The Feudal Future Podcast .
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Feudal Future Podcast . I'm Marshall Toplansky , I'm Joel Kotkin and today we are absolutely delighted to have Ramit Varma with us . Ramit is the CEO and co-founder of Breakout Learning , which you're going to learn about in a couple of minutes .
It is a revolutionary new approach to using AI in the classroom that I personally use in my classrooms , which is why I was so excited to have Ramit here . Just for our audience and viewers' sake , ramit , would you give us a couple of minutes about what it is that you actually do at Breakout Learning ?
Sure absolutely Happy to do so . Thanks you guys for having me on . I really appreciate the opportunity to talk about this stuff .
I'll start with this All the research in the world will tell you that small group discussions are the most engaging and the most effective format for learning , and this should really not come as a surprise to anybody , because , as a species , we've learned this way for thousands of years . We were doing this when we had shamans around a campfire .
This is Jesus and his disciples , socrates . The view is a small group discussion . Fox and Friends is a small group discussion and this is a small group discussion . Ok , the problem is with unmoderated discussions , and so when you have unmoderated discussions , particularly in academic settings , you have a few behaviors that students will participate in One .
Sometimes they take the assignment that's intended as a group assignment and they just divide and conquer . You do this one , you do the next one .
I'll do the third one One ends up doing all the work , or one ends up Exactly exactly , and you see that a lot Free riding , one student dominates the other , students don't participate at all and , most importantly , the professor doesn't have visibility into what's happening in those conversations .
So what we did at Breakout Learning is we created a platform where students can come together on our platform , they can have conversations that are set up by the professors and we have AI that listens to those conversations and evaluates the quality of their content , the quality of their participation , the quality of their discussion .
It's not a keyword matching algorithm . Okay , that's fairly straightforward and that's something you can do with many current methods . What the beauty of AI is is that it allows for actual natural language processing and understanding and that allows for us to use different levels and different types of rubrics on the evaluation .
So right now , we use a thing called Bloom's Taxonomy for our depth of understanding measures . So if you give students an assignment , you ask them to talk about two entrepreneurs as they're distributing equity in their startup , you might say , okay , did they mention dilution ? And that's a recall of facts on Bloom's taxonomy .
You say , oh well , they use dilution when they talked about , when they sell the company and they exit , how much of the company they'll retain . That's a higher level of Bloom's . They might say oh , in my last company I took on way too much dilution . It wasn't worthwhile , and that's why next time I did this .
That's a synthesis , where they're tying it to their personal experience .
So what we're seeing here which is fascinating , as I'm just listening to you talk is the whole focus of education is around trying to create critical thinking . But so what is critical thinking really ?
The way we've set it up in the past is we've been forced into a world of multiple choice , measurable , discrete , little yes-no answers that people can then regurgitate , and it takes a professor sitting down and actively talking in a classroom with somebody to discern whether somebody actually has critical thinking going on , and what you're doing is you're having AI do
that . This is revolutionary . By the way , as a person who is actually using it in my classroom , this is not bullshit .
It actually works .
It's amazing . What are you finding with the acceptance of this ?
Yeah , so this is really what's interesting . So you know ? A small side note you know we have a saying that we have a breakout learning , which is that education is about inspiration . It's not about explanation .
Okay , if you feel your job as an educator is to tell somebody something or or provide them with some information or some knowledge , you're not educating them . That information is now widely available to anybody . Go to TED and watch TED Talks . You can go to Google . You can get anything that you need , right ?
So what we're trying to do with the AI and with our technology is we're trying to let that fade into the background and we're trying to highlight these discussions and conversations between students . What that does is it puts them in a position where they need to take a point of view on a subject and then defend that point of view , believe it or not .
That's an extremely uncommon activity for students , right ? Your typical classroom does not include that much time for students to actually articulate their viewpoints , listen to somebody else's viewpoint , refute it or build upon it Okay . So when you ask the question like , what is critical thinking ? That's what it is , okay .
