Monthly Archives: March 2016

#BooksNotBombs

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© UNICEF/UNI156500/Noorani

It was shocking to see the terror attacks in Brussels last week.  Condolences to those who have lost someone they loved and I hope for a good recovery of those who were injured. I was relieved that none of our people in Belgium were injured in those terrible events.

There seem to be many people in our societies across the World who are resentful these days. Some people are feeding this resentment and calling out the hate in others. Why? This will not lead us anywhere good.

There is hope too

When you look further, you see that many people did many good things in response to the attacks.  The emergency services did an excellent job in taking care of the victims and restoring order.  People volunteered blood donations.

#ikwilhelpen

I was especially heartened by people volunteering to help others with transport, shelter, food or even a hug through #ikwilhelpen (#IWantToHelp). People volunteered practical help and this was good for the spirit too.  It’s the best answer to those calling out the worst in others.

 “Wouldn’t our societies be happier and healthier if we would more often do as those good people in Belgium did, and volunteer our help?”

#IWantToHelp

I also want to help contribute to making the World better than it is today.  I care a lot about education. UNICEF has launched an appeal to reach 43 million children in humanitarian emergencies worldwide.  The largest portion of the appeal – 25 per cent – is going towards educating children in emergencies.  I support this plan.

I understand from UNICEF that it could typically cost about € 150 to pay for a teacher to give lessons to children in their own language in an emergency zone for one month.  I’ve made a donation to UNICEF today in that amount. #BooksNotBombs.

 

Education reform in Finland

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kirsi

This week I caught up with Kirsi Harra-Vauhkonen, Managing Director of Sanoma Pro, market leader in Finland. The Finnish market is currently undergoing both a major curriculum change and digital transformation.  I asked Kirsi to explain more about what’s going on.

You’ve got an interesting background Kirsi, including positions at Nokia and Google. Tell us more.

Continuous learning is my passion, and I have been fortunate to be able to gain experience from many different positions. I have worked for example in recent years in telecommunications (Nokia), digital media (Google) and now in educational publishing. During my career, I have worked mostly in commercial and business development leadership roles. Mostly I have been leading change – be it new opportunities in the market, new ways of working or digital transformation.  I am driven by working with great people and teams.

Finnish education has a world class reputation. Why is that?

Finnish pupils have scored highly in the PISA surveys for many years. This is a result of the high quality public education system in Finland. Excellent teachers are one of the most important cornerstones of the system. All teachers have a university degree, and being a teacher is a highly respected profession. The fact that high quality education is available for everyone, is very important for Finland. High quality, versatile learning materials also play an important role in helping pupils and teachers to achieve excellent learning outcomes.

What role does Sanoma Pro play in Finnish education and why are our methods popular?

Sanoma Pro is a major publisher with a very good reputation and the most extensive offering in the Finnish educational market. We publish learning materials for all grades K-12 and also for vocational education. In addition we also have the Oppi & Ilo edutainment line for the consumers as well as tutoring services by Tutorhouse.

Our learning materials are used in almost every school and class, and our digital learning environment has more than 100 000 active teacher and pupil users. Our solutions are developed through very intensive collaboration with our customers, and our authors are the best professionals in their own subjects.

Our solutions are popular because they are high quality, they fit the curriculum perfectly, they are easy to use, and they have a good mix of print and digital elements that match the ways and needs of the classroom.

And they provide excellent benefits by enabling learning impact: they help pupils to achieve good learning outcomes, they engage and motivate pupils to learn, and they save time for teachers in their professional work.

 

There’s curriculum reform coming this year and next. What’s happening and how are we supporting the change?

The reform is a combination of driving change in the pedagogy and in the learning goals and related learning contents. First of all the reform is encouraging strong engagement of pupils and thus changing the role of the teacher to become more like a coach for the active pupil learners. Another theme is to update the learning objectives to equip children with such skills and knowledge that better meet their needs of the future. Also the need for more theme-based learning is emphasized as well as the aim to bring digital into the everyday work at schools.

We have integrated these themes in our methods, in addition to the new learning contents, and provide a lot of supporting tips and tools to help the teachers to adapt to the new ways of teaching.

