Strategies for Engaging Online Learners with John Gamba and Thaddeus Reichley

Nectir. John Gamba is a serial entrepreneur and a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania. He has been dedicated to transforming education for most of his career. In 1999, John Gamba co founded pace the Partnership for academic and community Excellence, which was the first school to home communication network, connecting 1000s of students to millions of homes, which was eventually sold to Blackboard international industry leader in

education that we all know. John currently serves as an entrepreneur in residence and director of innovative programs at Penn's Graduate School of

Education. And in this role, John mentors education entrepreneurs, helps incubate new ed tech ventures and oversees the Milken Penn GSE education business plan competition, which is awarded billions of dollars to worldwide education ventures fattiest that regularly, with over 20 years of teaching and leading in public charter and independent schools said rightly has designed curriculum lead faculty through challenging times done strategic development and built highly productive teams that is

currently completing an education degree at USC and is in the midst of writing his dissertation about student engagement in online environments. We know Kavitta Ghai from previous episodes. She's one of our favorite guests from last year, who happens to know a lot about many of the topics we're talking about today, especially improving communications and building learning relationships in higher ed and getting buy in from faculty. Thad Reichley, and John Gamba. Welcome to Ed Tech insiders.

laborers. And I have a funny story that my grandfather bade gamba, who is a painter, he painted bridges in New York, Newark, New Jersey. And when he came home, he wouldn't allow my father to have a paintbrush because he was afraid he'd like it. So the story goes, but they always instilled in us the importance and power of education. And you know, kind of the rest is history. I graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. I started in

consulting at KPMG. And then in 1999, I started a virtual incubator for education ventures and oversaw, started, wrote business plans supported several edtech companies, before coming here to the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education, and serving as their first entrepreneur, President.

undergraduate work. I was actually in probably around 1997, working on a little project with a couple of buddies called nature's web and the early days of internet education. We were traveling across the country, if you can believe it, doing juggling performances for elementary kids and teaching them about Lewis and Clark and trying to build a network of schools. It was really inspiring for me to go and pursue my graduate degree in education and become a teacher.

And then I spent the last couple of decades teaching and leading in schools and then just ahead of the pandemic decided that I wanted to pursue my doctorate in education and think about next steps See, and at that time was really interested in pursuing online education and seeing what that was all about. Little did I know, we were all about to go online, and I was about to leave my, you know, help a team lead my school into an online environment kind of over the

course of a weekend. And I went in originally thinking I was going to study dyslexic learners and how to really support them. And the shift to online learning. And what I was experiencing caused me to pivot. And so I, I started really focusing on research regarding how to improve student engagement and online education. And that has been sort of the

passion. And the result of you know, my research for the last three years now has been on how to really improve and be a part of that conversation around how I think education needs to evolve in the coming future.

online community as well. Let's talk about some of the areas of student communications that both of these folks have a lot of expertise in.

coming out. John, I know you're seeing a ton of new companies come across your desk, and that I'm specifically really curious about based on the research that you're doing. What are some of the most exciting shifts that you're seeing in education right now, specifically, in how we're engaging students in online courses?

education. And I think, you know, we're experiencing what many would call a mental health crisis right now with our youth

and college age students. And so I think, you know, anything that we can do to improve those connections in the communication, whether students are in person and, you know, sort of brick and mortar institution, or they are in a hybrid moment, or they're fully online, you know, I'm really excited about any opportunities that schools and companies are taking to really deepen those connections student to student and student to professor. Yeah, I love that.

parents in a moment's notice. We believed we had a hunch that a more engaged parent led to a higher achieving student, and sort of the rest was history, we went through a couple rounds of funding, and then eventually, that company got sold to Blackboard and an all cash transaction since then, fast forward. Like that says a couple decades, we are now looking at this state of community engagement and where the space

is going. We recently did a analysis on the space looking at all the outbound communications providers in the inbound communications providers and tried to answer the question, what's next. And what we found when we looked at the seesaws. And the parents squares in the app to GS and K 12. Insights. And the list goes on, is that there's a lot of dominant players in the outbound communication space, a lot of dominant players in the inbound

space. But I think the future is really going to be how do you come up with actionable insights from what's coming in? And what's going out? How can stakeholders, decision makers in K 12 and higher ed, take that information, package it, analyze it, maybe even through AI, and come up with ways to personalize the outbound and inbound communications that are coming in from parents from students and stakeholders in K 12?