So Bloom's is one measure of depth of understanding . Okay , we've developed a separate one , which is called a Socratic seminar method , which actually measures the student's engagement in the discussion . So if we're in a conversation and you used facts or observations from the source material , then you get some points for that .
But if you're going to measure their engagement , what about the kid who doesn't engage in class but could be your real good , an autistic genius , right , oh , but could write a great paper ? How do you compensate that person , or do you compensate that person ?
Candidly I'd say we don't . You know , I think candidly there are formats that work better for different types of students and people and learners . Right , and the current format , which is a factory registration format it is an individual reading and an individual writing format absolutely works better for certain people . The workforce is not that right .
I mean there are narrow niches in the workforce where that is the key skill . But your typical workforce skill is much more conversational skill . The ability to in real time practice this kind of back and forth , this kind of banter , is foundational and we don't allow for that .
And in my opinion that's actually part of the reasons why we have so much polarization in our society , because we have a world in which you are trained to listen to and absorb a point of view and then parrot that point of view .
If you listen to most discussions between people , it is point counterpoint that somebody else's point and somebody else's counterpoint it's . It is a theater , it is discussion theater . It's not real discussion .
That's absolutely right . I mean it's funny Joel and I co-teach a course called the economics of AI and the internet and it's a graduate level course . We get an . Incredibly we're lucky .
We get like 12 people in the class , which is just perfect for us , right , because you can actually have a relationship with each of those 12 people and you can do what you're doing electronically 12 people and you can do what you're doing electronically . We can do it , as you know , as people in the small person setting , but try to scale that .
I mean , think about if you had two professors like us that you had to pay for every 12 students . I mean , suddenly , the schools they're already broke right . This is going to be even worse .
What your stuff does , which is fascinating to me , is it mimics that world , right , where you can prep somebody for in a small group discussion for a larger class discussion and being engaged , but you can execute that in a larger scale .
That's right . The scale is really the issue , right ? I mean , I will say there is no substitute for a 12 person class with the two of you guys leading it , but that's hands down .
We're hoping that's true . We hope the students before they fire us a year for that to be the case , right ?
So that is , that's the gold standard , right ? As I say , it's about inspiration , it's not about explanation . The minute you get to 30 students , the minute you get to 60 students , which is actually not a particularly large class at the higher ed level , you can't scale that .
We have many classrooms of 300 , kansas University to Michigan State , university of South Dakota . When you've got these freshmen large , they're like auditoriums . Got these freshmen large , they're like auditoriums .
Okay , how do you create engagement in a class like that , when you've got a bunch of students who have their own devices that are all connected to the internet and you know , you don't know if they're shopping on Amazon or watching TikTok or listening to your lecture ?
Okay , well , you do know they're shopping on Amazon and they're watching Monday night football . That's why , in a class I teach on propaganda , I don't football .
That's why in a class I teach on propaganda . I don't the first thing .
No computers no , no phones . Yeah . So you block , right , right , which is what a lot of people are trying to do with AI . They say , well , you know , you're going to use chat GPT to write your essay , so I'm going to block it , okay . And then you end up in this cat and mouse game of of the blocking and and coming around the blocker .
Okay , there's an AI tool right now that you can take and you can have it on a McGraw-Hill Connect or a Pearson or Cengage any of their platforms . The tool will by itself go through that entire course for you . Really , yeah , right now that tool exists . When a tool like that exists , what is education ?
How do you really get to the essence of what education is ? And for us , that is human interactions , human discussions , right . What we found is this I had a really interesting conversation with a professor from Boston College After he'd used our program . I said you know , I just want to hear about your experiences , tell me about it .
He said Ramit , when I first heard what you guys were doing , I thought , wow , that's really cool . You've got some interactive technology . Like let's check it out , he said . And then I got the discussion summaries . He has classes about 75 . He said I got the discussion summaries , 15 discussion summaries . He said the light bulb went off .
But just to fill in the blanks in their system , they put together four and five person small groups that do the discussion together and provide a discussion summary to the professor that says here's what this group was talking about and , by the way , the individuals in the group so continue .
