education – Vivaldi https://vivaldigroup.com/en Writing the Next Chapter in Business and Brands Tue, 27 Jun 2023 22:00:39 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.8.22 The Interaction Field Opportunity In Education, Part II https://vivaldigroup.com/en/blogs/interaction-field-opportunity-education-part2/ Fri, 08 Apr 2022 16:29:44 +0000 http://vivaldigroup.com/en/?post_type=blogs&p=6273 Interaction Fields are changing the lay of the land in many industries. Education is no exception— Vivaldi’s Anne Olderog shares why in a two-part series. Part One outlined the conditions for the emergence of Interaction Fields and the type of problems that Interaction Fields can successfully solve. Now Part Two below shares the various types of Interaction […]

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Interaction Fields are changing the lay of the land in many industries. Education is no exception— Vivaldi’s Anne Olderog shares why in a two-part series. Part One outlined the conditions for the emergence of Interaction Fields and the type of problems that Interaction Fields can successfully solve. Now Part Two below shares the various types of Interaction Fields emerging and opportunities we can expect to see going forward.

Types of emerging Interaction Field Models

What types of interaction fields are emerging in Education?

  1. Platforms for unbundled courses

One of the most prominent phenomena is of course the rise of platforms such as Coursera, whose $7bn IPO is a testimony to the enduring business opportunity in Interaction Field models. A community of 87 million learners and over 200 universities, Coursera opens up access for students and enables professors or institutions to reach wider audiences, creating a larger market opportunity for all. The Science of Well Being by Yale professor Laurie Santos, has been taken by 3.38 million students. Such Interaction Fields might well be pointing to the future of education, by allowing students to assemble their own set of courses best suited for the professional and life paths they set for themselves. Some courses could potentially be taken directly from potential employers such as Google who also offer certificates and some could be taken from educational institution such as Stanford or MIT who now offer the majority of their courses online for free.  As a result, Interaction Fields could potentially play a role in the deconstruction of the educational landscape. The emergence of such platforms will lead to a star instructor system – somewhat akin to stars gaining independence from the Hollywood studio system – where some instructors will be able to garner audiences in the millions and will enjoy significant popularity around the world, creating even more viral and network effects.

  1. Information Exchanges

The rise of student-centric information exchange Interaction Fields has been a defining trend of the past years. Chegg, Quizlet and Course Hero allow students contribute study sets that they can share publicly to help others build their knowledge and also answer specific questions directly – a little too directly if you follow the controversy on cheating.

While these Interaction Fields are primarily focused on students, they also include other types of participants. For instance, instructors can create study sets to share with their students and track their student’s progress. Content creators can partner with Quizlet to become Verified Creators – combining their content with Quizlet’s study tools and selling that content to schools or directly to students. As such, it is expected to learner information exchanges are only the starting point and will try to scale up to include more and more audiences over time.

  1. Learning Networks

The second model seems to be emerging to counter the fear that technology might eliminate community. For instance, Prisma, started by former Google execs, defines itself as a “connected learning network” cultivating independence and joy of learning. It allows individual learners already on the K-12 level to form community. This is how Prisma describes its ecosystem: “It consists of a small cohort of diverse kids learning virtually together with the support and guidance of dedicated learning coaches and a network of these cohorts spread around the world where learners can make friendships, collaborate and share ideas. Our vision is that learners get the best of both worlds: the intimacy and support of a “one-room schoolhouse” (the cohort) and the breadth, diversity and global perspective of the world’s largest kid-focused learning community (the network)”. Such an Interaction Field model is predicated on creating learning and network effects among the different cohorts as these exchange ideas and best practices.

  1. Conversational Learning

Conversation Learning is an entire category of Interaction Fields, predicated on creating viral and network effects by drawing students into great conversations. Kialo, Parlay or Packback invite students into debates on often open-ended questions – from neuroscience, we know that asking big, open-ended questions makes learning more motivating.

Discord takes this models model even further by creating micro-tribes within larger networks – students can join groups around particular topics or Silent study rooms (keep your camera on) holding them accountable for silent study, reminding them to take breaks and recording session time for leaderboards; study bots help students meet deadlines. Discord is essentially akin to a monitored study hall, where students can ask for help, join competitions and be held accountable for time.

  1. Mentorship and Support Networks

Matching learners with support – from instructors, real world experts, or peers – is a problem Interaction Fields are particularly well suited to solve. Brainly allows students to tap into the brainpower of thousands of experts worldwide by asking them questions. Piazza, on the contrary, focuses on micro-communities on the college or course level.

Online tutoring platforms such as Knack, Vygo, Skooli or Tutit create Interaction Fields matching students with support, be it from tutors or peers; Peerceptiv is focused on creating a virtual cycle of feedback on writing and analytics that set the stage for collaboration between students and instructors.