Is that something that you think we should be embracing and bringing into the classroom and saying, Yes, this is the next wave of education. This is how we do it, or is it It, you know, a balance and we have to make sure that we're, we sort of have the antithesis of it as well, which is more peer to peer communication and learning.

How can you actually use chat GPT in instruction in learning to really deliver on what we need to deliver with 21st Century Learning, developing critical thinking skills, metacognition, what are we going to do to be able to use chat CBT to say to a student, use this tool to be able to substantiate an argument come up with ways that you can really support through reason through evidence, and how you're developing an argument and drafting a paper?

Sure, just like when the calculator came out, everybody's talking like, oh, my gosh, is that going to change? Well, we're not thinking about rote memorization, and drill and kill, we're really thinking about developing complex reasoning and creative problem solving skills. And I think chat, GBT can be used as an asset to deliver on those views and values.

get what you need from it. And I think that we're gonna see a huge shift in education in our curriculum towards, you know, less of the quantitative learning and more of the qualitative stuff that, frankly, a robot can't take from us.

But communication data is extremely complicated, you know, trying to figure out what people actually mean, when they say this, or what how deep a discussion goes. We've seen some academics work on it, but it hasn't really gone mainstream. I love the idea of AI being able to make sense of that data and have personalized suggestions that I just want to throw that

to you. Because, you know, when you're looking at you're doing your research on engagement methods and tools, what are some of the sort of cutting edge ideas that people are trying to move on to get engagement to really catch up with the number of students who are suddenly thrust into online learning? How are we reaching the students who are disengaged?

connection, right. And I think, especially in the K 12 environment, I learned that in trying to take, you know, kindergarteners online, and you just you realize how important that is, and that transfers all the way up through higher ed. And honestly, you know, I think some of the most exciting stuff when I look at what nectar is doing and what Kavita is doing with her company, you know, meeting students where they are and finding and utilizing the pathways that are already there,

I think is what's most exciting to me, when you think about communication. I've actually been surprised in my research, even with decades of data showing how important communication is. And that connection is both an in person teaching and an online teaching how little professors and institutions are paying attention to it and really utilizing it as an important

tool to improve engagement. And in the absence of that what students are doing is finding their own ways to communicate, they're, you know, creating rudimentary Google Docs where they're sharing notes and asking questions, they're doing discourse channels, and, you know, Slack channels where they

can communicate. And so, you know, to find those channels, and those things that are already working, and then capitalize on them, and really, you know, build them into more robust platforms, I think is what is really exciting to me, because, you know, students are so hungry for it, they're going to create these connections

however they can. And if we can then figure out where they're having those conversations, and then build that into a platform that can you can gather that data real time you can use it to see how the communication is and what's most important, and you can really fuel that engagement and improve Of course, outcomes. That's what's really exciting to me.

artificial intelligence. If you watched the Netflix documentary, social dilemma, you know, what are we doing with our information? I just was went through a really cool construction effort. And we were meeting with students about a digital learning platform, and we ask the question, you know, Bing, Google, what do you like, and they all looked at me high school kids, they said thing of Duck, duck, go, and I was like,

duck, duck, what? And they said, Yeah, duck, duck, go, they don't take your personally identifiable information. So students are thinking about this, how are you using information privacy, security, how data is getting compromised, how data is getting used? And I think there's, you know, the the outcome for that is when students start saying, hey, my data is valuable, I want to be compensated for it. Instead of me paying through my eyeballs in Facebook and Twitter and Tiktok.

How can we create an awareness around how this information is being used, and empower students to be part of this AI and machine learning revolution?

graduated in 2019. And we at almost every school that I know of, we used to do this thing, where we would create a Google sheet for the entire campus, and just a student would create it usually in student government. And we'd put all of the classes and then one by one, somebody would take it upon themselves to make a group chat for that class, it would be on Discord or group, me or WhatsApp. And we'd go put the link in it. And no teachers or admin knew that we were doing this or maybe they

didn't care. But it would get to every single student on campus somehow. And it was so interesting to see we built our own neural network, basically, within the campus where we all knew we need a way to communicate with one another, we've got to be able to help each other and give each other those resources in classes. And you're right, if students don't get it from the administrators from the faculty, they're going

to go build it themselves. And these are digital natives who know exactly the type of technology that they're looking for, to improve their own learning outcomes.