Thank you for that clarification . So for individual comments , individual points of feedback , individual things that somebody said and we lift that up for the professor . He said when I saw those summaries I thought , wow , now the light bulb has gone off . I understand why I'm doing it .
I could never have sat through or had my TA sit through 15 one-hour discussions and get this kind of information . But then he said I went and taught the class and he said and this is where the light bulb really went off . He said I went and taught the class and he said and this is where the light bulb really went off .
He said I had five times as many students raising their hand in class . He said it was the students who never raised their hands . They were , they were up there raising their hands . And here's why . Two reasons , okay . Reason number one is because it is intimidating to raise your hand in a class of 75 and be worried that you're going to say something stupid .
Okay , which is enough to keep most people from you know , raising their head .
Maybe worse if you say something smart , exactly .
Raise your hand , you get your head chopped off right Potentially . Keep below the thing you don't . So you have a small number of students who actually participate in those classes and you see that from professor to professor you have 75 students in a class .
There are five , seven students who are the same students raising their hands and commenting and talking the whole time . With our program you have 30 students that are raising their hands and engaging .
So reason number one is because they've had an opportunity with their peers in a very safe place to just try their ideas out and they'll know if it was smart or if it was stupid . That's the first thing . You've reached over the barrier of fear that I'm going to say something embarrassing that I'll be ridiculed .
For Plus , you've actually just the barrier of fear that I'm going to say something embarrassing , that I'll be ridiculed for Plus .
you've actually just gotten them to do something . That's right . They wrestled , actually get out of themselves and open their mouths , which is a huge hurdle for a lot of students .
They're just , you know , shy particularly modern students , pandemic era schooling , uh , devices , smartphones right and also cancel , cancel , right , that's yeah . Devices , smartphones right .
Oh , and also cancel .
Cancel . Right , that's right . It's risky to say anything .
I mean , I find very often that and now less now than before I find sometimes students who are , let's say , on the left , they'll say whatever they want , right , but the more conservative students you never find out , and sometimes until after class . Oh , I didn't really believe in that , you know .
So if this can bring people up so that actually there's some communication between the two sides , which you know basically doesn't exist very much , that's right .
Part of this , Part of this and this is one of the things I like about it is that your breakout learning system is not a replacement for professors . It's not a replacement for teaching .
You don't want to become redundant .
I can just get a royalty on it . I'd be happy to do it , but no , it's not a replacement .
It's something that creates the environment for a richer discussion that a professor can still lead , and so , once students go through the discussion of the source material so , for instance , you might have a in my case a business school case , or an article from a magazine that you're going to want to use as the source material you also actually create cases , which
I think is kind of fun .
That's right .
So , but that gets fed in . Students have the small group conversations and then you can basically , as a professor , say , well , what was your feeling about this argument , what was your feeling about that argument ? And engender a much richer conversation in the classroom itself .
that is the theater that people take away so you have the , the groups , the small groups , and then that becomes a basis of the general discussion for the whole class .
That's right okay , right , if you think of what we do right in our class . In our class , it's a fun format , plus the great kids . There's a reading . Yeah , we're blessed with great kids , but there's a reading that you have every session . They are hopefully have read it , right . We then cold call on people to give the . There's a debate topic .
Yep , you have to give your pro , your con on the debate topic . We cold call on you and then everybody jumps in on the conversation . But if they were prepped and had the small group conversation beforehand , imagine how much richer it would be .
Yeah , that's true , and so I love that you brought that up , because we just rolled this new feature out , which you'll get a real kick out of this thing . So let me rewind for one second .
So the first reason that they participate more in class is because of that safety , that psychic safety that they know they're not going to say something really stupid and embarrassing . The second reason I think I shared this with you is from the Jerk Store Seinfeld episode .
I don't know if you guys are Seinfeld fans at all , but in Seinfeld episode I don't know if you guys are Seinfeld fans at all , but in Seinfeld there's a there's a episode where Costanza is in a meeting at the Yankees , somebody burns them and he can't think of an answer in real time and three days later he's thinking about it in his car .
