care Education is next so I think it's a fair point and I think the sort of larger point that Anyone who's making this argument has to contend with the fact that we've had technology after technology after technology With lots of promises, um, you really do have to make a strong at Jeff Solingo said this time is different argument But I do think that the sheer Scale of the market is something that is going to grow without really any precedent at all And that that I think I think the technology will just inevitably play a much larger role in serving those people I'll give you one cool example. I mean that I I get to travel around and see stuff but On the k-12 side take a look at the I guess they just recently changed the name But the open high school of utah fascinating idea Where they created a high school where all of the curriculum is available online 24 7 the students don't come to class in the regular conventional sense I think they come and they meet in classes and work groups that are project based once a week or so One of the cool things about that is that Because all of the curriculum for high school is available online 24 7 It means the eighth graders can see what the ninth graders are working on then the tenth graders can go back And look at what the seventh graders are working on They have some good data that shows they're getting higher graduation rates more of those kids are going to college They're expanding and scaling that approach. So I don't know if it's You know a question of One is beating the other but but as these models are developing. We're certainly seeing some very encouraging progress and stories of and and evidence Of success in improving both the quality of teaching and learning That's undisputable Yes Hi, I'm Julia yellow and I'm president of small startup of here in DC and I'm curious to know mostly for Can academy and ever fi if the What the the there if there's new research that shows how people learn with the introduction of technology And how is it being used in these new platforms that are emerging? Thank you I would say one of the exciting things about It kind of gets to the idea. I think Adrienne brought it up of sort of moving moving us up the food chain that when we start you know Being able to kind of deliver content at a certain, you know, sort of feeling like we kind of gotten the I'm not going to say that we've nailed like delivering the content part of it But you know sort of like when it stops being just about, you know, do you get one plus one? What are the other things that might it might be a barrier to you learning the next concept? And you know, so we're doing a lot of exploration with growth mindsets And I think there's a trend in in pushing towards the so-called soft skills and understanding those better And I think that you know the college of the future is going to understand those a lot better And is going to be much more actively engaging in things that we think of as being sort of Fluffy today, but realizing that those are actually core skills and we're we're doing a lot of You know ab testing with growth mindset messaging and you know elements into our platform to see how it affects the learning curve We're doing the same. I think in terms of looking at You know, I started by saying that part of this conversation has been just about like Knowledge gain, right, which is just how do you communicate? You know knowledge around these topics. I think that because of the topics that we work on Attitude and behavior change is a huge piece of that. So we've been using a lot of population health Models around how you think about these types of issues and I've done some research with the national institutes of health That have looked at our platform around how do you Actively pass students. So when they tell you for example that they are a drinker a non drinker How do you pad them in a way that allows them to learn? Information in a way that they'll be receptive to and that's I think the beauty of adaptive pathing technology is our ability to kind of take information in That are on the softer skills and then feed them back a path that actually is more receptive to their attitudes and behaviors And I think there's a long way to go. I think that you know, you brought up this idea of assessment and efficacy I think anybody new in this field realizes that the ed tech industry is going to have to lead on that, but I also believe that it's got to be in parallel with with With thinking about how you actually engage with the user So, you know for a long time we've been talking about the achievement gap or the dropout gap in k12 or higher ed We had ever fight firmly believed that you actually cannot start closing that achievement gap if your user experience is still one voice With a chalkboard to a group of students And so there are lots of great organizations including con but A company that went public last week that I think to you Is a company that's been working with a lot of higher ed institutions To take full programs from georgetown from university south Southern california and put them online with a lot of that interactivity And I think that there's a lot of models out there that we really should be looking at around the efficacy of this I think we have time for one more question if there is one If not, please join me in thanking our panelists