And so, you know, as I started moving into online education, and was taking courses online, you know, I found my classmates and I falling into the same pitfalls of conversations being dominated by the same few people, right, and lack of sort of the diversity of thought and participation in the classroom experience, really creating a watered down academic experience

for all of us, right. And so whether you're in a business environment or in an academic environment, again, using real time metrics, and data to see who's actually taking a moment to share their ideas, and to ensure that everyone around the table is sharing their ideas, is another really important, I think, opportunity to utilize technology and all the forms that we've been talking about to really improve the experience

for everyone. And then again, just increase those outcomes, whether it's a business outcome or, you know, knowledge acquisition for all the students in the course. I love this

and the teachers. But I think the educators can actually sort of move in that direction and say, Well, why don't we create environments that actually encourage students to feel relatively free? We're not

trying to spy on them. But if they have, if there's information in there that can actually improve the class environment or the learning, how can we make the formal learning environments have some of the same elements and some of the same, like fun and engagement and sort of interest as the informal and then to your point, that diversity of thought it's really on the educators in many cases to ensure that they aren't stifling diversity of thought they're not sort of trying to

get people to get to a single right answer or, you know, I always feel like that that online show We have where it says, you know, hey, here's a prompt. Everybody has to respond to this prompt and you just have to write anything. But it's it's graded. It's like the worst possible way to stimulate innovation. But we're learning I think, as an industry, we're learning.

in this in this spacing. You know, if you look at 1000, digital learning products, or if you if you look at what was the mark of success, 950 of them failed, 25 were successful. 20 of them were really successful. And, you know, five, were unicorns why, you know, asking that question, and the research says that it breaks down to three fundamental or core elements. One is how engaging is the software? How engaging is the solution to students to the

learners like it? If you're not delivering a fortnight or a Minecraft, like experience these days, as we just talked about? The digital natives are going to rebel and say, No, that's not for me. But you also have to ensure that it's pedagogically aligned, you know, and that's a tricky one, because teachers, right, that are still measured by how well their students do on

PARCC, and smarter balanced. And that sometimes clashes with what we're trying to do to drive the deeper learning movement, critical thinking, complex reasoning, creative problem solving skills. So you have to think about pedagogical alignment through the lens of high stakes tests, formative assessments, but really thinking about what drives a college and career ready student. And that's

tricky. Third is easy, but ease of adoption if you get the first two, right, super engaging and pedagogically aligned, say to standards and outcomes, but it's not easy to adopt are not easy to implement. You also don't have a shot, those that get those three things right, in our research, and our experiences are the ones that are really the ones that are primed for long term competitive success.

off. First one comes to mind is a company called prisms of reality, which is doing math in the metaverse, you know, VR, experiential learning, complex reasoning, real world problem solving, to solve the algebra problem. And we know we have a big algebra problem on a Rupa who came out of the classroom and really understands how to develop an engaging, pedagogically aligned and easy to adopt solution did just that and has been super successful.

Students are raving because they have their headsets on and they're actually able to solve a problem collectively through a classroom, teachers love it, because they're seeing their students through the lens of credit, recovery, improve academically through the

craziness of the pandemic. And it's easy to adopt, they've got a great approach to customer success, making sure that they have professional development, and thinking about being intentional about onboarding, implementation and celebrating the success of students who succeed through that solution. So that would just be one example. We've worked closely with them. And you know, there

are others. But if they follow that model, you know, engaging pedagogical alignment, ease of adoption, that the chances of success, and you know this with nectar, you know, there'll be super successful.

those tools. From my perspective of onboarding all these campuses, that has really been the biggest piece, if you're going to ask people to do an entirely new behavior that they've never done before. You've got to make sure that they have the support to do it. And that's going to be a very human level of support. I think the you know, technical support that we see within the ad tech world, it's got to be at a lot deeper level than we see other

tech tools. Because we're asking, like we said digital natives to come to the same place where professors who are on average 55 And maybe haven't used technology like this in their teaching spaces before. We're asking them to come to the exact same place. So I think from my perspective, that's really the balance that I look

for in new edtech tools. Do you have the forethought to know I'm gonna have three actual very different stakeholders, the administrator, the faculty, Do you and the student, can I meet all of them where they are and provide actual value to solving their problems. And it's gonna be really exciting to see how the EdTech market sort of evolves over the next couple of years, I think we've seen a ginormous boom, we have all of these new technologies that are coming out. But John, I think

you're 100%. Right, the incumbents are going to be the ones that figure out how to get a pedagogical tool that really works and solves problems into the hands of students that genuinely authentically want to use it. And teachers that feel like it is solving problems for them as well, and improving their students learning outcomes.