He's like oh , I should have said this . They ran out of jerks at the jerk store . Every human being reacts that way . Okay so these students ? Human being reacts that way . Okay . So these students they're in these discussions and after the discussion's over they're still thinking about it . Okay .
So by the time they come to class , they're like I should have said this , that would have been the right answer . They're raising their hand to say those things .
Yeah , and here you're rehearsing them , basically for for that for that discussion .
Now , the second thing that we do is , for each discussion , you get the summaries , you get some excerpts , and now we've created a thing where you get a thematic summary of here's what your students thought .
So we have a case where one of the discussions about whether you should drop out of school to start an entrepreneurial venture Okay , and the students always have a lot of debate Well , it's about privilege , and if you have the money to do it , you didn't have the money to do it , so on and so forth . So you get all this stuff .
So you get all this stuff . Well , we take that analysis from that discussion and , depending on how the students go , we'll then suggest to the professor some examples to bring up in class and say well , here's a new scenario .
What would you guys do on this , based on what your discussions were and that scenario will emerge from the small group discussion so that the professor is actually now part of it it so let me , let's let's kind of zoom out for just a second and look at kind of what's going on technologically within the education business .
So we're in a environment where the number of students is dropping off . It's dramatically affecting the business model of schools .
And , of course , most kids are looking at trade schools or other things because the university degrees aren't worth what we thought they were worth In the broader economy .
We're finding that , especially with AI's application in other areas , there is less need for people and that we can automate things and the educational environment is not really adapting to it . What other things do you see happening there that give you hope , other than what you're doing with the breakout learning ?
That are innovative things that are trying to address this , you know .
I actually think and this may be a popular and unpopular view back to your earlier point about wokeness but I actually think that the next 10 years in K-12 are going to be the place where we begin to see the cracks in that system finally break open . Ok , so you know , we've had years of ossification in K-12 .
The unions have blocked performance systems , They've blocked charter schools , because the minute you have choice , your economics don't work on your school and the whole , the whole , the whole thing crumbles . Okay , I think we're going to start seeing those things crumble . I think you're going to start seeing a lot more five , 10 , 15 , 20 person schools crop up .
Is that like those study groups that became very popular during COVID and the people would be in the backyard ? Little pods ?
Yeah , exactly , and they saw that they could do it and they're like wait a minute . Why am I sending my child to school ? To be indoctrinated or to be taught things , or to sit there for six hours a day Bored ?
out of their minds , bored out of their minds , you know there's a model in .
It's based in Austin by a CEO of a software company , a guy named Joe Lehman . It's called Alpha School . He's developed a software tool that in an hour a day , gives you the same learning outcomes as you would get in six hours a day of school . Wow .
And so they put the students on this asynchronous thing for an hour a day and then they spend their days in projects and multiple students of different age levels and those kinds of things or becoming really good at call of duty . That's right which is , which is its own , uh potential career path these days ? You ?
know , look manual dexterity , it doesn't that helps right let me .
Let me raise what is a concern for me now . I'm fortunate , I'm towards the end of my career , so you know the fact that the country is becoming a letter .
It won't hurt me too badly , except when you try to explain to the person that's pushing the wheelchair what it is you want , right , right .
So the bottom line is is there a danger that this becomes a substitute for reading , like , for instance I've seen with students you sign books ? When I went to Berkeley a thousand years ago , you know , a class had eight , ten books in a semester . Same thing when I first started teaching having seven , eight books .
Now , if I give them three , I know that 90% of them won't read any of them , or maybe they'll read a paragraph . I just think that there's the engagement with the written word that I think is is a little bit threatened , as people say . All right , ai , you , you write this up for me on this topic , like I'm going to learn about .
You know the history of the , you know , you know the , the civil war and I'm , but you're going to get a , a homogenized part , given this is a field which is incredibly complicated . Or the idea that you , um , you know when , when you read a book , you have to think of the images in your mind .