 

What are the most important digital initiatives we are working on?

We are very excited about our new digital learning solutions. It’s now possible to use fully digital learning materials for teaching and learning in all of the primary subjects in the new curriculum. In addition, for the teachers who prefer a hybrid solution, we are launching the gamified, curriculum-fit exercise environment Bingel. Bingel supports seamlessly the Sanoma Pro learning methods and makes exercising engaging and inspiring for pupils.

In upper secondary we have Kompassi, the digital testing and assessment tool that provides teachers an easy way to create and assess tests, saving a considerable amount of their time and providing students with the opportunity to get familiar with the digital testing. The first national digital matriculation tests in Finland will take place this Autumn.

What are you most proud about with Sanoma Pro?

I am very proud of our extremely professional and talented team. Going through a phase of digital transformation in the market simultaneously with the very intensive curriculum change is not an easy task, but the team has shown great effort and we have been able to bring all the print and digital products to the market, while also innovating new concepts.

Our new learning solutions bring a lot of new opportunities and support for the teachers to renew their way of teaching, and to engage and inspire the pupils. I am very proud of this achievement, and having delivered this as a team!

 

Exciting times

Thanks for talking us through this Kirsi.  These are exciting times in Finnish education and it’s great to hear more about our commitment to working together with our customers in bringing new innovations to the market.  Good luck to all our people in Finland!

Child-friendly learning design at Bureau ICE

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I like the way Bureau ICE helps in identifying and developing the talents of our children.  I also especially like the child-friendly and child-centric design thinking that they use, which engages pupils to show their talents.

“Helping to identify and develop the talents of our children”

This week I caught up with Karen Heij, Managing Director of Bureau ICE to hear more.

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Karen Heij

Karen, I’m interested to know more about Bureau ICE and your personal  motivations as MD

We specialise in tests and exams that help learners to really show their capabilities. We believe it’s a human right to be able to develop in a way that gives you the best opportunities and helps you find a direction in life that makes you happy. Since testing often plays such a major part in a person’s (school) career, we believe that these tests should help you show what you’re capable of, and not hold you back. In the 26 years that I’ve worked for Bureau ICE and especially the last 16 years as managing director, this has always been what drives me.

Bureau ICE joined Malmberg at Sanoma Learning in 2012. How have things been going since?

Sanoma Learning and Bureau ICE share the same goals: we both want to improve the impact of learning for pupils, teachers and schools.

“Investing in improving learning impact”

Joining SL has given us great opportunities in entering the primary school market. Until 2014 this market was dominated by one other makers of tests and exams.  But when the government decided in 2013 that the final primary school exam should be mandatory for every school, it prompted the decision that a monopoly wasn’t allowed anymore: schools had to have a choice of tests. We wanted to pursue this opportunity and the investment of creating tests for a completely new market would never have been possible without the support of Sanoma Learning.

Recently, you’ve had a lot of success with the new IEP Eindtoets.  What is it?

IEP Eindtoets

The IEP Eindtoets is one of the three government approved final exams for primary schools in The Netherlands. It measures the language proficiency and calculus capabilities of 12-year old children who are on the brink of leaving primary school and moving onto their secondary education. In The Netherlands we have different levels of secondary education. The primary school teacher decides which type of secondary school his pupils should attend.

“A child is more than his cognitive abilities”

To help the teacher make that decision we not only have the IEP Eindtoets, but also the IEP Advieswijzer. This is a package of tests designed to measure other characteristics than language proficiency and calculus capabilities. After all, we believe a child is more than just his cognitive abilities. Therefore the IEP Advieswijzer consists of various tests measuring creativity, social skills and learning approach. We also have an IEP English proficiency test especially for this group, the 12 year olds. All our language tests are based on the Common European Framework of References for Languages.

Why did we win?

In short: our test is significantly more child friendly than the two competitor’s tests. We’ve created the IEP Eindtoets in a way that it would enable pupils to really show what they’re capable of. So we gave the test a recognizable and playful design. It’s very easy to use, so making the test becomes less stressful. And less stress means better performance.