I always ask that question to the experts, the honor roupas, the dads the people who are actually in the classroom, making the decisions serving as administrators and navigating that, you know, triumvirate of of stakeholders who need to be convinced to acquire or provision a tool.

thing to them. And again, they're in a different place than the digital natives that they're trying to reach. And then they've got administrators who are trying to sort of bridge that gap with new technology and

pick the right ones, right. And I had a similar list, I think, to what Kavita and John, were talking about when thinking about successful implementation of these tools, you know, teachers needed to be intuitive, they needed to have immediate value add, and they want to be able to have built in assessments and find data that really shows them if and how, you know, this new tool has

improved student outcomes. And so, you know, I think that is what what we're really trying to look for when we're talking about new technologies or new techniques. And I think that, again, it's true in the K 12 space. But I think it's also very true in higher ed.

now named? Can you indicate the outcomes that have been delivered by those tools, and it was something like four or 5%. And so again, I go asset deficit lens. That's really, really scary, but it's also an opportunity. So when we're working with our ed tech founders, and our entrepreneurs, we really talk about research, practice partnerships, and CO construction and making sure that you're very intentional with your evaluative model, so that you can report the outcomes

so people can remember you. And that's the key to invest to becoming more investable as a venture, sustainable and scalable over time is, when you get to that engagement, pedagogical alignment and adoption, can you actually celebrate and promote the success that's been delivered as a result of that product in the form of the things that are important to the thirds of the world, which is students, student outcomes, students

success. And that's not always parking, Smarter Balance, it's also soft skills development, self confidence, mental health, and a host of other things that need to be measured. When you're implementing these products and services.

haven't been able to reach. I think there's a lot of really interesting sub genres of outcomes or, you know, subsets of the outcome data that that tech companies could really be highlighting to make it very clear to everyone inside the higher ed institution or the school that these products are

making a difference. You know, it's definitely a key one aspect of the tech business that both of you have incredible experience in and I'd really like to drill into is the idea of taking academic research, you know, what we know about learning, and then helping find ways to put it into practice?

You know, we have these amazing graduate schools of education around the country around the world, including, of course, the Penn Graduate School of Education, where you are entrepreneur in residence, John, and we have decades of research and we know a lot about learning not everything at all. Not even close but a lot. But sometimes it feels like edtech companies have to start over sort of like, they grab one factoid from the research, and they base their whole company on it. And I'd

love to dig into this. So, John, let's start with you, you know, you bridge this world a lot. What do you advise companies on the topic of, you know, leveraging existing research or how to conduct new research in a way that can move at the speed of entrepreneurship and business, and that doesn't slow them down.

Whereas I often meet with a lot of entrepreneurs who come right in, and God bless them, they say, what's the least amount of research I have to do to still raise them to capital, and I always go and you know, need to be intentional with with how you're leveraging underlying research to substantiate your theory of action and your theory of change and your logic model. I think that's critically

important. And the strength of that goes up when you're using the latest in academic research to substantiate that logic model. And to is the evaluative model, you know, how are you measuring outcomes in quantitative and qualitative ways that can be presented and promoted in a way that would substantiate your value proposition? I'll give you an example. Being somebody who's come out of the community engagement space, we know that a more engaged parent is a higher

achieving student. There's been volumes of research done on that settled science, right. But what we try to do is, when we look at adventure, we ask deeper questions. Alright, we know that a more engaged parent is a higher achieving student. But what happens when it's student led parental engagement, where the student is actually driving an essential question, the company that comes to mind is gab on which came to us and said, We're doing this sort of Twitter for parental engagement

in the K 12. Space? How can we do better? How can we leverage research? And how can we come up with an evaluative model that's going to make us stronger? And so we started asking essential questions, what if the student

is driving that engagement? And what if that's being done habitually over time, and what we learned is that there is even a compounding effect and or impact on how that engagement and that bond, and that connection between the student and the parent strengthens over time, if it is student led and habitually implemented. So that's starting to become papers that are being written and

research being done. And what I love to see is our researchers and say, our Center for Human and optimal development, work with grad students and get a memo out that started with me and an introduction I make from a founder of an ed tech company. And then suddenly it becomes a masters or a PhD thesis. And that's super exciting. Because on one end, we're advancing the field of research in this area. In the other end, because I'm an entrepreneur by heart, a company like bonds, getting a free Chief