I mean , when I , when I'm reading , particularly a novel , it's like a movie is going on in my head . Do we lose that or Can we enhance that ?
Can I call you Coint ? I'm totally teasing you .
I've been called work .
So I'll tell you two things , right , so one . So I'll take it in two directions . One I completely agree with you about the engagement of your imagination as you're , as you're reading , okay , um , or as you're actually , I would just say , engaging with anything . We made a decision not to do video in our , in our tool . It is all audio and it is .
You know , there's there are like little sort of , uh , animated elements , but it's all audio .
for exactly that reason , you , could you think the visual ?
people would just it's very passive , right . It takes you from an active format to a passive format .
So for instance , your case on Love Pops , which is really , for those of you who don't know , love Pop . It's a greeting card that is extremely ornate and they have a case on it , which is really great . And so you have a choice as the student you can read the case material or you can listen to the audio explanation of it .
That's right and most of them choose to listen to the audio explanation because they can do it as they're , as they're going . There is no video deliberately right , like by design , and it's for that reason .
And if you look at like brainwaves even like when people are watching sitcoms and TV , versus listening , versus reading , they're definitely different , much bigger drop off from video to audio than there is from audio to reading .
That's really interesting . Now the second part how do you measure that ?
I'll have to I'll . I'll follow up with you on the research work but it's , it's literally like a functional MRI . It's like brain activity while doing various activities , okay , functional MRI it's like brain activity while doing various activities , okay .
The second thing is around the reading and like engaging and getting to the depth of understanding , right , well , I could take the opposite point .
I could say well , you've got one person's point of view , which is that , authors , okay , the modern student will watch a video and they'll go down a rabbit hole and if that's engaging enough , they'll learn all kinds of things about the civil war that you had no idea about , right , and , and that is actually that's very magical , right .
And if you can get the students curiosity engaged , right , I believe that the amount of information that they're going to take and they're going to extract it actually exceeds what they would have gotten from the reading , because it's just much more efficient , right In a- .
Well , and it also fits with the reality of their lifestyle in everyday life right . We're dealing with a world where you are to read and get the vividness of the written word , you kind of have to pull yourself away from reality and into your own little space , Whereas people are always walking around with earbuds .
They're they're used to kind of not multitasking , but multi existing in different planes , so it just might be an easier thing for them .
I think so , although I think there will be something lost in the process . I mean , where's going to be the creation that comes when I sit down and I write something when I could say to AI well , I'm writing a story about this , Can you do the first draft of it ? I think that you lose the engagement with the research material .
Can I push back with you on that ? Sure , all right . So animation Okay . So when they first started doing animation hand-drawn keyframes and intermediate frames Okay . When they started offshoring not the keyframes but the intermediate frames to India and to China and to Korea , people said , oh my God , what's going to happen ?
Intermediate frames to India and to China and to Korea ? People said , oh my God , what's going to happen ? When they started creating computer animation , that would remove the entire process of animation . Uh , he said , okay , well , you're losing the basic skills that it would take to design the , the , the .
What happens is you just , you just push the frontier right so you can create things , you can imagine things , you can dream things , you could do things that you could never have done before , and you just end up operating in that plane . So we describe ourselves , not describe ourselves . We take a lot of draw , a lot of inspiration from Pixar .
Okay , in our world we do three things that are that are fundamentally intertwined Instructional design , technology and content . You can't , it has to start with instructional design , but your content needs to fit into this instructional design , and then the technology needs to support both of these . They're fully intertwined .
That's what Pixar is okay , storytelling , which is where it starts animation and technology . If you don't have all three of them in full sync , you can't do it . You can't say I want to tell a story about a fish named Nemo if I can't animate an underwater scene .
And I can't animate an underwater scene believably and realistically and beautifully without technology that they themselves build . In order to do the animation , the three have to go together .