“Child-friendly design and choice for schools”

Also, in the calculus items we only use the language necessary to measure that specific skill. Superfluous usage of language can throw children with weaker language skills off and we didn’t want to do that.

But there’s a longer story to it as well. Schools have been forced to use the same test provider for decades and now that there’s choice, they want to choose something that fits their school’s vision.

“More than 30.000 children will use the IEP Eindtoets this year”

Last year was our debut and around 7.000 students made our test. This year this number will surpass 30.000! Of course this has to do with the quality of the test, but also with the great experiences of the users last year. They really spread the word to neighbouring schools.

What makes you most proud about Bureau ICE?

In the past 25 years we’ve really been able to bring about a change in the way people in The Netherlands think and feel about testing.  We’ve taught policy makers both in government and schools to think about what they believe students should know and be able to do at the end of an educational period. We have shown them how to create tests that measure their desired outcomes and this has in turn shaped the course contents.

What would you change about testing in The Netherlands?

I’m hoping I can help to change the ranking  approach that is currently used at age 12 in determining the future school path. Currently students are ranked against the rest of their group and the relative ranking determines the specific schooling path.

“Change the ranking approach”

In other words: it’s not an absolute norm or end goals that determine the level of school you will go to, but your capabilities in comparison to the rest of the group.  This ranking is unfair and demotivating I would like to help change policy in this area in the near future.

Positive spirit

It’s not only the child-centric philosophy that I like about Bureau ICE.  You feel the passion for their mission throughout the company and this energy feeds a healthy entrepreneurial spirit.  Great job by Karen and the team in creating this!

Working together to develop scalable technology at Sanoma Learning

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One of the key trajectories in our strategy is using technology to help pupils and teachers. We believe technology is an enabler of what we call learning impact: engaging pupils, improving learning outcomes and supporting the workflow of the teacher. Developing and deploying the right technology in the right way is therefore critical to our mission.

Key parts of our technology are developed together and scaled across our units. This is not easy but brings benefits in terms of speed, quality, cost, skills and shared learning.

This week I caught up with new recruit Heikki Rusama, in the team of our Chief Business Technology Officer Arnoud Klerkx, who recently moved from Rovio in Finland to Sanoma Learning’s co-development team in The Netherlands, to learn more about this work.

Tell us about your background and why you joined Sanoma Learning

I’ve been interested in learning since my teenage years and studied educational science to originally prepare for a role in academia. I’m keen to work in a role that will allow me to combine my passion for education with technology.

I found such a role when previously working at Rovio Learning, the entertainment company behind the Angry Birds. However I joined Sanoma for two reasons: to me it is important that learning is the company’s core business and secondly I see potential for further international growth in learning. Therefore, Sanoma Learning feels like a perfect fit for me.

What’s your role at Sanoma Learning?

My role as one of the Business Technology Consultants is to help business units to grow in digital learning by providing building blocks for the current and the future applications. This I do by leading some co-development initiatives like Edubase (learning engine), Identity & Access Management, and later this year Learning Analytics.

How does this bring value to our ways of working?

One of the many strengths of this company is the deep understanding of education including the local differences. Through our co-development program we identify and build common, scalable technology.  This helps us to develop higher quality solutions, faster and at lower cost and also to share learnings across our footprint which includes some of the World’s best education systems. If we are able to take co-development to the next level, we are going to create more Bingels in the future.

What are your first impressions of working with us?

I really enjoy my work. Like today, when I had meetings with Business Technology teams from Van In (Belgium) and Sanoma Utbildning (Sweden). Not only are they inspiring people to work with, I really admire the drive and passion they have for learning and technology. With teams like these, the co-development agenda will succeed.

Where do you think we stand on the digital transformation?

The future of our business seems bright yet increasingly complex. I am confident that we are tackling the right questions. We’re clearly a frontrunner on the digital transformation, which is going to be a long journey. Our deep understanding of learning combined with our technology capabilities make us strong. Further building on our co-development abilities will prepare us better for the future, by enabling us to make better products faster.

Thanks for the feedback Heikki. I believe enabling our learning methods with technology to help our customers is the way forward.  The co-development agenda is a great way for us to scale investments, skills and learnings as we progress.

