Category Archives: Learning Outcomes

Sanoma Learning Lab: Co-create for Impact

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sloa-header-1We’re going to run a Learning Lab this Autumn and I would like to invite you to join us. We’re going to develop new concepts with you, to improve and evidence the impact of education on learning.

There are 3 reasons why I would love you (teachers, academics, university students and Sanoma employees) to apply for a place at our learning lab:

1. Fantastic learning experience

You’ll get trained in start-up methods and work with experts on developing your idea. You might even win a place at bootcamp to build a prototype of it with a dedicated team of designers and developers. I’ve previously blogged about how such a program works and what happens at bootcamp. It’s really exciting to be part of it!

2. Great networking

The Lab will be a great way to build relationships with other professionals passionate about the future of learning, both locally and internationally. People from diverse backgrounds, from instructional design to user experience to learning analytics. People who want to make a difference in education.

3. Make an impact on the future of learning

We’ll co-develop new concepts with you, to improve and evidence the impact of education and to contribute to the future of learning. Concepts that will improve learning results, support the ways of working and help to better engage pupils. It’s about the future of learning.

Join us!

We’ll be accepting applications until 24th August. Please go to www.sanomalearninglab.com and apply. I really hope you’ll join us! Looking forward >>.

The killer app in education is the teacher

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edtech-logoLast week the second EdTech Europe meeting was held in London. It was an inspiring day and attracted high quality participants including quite a large audience of start-ups, established operating companies and investors. Thanks to Charles McIntyre, CEO of IBIS Capital and Benjamin Vedrenne-Cloquet, Founding CEO of Edxus Group, for having arranged this excellent meeting!

I was a speaker on one of the panels and also a member of the Advisory Board, so I was happy it was a success. I loved engaging with the entrepreneurs running the edtech ventures. It’s inspiring to hear their stories and feel their energy. And it was also a great networking event for meeting peers from across Europe.

Technology, platform, content, data?

This was a meeting about educational technology, so there was rightly a lot of discussion about the transformation of education and the roles that technology, platforms, content and data will play. What will be the “killer app” of education in the future?

The killer app in education today is the teacher

Today I believe that the “killer app” of K-12 education is the teacher. Great teachers engage individuals and classes, ensuring that they are motivated to learn. They stretch and support individual pupils so that they reach the best learning outcome they can. And they guide the ways of working such that learning time is spent usefully.

Technology will both enable and disrupt teachers in the future

Effective use of technology, platforms, content and data can help to raise learning outcomes (e.g. data-driven personalised learning), bring efficiency to the ways of working (e.g. automation and performance dashboards), and support engagement and motivation (e.g. gamification and storyfication). The teacher is therefore likely to get both enabled and disrupted by technology in the future.

Yet although the role of the teacher will change, I believe they will remain the “killer app” of education in the future too. They are likely to remain the leader of the classroom. They will probably more-or-less remain as the primary guide and gatekeeper to the learning activities that are carried out. And their relationship with classes and individual pupils will remain pivotal to engagement and motivation.

Enable teachers to develop each child

Our ambition is to use edtech to enable teachers to excel at developing the talents of every child, resulting in higher outcomes, better engagement and new ways of working. That’s something I believe in and would be keen to invest in.

Revitalizing Primary and Secondary Education in Russia

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Last weekend I was a speaker/panelist at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum on the subject of Revitalizing Primary and Secondary Education in Russia. Learning outcomes in Russia are rather uncompetitive when seen from an international perspective. I was also surprised to hear that schools in many urban areas run two shifts a day due to a lack of capacity.

Although Sanoma Learning is not currently directly active on the Russian market, we were interested to contribute to the discussion. Firstly, because we believe that education is one of the most powerful instruments known for developing individual talent, reducing poverty and inequality and for laying the basis for sustained economic growth, sound governance and effective institutions across the globe. And secondly since we might be able to contribute to improving Russian learning outcomes in the future.

What can Russia learn from our experience?

I was asked what Russia could learn from our experience. I cannot claim to be an expert on Russian education. However, we are an integral player in a number of education systems that consistently perform very well – including Finland, The Netherlands and Belgium. In addition we are the market leader in Poland which has been one of the rising stars on outcomes in recent years. And we have recently acquired a position in Sweden and are keen to support teachers in raising learning outcomes there too.

On the basis of our experience in these successful systems, we believe there are three cornerstones of excellence in primary and secondary education.

1. Skilled and motivated teachers

The first cornerstone is to make sure the level of skills and motivation of teachers is high. A skilled teacher is like a great leader – the impact is huge. They are the heroes and heroines of education. For example, this means:
a. Getting the best people to apply to teacher training
b. Paying them adequately
c. Making sure they are treated with respect, both in school and in society
d. Not over-managing them – they are professionals. Give them space to run their classes without too many rules
e. Making sure they have access to good learning and teaching materials and are free to choose them based on their professional insights. State-prescribed and created materials tend to lead to lower standards and reduced motivation for teachers
f. Keeping their skills up-to-date.