Well , and the technology side , making the process of developing things faster , and now , with the generative AI side , taking it in directions that humans actually , frankly , have never even thought about , is really kind of an interesting way of pushing the envelope on both the storytelling and the and the animation side , right on the , on the , the content creation
side . So what , as you look at your own world of trying to get this out there , I've not seen anything similar to what you're doing . I don't know if there are any things other similar , but , um , what are the headwinds you're coming up against when you go to what is obviously a very ossified institutional environment of academia ?
What kind of headwinds and how do you overcome the headwinds ?
Yeah , it's a great question . I'd say the biggest headwind is actually inertia . You know like we talk to professors , sometimes they're like yeah , I know , my students aren't really reading , they're not really paying attention , attention , but I'm really focused on my research so I show up .
I and the check gets there . And the check gets there anyway , right ?
I deliver the slides I delivered . You know what's actually interesting is . One of the biggest motivators these days is , uh , student reviews , right . And so your your berkeley class with eight books . If you tried to do that now , you'd get slammed on , rate my professor and you wouldn't be teaching Right .
And so what's happened is that there's been this power dynamic shift towards the students and students . Are kids ? Right ? They're , they're like , they want to get away with doing the minimum amount possible . They're flexed their muscles . If I complain about this thing , they'll back down , and that is what has happened , right .
So for us , the idea is how do you create an experience that is easier , better and more ? It's more delightful , even to the students Like I believe that there's something fundamentally positive about learning as a human being . Right , I'm 50 years old and I'm in there . I'm taking piano lessons and I told my team I'm two months in .
I said within a year I'm going to play Chopin . They , they have disputed that , but I will be playing Chopin within a year . I could play John Lennon . Imagine , right now . Right , it's been two months . It's delightful , it's pleasurable to learn . What we do in schools right now is rarely learning in that sense . Ok , it's more like force feeding right ?
Well , this is . It's like the old joke . You know how many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb ?
None , but the light bulb has to want to change , and I think we have a lot of light bulbs that don't want to change in academia because , they're and I think the tenure system frankly has been one of the issues and I think teachers unions in the K through 12 world . It is anti-innovation .
Because I would think about a K through 12 case . If you had these classes and you broke them down and all this , maybe you don't need as many teachers that's right , you know and maybe there'll be kids who need intensive help that in this system don't need intensive help .
But you know , at some point the financial reality is going to have to come home to roost . You cannot Right If we we have been talking for years about the demographic cliff that we're witnessing today in terms of fewer students , just leaving aside taste and goals .
And particularly in areas like on the West Coast and the Northeast , where there's very few children .
Yeah , it's a little different in Texas , so schools are having to make up the loss of hundreds of students coming in , paying their $25,000 to $50,000 a year . I mean that's a substantial amount At some point in time you don't have . Your endowment is not going to be able to cover that , you know . So there will be a financial reckoning that comes .
Oh , it's happening now , right . Colleges are closing all across the country right now 500 in the last decade . Is that right ? I ?
have a piece coming out tonight on that .
There was an article out actually today on CNBC that said they're expecting another 23 to close within the next , within the next year .
Really yeah , yeah .
Well , this is the thing that's interesting . So my last business was in college admissions . Okay , so we did SAT ACT prep tutoring for primarily high school students , and you know I started my first job with the Princeton Review was in 1993 . Ok , so I've been in that business for a long time .
I sit on the board of the ACT now , so I'm like I'm in this space , ok , and this is what it was interesting . We sold everything , an entire generation on the idea that you should go to college and we did a very effective job of that . And what happened was the market forces in higher ed are not what they are in K-12 .
So in higher ed , lots of new colleges formed to create places for those people to go get their college degrees , some better than others , some more ethical than others . You saw Corinthian , which was here . We've seen lots of these big colleges , online degree mill kind of colleges . When they did that , it created competition for professors , costs rose .
The value and the cost of a degree like Chapman is probably 4X what it was 25 years ago . Okay , that's outstripping inflation by 4X almost .
Right , right , right . So it's like it's kind of , and , by the way , not just Chapman . Oh , 4x , almost right . So it's like it's kind of and , by the way , not just Chapman . Oh yeah , sorry , nothing everywhere .