Research Officer, right. And all of that's contributing to the investor ability, sustainability and scalability of that venture. And when we can do that, you know, with more than just a few ventures, we know that we're on to the right, and that is the essence of a research practice partnership as we see it.

to see. And I think, you know, there's complementary skill sets when it comes to researchers who are going to be very controlled, and make sure that, you know, they're crossing their T's and dotting their eyes and doing serious science, and entrepreneurs who want to keep moving fast, trying new things, testing new things, those could work together, they don't have

to be seen at opposite odds. You know, CNET adds that I want to throw this to you as well, because I know you've been deep in the research on student engagement and online engagement. And I'm curious how you've seen, you know, opportunities for application, do you see companies out there that are already leveraging the research in really smart ways? Do you see ones that are sort of

beginning to? Or do you think there's a lot more opportunity for the research that's already established to create a whole new generation of communication tools?

what we need to be doing. Right. And that's both in in person and online environments. And yet, I think if you were to bring a student from 100 years ago into a classroom right now, they would largely be pretty comfortable with what they were seeing. Right. And you know, I think, right now, one of my frustrations is that the goal of online education Mission seems to be to recreate the classroom environment as closely as

possible. And I think, again, we're still trying to catch up and listen to the research that tells us what works and what doesn't work in an in person environment. And if we're now just, you know, replicating those same issues and problems in an online environment, without really thinking in the exciting ways that John's talking about with this entrepreneur mindset around, what could we do differently, right, we had this catalyst moment with COVID, to really

shake things up. And if everyone's goal post COVID, is to see how quickly we can get back to pre COVID ways of teaching, that is a lost opportunity, right? And so I think that, for me, is the exciting moment of how can we really think about the research, but how can we, as entrepreneurs and changers in this space, take some big swings, to think about what education might look like and how it might evolve in the next 10 2050 years? Right?

That's the exciting thing. And so companies that are on that edge, that are using the research, but are using it to try new things, and not just recreate what we've been doing for years,

my classroom. So for the educators that are listening, what are the metrics that they should be looking at when they are choosing which tools to use in their classroom? What can they really look at? And say, Yes, this is the company that is going to help me achieve, you know, higher student engagement? Are they looking for something that is helping increase social

emotional learning? And if so, you know, how do you break that down into this is the actual concrete feature that you should be looking for?

So as a faculty member, as a teacher, when you are really thinking about technology in that way, as is it helping my students get to that learning objective, then that's the technology you should be leaning into, right. And sometimes that can be a little hard to understand or to see. But again, that's where if you have technology and tools where the data and the information is real time or built in are easily accessible as an educator, you're going to be able to see if you are reaching that

objective. And so again, tools that have that built in that is intuitive for a faculty member to really grasp on to and understand, those are going to be the tools that educators

should really gravitate to. I think we are going back to John's point, too, we're in an age where I think there's early adoption of some technologies by faculty, again, faculty members are just like students, they are going to find solutions to problems and start to build things or use things before their district or their administrator brings it to them.

And there are a lot of flash in the pan technologies out there that are more window dressing than they are actual tools to get to those learning objectives. So again, really paying attention to those things that are that are moving you forward. And that can give you some data around student outcomes, I think are the things that educators should really latch on to and pay attention to.

time. But I think coming from somebody who experienced that feeling of wanting to drop out in college, the first person that could have really saved me from that was my instructor in the classroom. And if they can see the very first time that a student disengages, right, they are the first person to be able to digest that information really quickly and say, Okay, this week, the student is a little bit less engaged. Let me be the first one to reach out to them and bring them back into

the classroom community. I think that's where we're going to see a real shift in student retention, it's going to have to be even earlier than a student fails a test. And the first person who's going to catch that is the instructor. So I would love to see that shift happen of bringing those metrics to the actual instructors and having it be really digestible and readable for them.