2. Motivated pupils

The second cornerstone is to ensure that pupils are motivated. The correlation between motivation and outcomes is high. This includes:
a. As described above, recruiting and retaining good teachers who can motivate pupils and classes
b. Promoting equity. It’s important to support poorly-performing students and students in economically less advantaged areas. Furthermore, to include marginalized pupils such as those with special needs or from diverse backgrounds and minorities in the mainstream. Their education should be well resourced. It will significantly improve their life chances and lead to better overall outcomes
c. Ensuring that education is valued in society. Amongst others, this will encourage parents to support learning, and this will raise expectations which typically raises outcomes too
d. Finding ways to personalise the process of learning, for example by using technology, or ensuring the teacher has time for individual intervention, or by providing access to tutors. Personalisation improves engagement and better engagement tends to lead to improved outcomes
e. Using high quality learning materials, that both pupils and teachers appreciate.

3. High quality learning solutions

We believe that the third cornerstone to excellence in education is to provide teachers and pupils with high quality learning solutions. They can make a significant contribution to achieving excellent learning outcomes, in a time- and cost-effective manner, whilst keeping pupils and teachers engaged on the journey of learning. Such solutions could include the following elements (for some parts depending on the ICT status of the school):

a. Close “fit” with the local curriculum, language, culture and ways
b. Excellent instructional design
c. Good user experience
d. Play multichannel
e. Capture data and can give insights, and on that basis can be personalisable and adaptive
f. Deploy a coherent learning path and design – easy to use for both pupil and teacher
g. The teacher should have a high level of freedom to choose from a competitive offering – to find the solution that fits them and their class best.

Our beliefs

So those are our beliefs about the cornerstones of creating excellent education systems. There is probably not a single approach that can be copied and pasted across the globe. But the chances are good that most education systems (including Russia) would benefit by focusing on skilled teachers, motivating pupils and providing high quality learning solutions.

Where are the giants of edtech in K-12 education in Europe?

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We’re committed to playing a leading role in renewing education for the next generation and believe we can add value by supporting pupils and teachers on three fronts:

– Achieving excellent learning outcomes
– Enabling efficient ways of working, and
– Supporting engagement and motivation.

Technology can be a key enabler on making progress on each of these three fronts, Today, Sanoma Learning is one of Europe’s leading edtech companies, with roughly € 40 M of pure-play digital and € 100 M of multi-channel sales.

We’re ambitious and like to partner with and acquire other edtech companies to help us to support customers on the three fronts mentioned above. Significant amounts of money are being spent on education each year, of the order of 6% of GDP. This is approximately € 800 bn per year in the EU: the market is sizeable and K-12 is a big slice of that. Yet there are relatively few edtech companies established on the continent today that generate more than € 25 M of annual sales. To be honest, I couldn’t name 10 off the top of my head.

Plenty of talent, ideas and capital

IBIS Capital estimates that there are approximately 3,000 e-learning ventures in Europe today. These companies employ a lot of entrepreneurial talent, many of them working on potentially high-impact ideas. Also, it seems to me that it’s not impossibly difficult to find funding for promising edtech ventures. In the USA in Q1/2014 about $ 500 M was committed in new funding to 99 edtech ventures – the biggest quarter for the last five years.

“The market is rich enough in talent, ideas and venture funding.”

So why hasn’t this large and transforming market in K-12 education spurred the growth of a handful of European edtech giants?

To be frank, I don’t know. Let’s start by looking at the context for K-12 education in Europe today. The great majority of the money in the market is spent (directly or indirectly) by the government through schools, many of which are not yet ready for e-learning. Also, the great majority of overall funding is spent on the salaries of teachers; this is absolutely right – teachers are the most critical factor in providing excellent education.

Within this context I think there are probably three main reasons that make it difficult for an edtech giant to emerge from the European continent on the short term:

1. A rather immature ecosystem
A well-functioning e-learning ecosystem can be built if we can make progress on four dimensions in schools: i) a clear vision on what we want to achieve and committed leadership to make it happen ii) good ICT infrastructure iii) availability of content and software and iv) teachers equipped with the skills to get ICT to work for them and their pupils. Although good progress has been made in many countries on many of those dimensions in the last ten years, most of these ecosystems are still relatively immature. In many ways progress needs to be made on each of these dimensions simultaneously in order for the ecosystem to flourish. There are a lot of data available on this. To name one important element – today there are of the order of 5 devices per household in northern Europe but five pupils per workstation at school. The home is a much more advanced digital ecosystem than the school. Surely this is just a matter of timing? Maybe BYOD tablets will provide the impulse the ecosystem needs? In any case, the early stage of the ecosystem hinders the adoption of educational technology.