Everywhere . I mean , when I went to University of Maryland , tuition was $1,500 a semester . Okay , that was in 1992 to 1996 .
Oh , I could beat you on that . When I went to Berkeley it was 212 a quarter . Is that right ?
So just think Berkeley's $75,000 a year . Now , right , I mean , if you're out of state , oh yeah .
If you're out of state , it's like still $30,000 .
Fortunately my family . I had relatives living in Berkeley since the 40s so I was able to you pulled the in-state one Otherwise it would have been $212 a quarter .
It would have been $290 a quarter . They're going to sue you for fraud now .
Exactly , they're coming for you . But um , but no . But the interesting thing , if you think about it , is because all those other universities started forming , they became a lot more competition for professors . Everything got more competitive . Professor salaries rose , which was a great thing .
But the cost of higher ed has skyrocketed and people are like , okay , is it , is it a worth , is it like worthwhile ? As you pointed out , like you know , you can make a hundred dollars an hour as a plumber . Okay , come in , check your you know thing and an hour and move on to the next thing . You make really good money doing you know doing trades .
So I think that what we're going to start and continue to see here is just a little bit more of a of a shaking out , and I think that you know what you will be able to offer at a mid-level or a mid-tier school , because this is the thing that a guy like Marshall or a guy like Joel , you may or may not recognize how good you guys are in the scheme
of being professors . You care about your students , you pay attention to your prep work , you listen to what they have to say . You're there , you're engaged , okay , that puts you in like the top couple percent . Okay , you're , you're typical the middle . I should be careful about what I was saying . I don't want to . I don't want to .
These are supposed to be your customers ? Yeah , exactly , be very careful to insult my customers , but the truth is that 20 to 80% .
Many of them would agree . They say you know I , you know it's too risky to take on any change , and so I'll just keep doing the thing that I did . And if the students aren't complaining , I hear that all the time .
I'm a faculty fellow for innovation , so I'm the designated Petri dish for new stuff that the school wants to do . Petri dish for new stuff that the school wants to do , and not just with breakout learning but with , like , for instance , VR and for other kinds of technologies .
Just trying to get people other professors to take half an hour to like , sit down and experience it in class . You don't have to do anything , Just come . Come along and see what it's like to go to Singapore with a VR headset . Maybe you get three people out of a faculty in the business college of 75 .
I think what we may be looking at in the long run is some sort of blend between what you do , some traditional teaching . But fundamentally , somehow we have to . But you know , fundamentally , the somehow we have to figure out a way so that the cost of doing it has got to go down .
Given , given what the rewards are , the costs have to go down the way the costs are going to come down , honestly , is having talented professors that can serve a larger number of people per professor , and the only way you're going to be able to do that is with tools . No question , you know .
So if you don't embrace the tools , I mean you're going to be out of business .
And I assume some of what you do could also be done online . Right , it's all done online , all right . So , if it's done online , you know , because let's just say that a college president that I know well said you know , eventually , you know we're spending a lot of money on gyms , on dormitories , but really we're not putting the money into learning .
You know , I mean you think about , I mean sometimes I go to . You know , when I went to school , let's just say the food wasn't great , and now you go in it's like a food court .
You know , and you know you see all these very elaborate social services and you know people who are watching over the students at a almost parental level , and I think that eventually the structure is going to have to change somewhere . Now there'll always be a need for the Oxfords and the Cambridges , and well , forget about Harvard .
Harvard is completely destroyed itself . We're already set up pretty well . Thanks , Joel .
Yeah , that's a shame . What's going to be really interesting is whether or not these they'll become more intermediate outside of the traditional realm . Like you know , if I talk to a friend , I was thinking about a friend of ours who is a housing expert . She knows a million things .
She said well , if I want to get a better job , I have to go get a master's . I said why you know more than the professors know . Why should she spend you know $130,000 to get a master's ? I said why you know more than the professors know . Why should she spend you know $130,000 to get a certificate ?
See , if we started thinking about learning as something that actually is about learning and not about punching a ticket .