That's the table stakes. And I'm very relaxed about that that's been going on for a while, where I see a huge opportunity, though, in terms of outcomes and measuring the impact our student centered assessments. So take SEL and the castle standards is very interesting panorama is very interesting to be able to track if a student is demonstrating self awareness or self confidence, or all the other Castle standard behaviors

and expectations. But what happens when we're tracking that performance according to how the student feels? Are they demonstrating self awareness? And can they name that they've demonstrated it, and if they can name that they've demonstrated, that means that they know about it, they've probably mastered what it is. And they can see it in action from themselves or

their peers. And if that is complementing the table stakes in terms of the crosswalks and assessments and standards, I think we're really on to something in terms of true competency for developing the whole child. And I also think that gets into a lot of culturally responsive and equity issues, right with students with disabilities and being equity minded in terms of meeting students where they are and being culturally responsive, which we need to do a lot better

job in doing. And I think that's manifesting itself through outcomes and objectives in learning as well.

this specific skill set. I think that's something that you know, me growing up and going through college very recently, I never had that opportunity in the classroom to point to the soft skills and say, Oh, I can see that I've now adopted this through this class, even if that wasn't the outcome that I came here for, you know, those are the ancillary things that you want to get from your college education. You want it to be preparing you for the workforce.

And that kind of brings me into my next question for both of you on not only from the research end, and also from seeing the new technologies that are coming out of Ed Tech, are we still focusing on keeping students prepared for the workforce? I know a lot of the conversation we've been having is around student engagement and the community and making sure that we have the best levels of communication, especially now that we have all these online

and hybrid classes. But how do we make sure that we're still preparing students for the workforce? Because that's essentially why they're coming to college. And I asked this in context of 1.3 million students deciding not to come back to school after COVID. I think that was a huge shock that really shifted schools from just talking about student retention to now saying, How do I attract

new students? So for edtech companies out there, how do they balance, you know, not only having aspects of making sure they're keeping their students engaged, but how do they position themselves as a tool that's going to attract new learners?

needs to happen. I think a lot about the relevance of the traditional four year college degree in light of all of the different certifications, and learnings and things that people can do online, and through other avenues to really gain experience and gain knowledge and gain skills that are really applicable in the workforce and the jobs that they're going to

be looking to fill. And we then need organizations and businesses to be willing to look beyond a traditional four year college degree on a resume and take a chance on that person. Right. And so there is this moment of tension between there are so many ways right now to gather a great deal of skills and in some ways probably go beyond what you would get in a traditional university setting.

And yet, how do you then market yourself and how do we get businesses to take those people seriously who haven't gone that traditional route? And so I think when I think about the future of education and AI and all of these different ways that it's going to impact what students are able to access and learn. That's what's most exciting to me, but I think we have to be moving in step up with businesses and you know, the workforce coming along to really make that be a successful union.

There's a million cyber jobs open in the United States, right now, it's projected to be 3 million for a lot of the reasons that we've talked about artificial intelligence, privacy, security, data, analytics. And I think that right now, there's a lot of high school students who are being offered 7080 $90,000 a year to be in cyber stem oriented jobs that don't require, you know, an English degree or a finance degree at the University of Pennsylvania or Wharton School

of Business. Now, that's a challenging one, going back to the beginning of this segment, right? Education is critically important higher education is critically important. But if you train a 16 1718 year old, from the Dunbar community of Fort Myers, and certify them in the latest in cyber or CompTIA, and say, you can go to the bank here locally and make 70 grand, I think that says a lot about where they'll be tempted to go. And I think that's a good thing, because it's a white collar job.

I'm a big fan of vocational technical school. I'm a big fan in career and technical education. But I think we're gonna see a huge movement for direct to work opportunities, and career pathways that are going to be stressing how do we get kids young students paid, and not necessarily after they have a master's degree in computer science,

There's the learning objectives around effective learning SEL retention, as you're mentioning Kavita, you have to have explicit goals as an instructor to keep your students engaged and enrolled and excited in your class that has to be explicit.