2. Long sales cycles but narrow sales windows
The great majority of spending on education in Europe is channelled through institutions. Most of those institutions are organised around an annual cycle. Sales processes into them tend to be long and complex and the window of opportunity rather narrow. If your service is great, but you are not well-positioned to make the sale, the opportunity can be lost until the next year, or for many years. This can be killing for start-ups managing their monthly burn rate and can be a big disincentive to some investors and entrepreneurs.

3. Lack of scale
The final area that is probably hindering the emergence of new European edtech giants is the lack of scale in the market. Education systems tend to be organised very locally and can be prone to political influence. There are relatively few things that scale across multiple countries. Even if your business does brilliantly well in one country, it will be very hard to capture that same position across the continent. Edtech ventures from the USA or China enjoy a clear advantage, with large home markets that can attract significant funding.

How can we improve?

Europe has many natural advantages in the edtech space. For example, it’s home to some world-class education systems such as Finland and there’s a rich start-up scene in a number of leading cities. There’s also a reliable and significant commitment to spending on education.

I’m sure there are lots of smart options about taxes and skills and common standards and so on that the EU is working on in building a big single European market, and I imagine many of those things will help. In addition to that I would like to see us getting more proactive as an industry in two areas. Firstly, it would be good to get more transparency on the market. Which of these new ventures are really starting to fly? Initiatives such as Edtech Europe and Sanoma’s Start-up Challenge help, but are not enough. It’s hard (but not impossible 🙂 ) to see the wood for the trees amongst the 3,000 of today. Who should we partner with? And secondly, are there ways for us to create a European network that can bring scale to the market so that we can more rapidly deploy new technology for the benefit of our customers?

I’m interested to hear your views on this. Feel free to drop me a line if you have inspired ideas.

Looking forward >>

Seven trends shaping the future of learning

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Last week we concluded the start-up challenge on the future of learning with five inspiring pitches at TNW Europe. Many congratulations to Labster on winning and thanks to all five finalists would did themselves proud in their pitches! Check out my post on it here.

I was also one of the keynote speakers on the EduTrack at TNW. I received quite a few requests for a copy of the presentation – here it is TNW-keynote.blog and here is a drawing taken during the session.

These days I try to use images more than words in storytelling (except in my blog 🙂 ), so the slides benefit from further explanation. In this post, I would like to share my views on a number of trends that are shaping the future of learning, as seen from the perspective of a provider of learning solutions. Obviously this is in the style of a 15 minute presentation at a tech conference and not a white paper :-).

I would like to introduce myself

I was born in the Heart of England in the early 1970’s. Already at primary school I developed a passion for learning. I wanted to become a doctor and find a cure for cancer. So I studied hard, I really loved to learn, and went on to complete a PhD in molecular biology. Now of course my dream was unrealistic, I didn’t find a cure. But the dream did bring me something else. It brought me an education. And this gave me a passport to the world. So I moved to The Netherlands as a research scientist and university teacher. I then became a science publisher and now lead Sanoma Learning one of Europe’s leading education companies, with headquarters in Helsinki.

About Sanoma Learning

What I like the most about Sanoma Learning is working together with 1500 professionals who share my passion for learning.

We serve about 10 M pupils and 1 M teachers every day in Northern Europe. And we’re an integral player to the educational systems of 5 countries including Finland, The Netherlands, Belgium, Poland and Sweden – a sort of all-star cast for PISA. We acquired our position in Sweden a couple of years ago and are going to help them to improve their learning outcomes and rise in the PISA rankings, as we have been doing in Poland. We have a reputation for quality and export solutions to more than 40 other countries.

We make annual sales of about € 300 M, including € 40 M of pure-play digital and € 100 M of multichannel, arguably making us Europe’s biggest EdTech company today.

Three cornerstones to excellent education

three-cornerstonesWe believe that an effective interplay between teachers, pupils and learning resources is the primary factor in achieving great learning outcomes. From the perspective of being a leading provider of learning solutions, we see seven trends that are shaping the next generation of learning.

Trend #1 From input to outcomes

input-to-outcomesinputThere has traditionally been a lot of emphasis on the inputs into education. How much do we spend? How many pupils per classroom? How many hours of class time? How many devices in the school? And so on. These things are all inputs. The good thing about inputs is that they’re fairly easy to measure. But the value is in the outcome not the input.

Ultimately on the system level, the main outcome we are trying to achieve is to help people to make progress in their lives: to help them in their learning career, to help prepare them for work and to help to develop them to become good citizens.

These are really big goals for education systems, and by the time we know how we are doing, it’s too late to make positive interventions for a better outcome. So in my view we need to guide outcomes in learning on a more local level, maybe on the level of each lesson or each course:

– does this activity contribute to a good learning result for all of the pupils involved?
– in a way that is time and cost effective?
– and in a way that is engaging and motivating for pupils and teachers?