P.S. Leicester City has a five point lead at the top of the Premier League.  Go Foxes!

Learning impact

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mission

We believe it’s important to constantly improve the products and services we offer to our customers. More recently we have developed and introduced Sanoma Learning’s Impact Framework (SLIF) as a guide in this journey. This week I caught up with Sendhuran Govindan to learn more about the SLIF. Sendhuran’s a super-smart and nice guy, a clear thinker with a practical pair of hands.

Sendhuran2
Tell us about your background and role at Sanoma Learning Sendhuran

First, thanks John for having me on this virtual interview and for the opportunity to talk about SLIF. I am currently the Head of Strategy at Sanoma Learning. I joined Sanoma Learning 2 years ago and am passionate about our mission to develop the talents of every pupil. As Head of Strategy, I work with the leadership team to develop and execute our long-term strategy. I also lead specific strategic projects, one of them being SLIF.

My background is in strategy consulting and technology. I have spent over 10 years advising companies undergoing transformation due to technology, regulations, and other market conditions. Education is undergoing digital transformation, and it’s an exciting time to be here.

Why did we initiate the SLIF?

We have a long tradition at Sanoma Learning of developing excellent learning methods (an integrated set of learning resources for a subject, including textbooks, workbooks, software, supplementary resources, etc.). Some of our companies, like Van In and Malmberg, have been recognized leaders in educational publishing for over 100 years! As we shift towards making more hybrid and digital methods, we want to ensure that these new methods also deliver the high learning impact we are known for. We initiated SLIF to help us do that.

SLIF is our new way of developing methods and of evaluating their learning impact. Before we start developing any method, we set clear learning impact objectives and identify the features needed to achieve them. We then develop the method with the required features. After the method is launched, we evaluate the learning impact to see if the method and the features actually deliver on the objectives. By doing this, we can find out what works and what doesn’t, allowing us to continuously improve our methods further. This is very important as we are on the cutting edge of education technology. We have to ensure our innovation delivers learning impact, we are obsessed with that!

You mentioned Learning Impact. Can you elaborate?

With Learning Impact, we refer to 3 things: engaging pupils, improving learning outcomes, and improving teacher workflow efficiency.

We design and develop our learning methods to engage and motivate pupils to learn. For example, the story-fication in Bingel (our award winning learning platform), motivates students to do more practices exercises. This increased motivation, coupled together with our well-designed methods, help pupils learn better and reach higher learning outcomes.

Additionally, we design our methods to help teachers achieve more in their hectic schedules. For example, in most of our software, exercises are automatically corrected, and the teachers are provided with detailed insights on student performance. In some cases, our software even provides personalized recommendations per pupil. This saves the teacher a lot of time, which can be used to provide individual coaching to pupils.

What were the main results from last year?

Last year was the first year of SLIF. We incorporated SLIF in 3 of our 6 businesses. And we conducted pilots in 3 others. We found that it helped our publishers sharpen their focus on learning impact, and helped them think of how technology can be effectively used.

Additionally, we conducted our Sanoma Learning Impact Survey to evaluate the learning impact of our top 20 methods across Europe. We found that our methods had significant learning impact.

“85% of teachers said our methods helped improve engagement of pupils.”

“95% said that our methods helped them improve learning outcomes of their classes.”

“Teachers said that our methods helped them save 8 hours / week across planning, homework assigning & correction and test creation & correction. This gives teachers more time to individually coach pupils.”

What are we planning moving forward?

We have an exciting multi-year roadmap for SLIF. Currently, we evaluate our methods at a high level. We also have several different ways to evaluate the learning impact (surveys, pilots, big data, etc.). As we advance our learning analytics, we will standardize our impact evaluation and also drill down deeper to evaluate the impact of specific method components. This will make it much easier for us to improve our products in the future!

But our short term priority in 2016, is to complete the roll-out of SLIF to all our businesses and to expand our Sanoma Learning Impact Survey.

Using evidence to support improvement

Thanks Sendhuran for talking us through this. I see the importance of using evidence in assessing what works best for pupils and teachers and believe the SLIF can be a helpful guide.