Well , this is the guild right , right , we're living in , we are , we are the feudal right . So , we are living in the world of the guild when it comes to education , and they're going to be protective of their positions .
Right , that's right . So I mean , the fact is , given what the results are , you know , and I just went through all of it you know we're getting stupider . Let's put it this way the test scores you just saw are down in math and english .
Um , we work a lot with in the latino community and here in southern california and you know you've got schools with 25 of the kids are reading at grade level . Yeah , I mean some . There has to be something changed . What we're doing now clearly isn't working .
Yeah , you know , whenever I hear the teachers union people get up and say well , you know , we want to save our public schools . Yeah , when I went to public school , it was . The education was reasonably good . I knew more coming out of high school than my seniors know .
I mean .
I mean outside of technology , in , in , in , you know , in history and English and all those things . So somehow a new system has to be made , also , I think , at the K through 12 level .
This isn't working , and so what I celebrate and what you're doing is you're raising issues about how can we do things differently , and I'm personally , I'm involved with Civitas at University of Texas and we're trying to think about different ways that we can deliver educational product that's more worthwhile , and I think eventually we're going to have to look beyond the
brick and mortar costs .
Do you see any other new technologies coming up on the horizon that we ought to be focusing in on as potential solutions to the problem ? You know ?
honestly , like broadly , I would say I haven't seen anything that I'm that excited about . You know , I think VR is an . Ar is interesting in certain niche applications . You want to do training of a factory worker , you know , like there are . There are very niche applications which that's useful .
Otherwise , it's like a kind of a it's a nice to have and it's a kind of cool thing .
Well , it is , it has the same impact , I find , using it in a classroom as the impact that your technology has , which is to create a level of engagement that wasn't there before , because of the vividity of the of the input right . I mean back to your reading point . It kind of fills in some of the blanks of imagination . So , um , but I agree with you .
I mean it is , first of all , it's extremely expensive content to create and second , it forces you into kind of a cinematic uh kind of kind of consumption mode .
Yep , that's right . Yeah , I think that , like you know this , and we don't know where AI is going . Obviously , nobody does . I have I'm an optimist on it , right . I think that you know there's the the killer bots are coming for us , right ?
Like I'm an optimist on these things , I think as societies have gotten more civilized , they actually get more caring , they get more kind , they get more protective of the environment , not the opposite . And so it would be surprising to me if advances in artificial intelligence led to a , all of a sudden , very barbaric , savage future .
That doesn't make sense to me , but I do think that . I think that at the core of what we need to , the problem we need to solve as educators right , is how do a , how do you get the light bulb to care ? How do you get a kid to care ? And the way you get them to care is you give them something interesting . You say I care what you have to say .
Nobody gives a shit what you have to say . You know , when I was teaching my SAT classes , kids would come to me . So I have a pretty good memory , and one of the things I learned early on was , at the beginning of every class , 20 students in the class , 25 students , however many students . Okay , what's your name ? Joel Marshall , boom , boom , boom .
I got them to introduce themselves in a little name game . What kind of animal would you be ? At the end of the thing I'd say , okay , boom , boom , boom , boom . I name every student by class two . I'd have kids coming up to me in class my Like , my teachers in my class don't know my name , and it's been four weeks . How do you know my name ?
How do you call me by name ? And I'm like I just care about you this much . I don't even care about you that much . I care about you enough to know your name and your teacher doesn't seem to care about you enough to demonstrate to you that they know your name .
All I can say is in 20 years , you may not find it so easy to remember people's names . It gets harder . Well , you never know .
With the way AI is going . Maybe 20 years from now the AIs will train us .
It'll tell us yeah , we'll have the little earbud . You'll have the little earbud . You won't have to learn a foreign language , you won't have to remember a name , you won't have to do anything , right .
Well , what a brilliant vision of the future , Well as it unfolds . We really hope that you come back and give us a state of the state of the world as it evolves , but thank you very much for being part of the feudal future .
Thank you . Thank you , my pleasure Really really great to have to be here . Thanks , Marshall .