And then, you know, the career and vocational objectives there are every instructor and certainly those in schools that are direct to work, are trying to have alternative pathways to college have to think a lot about career and vocational outcomes, which are super specific, very skills based. So if you think of those three categories, there's ed tech for all three of them, a lot of ad

tech for all three of them. And it feels really compelling to help instructors and faculty and administrators think about all three of those outcomes and how to accelerate each of them. John, I want to get your read on this moment in ed tech, I want to get both of your reads on this moment in edtech, just as we as we get to the end of our hour. This is a crazy moment. So John, I want to start with you because you talk to tech entrepreneurs all the time with

the catalyst program. What advice are you giving entrepreneurs entering the field right now? How should they think about this moment in time?

any success. So the first thing I do is go in with an inquiry mindset, not just presenting something that they think that they're going to want, try to find something that's going to

connect to what they need. The other thing I think, is the essence and importance of CO construction, co creation, getting into environments, being intentional about PILOTs, not trying to get a full district implementation, but really say I have this theory of action theory of change in logic model, I have this MVP minimum viable product, I'd like to get it in front of you and learn from you in terms of how we can get

creative about outcomes. Say, Hey, we know it's aligned to standards, we know that it's going to help with assessments, but we're trying to develop skills that are going to lead to college and career readiness. Can we do that with you? Not at you. So I think that's

critically important. And I would go back to you know, alive in the swamp is a great Lighthouse report from the great Caitlin Donnelly that talks about this idea of the triumvirate, you know, you got to have all three, you can't just have one, you can't just say we're gonna have a learning outcome, but it's not easy to

use. You can't just be engaging and have, you know, minecraft.edu If it doesn't have a pedagogical admin and ease of adoption, so it's kind of the components of all three that I think are critically important and That research mindset can you substantiate what you're delivering through good research, great research and through an evaluative model that's going to stand the test of time.

right. And so I think as we do that, the research that I'm doing is guiding me to realize that quality online education needs to be inspiring needs to be connected, it needs to hold people accountable, right. And so I'm really intrigued by sort of the intersection of the gamification and immersive learning worlds, right, I think, to John's point, it has to be more than just, you know, the window dressing and the fun

aspects. But I think there's some really exciting stuff that's happening that can help create inspiring content that is allowing for these connections Student to Student professor to student and is allowing us to hold students accountable both to each other, and to the, you know, learning objectives. And so, you know, really sort of leveraging that technology and some of the stuff that's really becoming more accessible in the world of immersive educational experiences. I think that's

really exciting to me. And I'm excited to see what companies like prism, like John talked about are able to do for students, and then what you know, businesses are able to do with immersive learning for skill development. So that's the most exciting for me right now.

collaborative learning. I think a lot about what is a college and career ready student and graduate a portrait of a graduate look like when I have an interview with a team member. It's never about how to do hands, Parker SATs or L SATs. It's always about how do you

work on teams. So the future I think, to really drive learning that's going to lead to be being competent in the 21st century, 22nd century workplace centers around being a team member playing a role on a team and solving a real world problem.

I'm excited about edtech companies that really are driving themselves around, say the SDGs, the Sustainable Development Goals, building programs that drive collaborative learning and aren't afraid of things like, oh, my gosh, the first inappropriate picture that's posted by this team, we can't do collaborative learning, because we're afraid think that's going to happen, I think you got to co

construct. And I think you have to plow through those, those challenges in order to develop those four C's, and ensure that the students are going to emerge as college and career ready. So I think it's hard. But I'm excited. I'm most excited to see collaborative Cohort Based Learning models that really embrace what that can mean for creating future ready students are developing future ready students.

accessible. I mean, there's just so many ways right now to obtain knowledge and improve your skill set and you know, your own abilities, that if you're not taking advantage of it, I think you're missing the boat right now. So I think, you know, just being a consumer of knowledge information in whatever form that works for you is what I would plug right now is k 12. Teacher,

uses them. I work with my entrepreneurs and say, you know, come up with some key objectives and run your business through that lens. It doesn't have to be crazy project plans and difficult and KPI simple OKRs. And it's a great TED Talk by John Doerr on what OKRs are and how you can implement them in your lean startup. So I encourage people to read that book or look at the take the Cliff Notes by looking at the TED talk. Yeah,

conversation. Our co host Kavita guy, CEO of nectar, fascinating tool, fascinating person, and a great co host, that rightly who has been studying student engagement and is about to really take it to the next level in ad tech and John gamba, entrepreneur in residence at the Penn Milliken GSC School of Education and, you know, legendary ed tech founder. So thank you all really, really great to be here with you today.