I believe we should re-shape education by bringing these outcomes into focus.

Trend #2 From mass to personal

massmass-personalAs we move from the industrial age to the knowledge age, our ways of working in education will change too.

Technology will support us in tailoring pedagogy, curriculum and learning support to the needs and aspirations of the individual learner.

If we can get that right, we will be much more successful in helping individuals to reach their potential. This is a huge opportunity for us to unleash the potential of our children.

Trend #3 From workload to workflow

workload-workflowworkloadWe did some ethnographic research with teachers in Finland, a world-class education system. We were surprised to see that about 15 hours per week were being lost on bottlenecks in the workflow. For example, keeping track of administration, manual checking, inefficient communication streams and disruption in the classroom. Imagine the effect that these bottlenecks have on learning outcomes and motivation, and think about the impact that could be achieved if those hours were spent on teaching instead. Also, for a primary school with say 350 pupils and 35 teachers, the financial cost of these bottlenecks is about € 500 k per year.

We expect that technology will address some of the problem. For our part, we are digitalising our courses. Other elements of the workflow will get automated and personalised too. Teachers should spend their time and energy on teaching. This is their skill and passion and this is where they bring excellence to education.

Trend #4 From analogue to digital

analog-digitalanalogueSchools are slowly but surely becoming more digital. However, today in northern Europe, there is a big gap in access to technology between the school and the home. And we are arguably the most digital part of the world! There might typically be 5 devices per household. At the same time, there are typically about 5 pupils for every workstation in schools. So we have to design solutions that can play to that dynamic. Currently most of our methods play multichannel. We expect to continue to play multichannel for 5 or 10 more years and that by 2020 digital will be leading in the usage of most courses.

Trend #5 From data to insight

datadata-insightIn the coming years a wealth of data will come on stream about the learning of our children. Clearly, we have to treat privacy with the utmost respect. And also to look to the opportunity. We’re going to get rich data-sets and insights into how individual pupils, teachers, classes, pieces of content, courses and entire systems perform. We can use these insights to guide intervention: to raise learning outcomes, to focus resources, to enhance engagement. We should embrace these insights to improve learning, and to stop doing the things do not bring value.

Trend #6 From classroom to borderless

classroom-borderlessclassroomDigital is fundamentally changing the way we live. In the analogue world, the classroom was the centre of learning, whereas the individual stands central in the digital world. Digital has opened up the border between school and home and we see growing demand for services related to curriculum, tutoring and communication that bring a holistic approach to learning for the pupil.

Trend # 7 From scarcity to abundance

scarcity-abundancescarcityLooking at it from the global perspective, good quality education has been the preserve of the happy few. It’s been a scarce resource. However, that’s about to change for the better. Extreme poverty has halved over the last 20 years and some reckon that extreme poverty will be eliminated within 20 years. Going hand-in-hand with rising prosperity has been increased access to mobile technology for the world’s poorest people.

Education is one of the most powerful instruments known for reducing poverty and inequality and for laying the basis for sustained economic growth, sound governance, and effective institutions.

“Imagine the profound impact on our people and planet if we can bring mobile learning to the four billion people rising out of poverty. Imagine that.”

Time to embrace change and invest in renewing education

So these are seven trends that we believe are shaping the next generation of learning. I am sure there are more, and they are obviously impacted by the perspective you have.

“We believe it’s time for governments, companies, schools and individuals to embrace these changes and invest in renewing education for the next generation.”

What can Sanoma do?

So we ask ourselves what we can do to contribute to the renewal of education. The answer is in our mission already – in supporting pupils and teachers on three fronts:

– Achieving excellent learning outcomes
– Enhancing workflow efficiency
– And supporting engaging learning

By creating courses that play multichannel that address those three goals, we can contribute to building the future of learning.

Learning outcomes accelerator

We see that the most challenging of these tasks for everyone in the educational ecosystem is how we can take a step forward on learning outcomes.

We like a challenge at Sanoma Learning. So we want to run an innovation accelerator focusing on learning outcomes.

“How can we improve and evidence the impact of education in the new era?”.

Together with schools, teachers, pupils and academics, plus about 75 learning and start-up professionals from Sanoma, we want to run a 10 week program to develop ideas and build prototypes of solutions that can improve and evidence the impact of education.

We’re going to start recruiting the teams and participants now, ready for a kick-off in September. If you’re interested to join us or to learn more, please visit sanomalearningoutcomes.com

We’ve run 5 accelerators at Sanoma in the last couple of years and I can promise you they are inspiring and energising and you learn new ways of co-developing your ideas with your customers.

Any questions?

Thanks for listening. Feel free to contact me @johnrichmartin. And please let me know if you want to join us in renewing education for the next generation.