  1. Creator Economy

One of the enduring misunderstandings about Interaction Fields is that these simply replicate relationships and interactions happening offline. Instead, the more interesting aspect of Interaction Fields is solving new problems and enabling new interactions – one example are the new needs that come along with the emerging Creator Economy. These Interaction Fields enable students to be not just recipients  or even interpreters of information – and not just tutors or mentors – but also creators and authors in their own right. For instance, Scratch is a  platform where students can program interactive stories, games, and animations, and share creations with others. GoConqr is a social learning platform – offering an array of learning tools for students and educators to create and share study resources in innovative ways.

  1. Innovation Labs

Finally, one of the enduring values of Interaction Fields across industries is to facilitate the exchange of ideas and best practices. Curio is an online platform for educators to discover, curate, and collaborate to find new ideas to transform education. Among teacher-centric platforms, Online community of teachers to collaborate and share best practices/methods for teaching – join community groups, ask questions (anonymously or not), connect with others through private messages.

Most of these merging Interaction Fields aim to leverage both direct network effects (students pulling in other students) as well as indirect ones (e.g. higher quality support or tutors attracting more participants); supply side ones (the scale of the offering attracting better quality) as well as demand ones (learners increasingly dependent on the network in order to learn, work on homework and prepare for tests). The question is, of course, which particular players are likely to quickly build scale and viral effects – and those are largely rooted in the ability of these Interaction Fields to create learning effects, in particular from data that will allow them to improve their offering as they go.

What to expect going forward – Emerging opportunities in Interaction Fields

Finally the fourth question is which other models are likely to emerge going forward.

We are likely to see the emergence of super-platforms – “platforms of platforms” that include serve a variety of complex needs that build on each other and as such can build scale more quickly. We expect that this can happen by acquisition from established players, as well as by building additional capabilities to serve more full-spectrum needs.

On the other end of the spectrum, a typical phenomenon as Interaction Fields grow is to see a subdivision by sub-tries or micro-communities that ensure a more functional model and tighter connections that can be found in a large scale network. Examples can be seen within Reddit, for instance, that became structured as a series of smaller sub-communities. In education, a key goal and pain point is to ensure high-quality, productive conversations and to weed out the “noise” – this can be achieved in potentially forming high-powered, topic-centered academic communities that allow deeper conversations and engagement with the subject matter in a more productive way.

A potentially under-served audience are instructors – even though Interaction Fields are increasingly offering tools to serve this audience as well.  It will be interesting to see in the coming years the emergence of more Interaction Fields that specifically serve instructors, allowing them to extract patterns that work, explore different approaches and ultimately try to create new models. Some of these Interaction Fields might serve the emerging disintermediation and the need for instructors to reinvent themselves outside of existing institutional boundaries, creating a following not just among learners but among instructors themselves – and also feel less isolated in a profession that is constantly changing. There is already movement in the direction – for instance, Outschool allows teachers in K-12 to create their own courses, and Teachers Helping Teachers allows to exchange educational materials and ideas. We expect to see more movement and scale in that space.

A critical audience will also be institutions. These will have an increasing need for exchange in information, best practices, resources – a mid, in Higher Ed, falling enrollment and rising attrition, a talent war for burning out faculty.  This area is perhaps the most emerging one, and it will be interesting to see how the industry evolves in the future, including potential data, best practices or even capabilities exchange as the traditional value chain is becoming reconfigured.

Ultimately, we see the rise of learning data companies that will leverage big data residing in the many technology platforms to continuously optimize the learning or teaching process, identify patterns that work best  – not just generally but also for each specific learner or challenge type, as well as institutional patterns, challenges or cultural constructs.

As a summary, Interaction Fields represent a large and rising opportunity in Education – as evidenced by the many Interaction Fields already in play or in formation. Interaction Fields make sense from an industry structure point of view, and will allow to find new ways to tackle big, previously unsolved problems – not just for specific audiences, but rather bringing together different market participants in the search for solutions.

Perhaps one of the problems – or the opportunities – is that Education was until recently often considered an individual, solitary activity. In this context, Interaction Fields can open many doors to creating value. After all, one perspective on learning is it was always about a form of interaction with other minds, present or past, synchronous or asynchronous.  So what industry can be better suited to creating interaction shield stand the space that gave rise to Socratic discussion?

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The Interaction Field Opportunity in Education, Part I https://vivaldigroup.com/en/blogs/interaction-field-opportunity-education/ Sat, 12 Mar 2022 16:45:23 +0000 http://vivaldigroup.com/en/?post_type=blogs&p=6260 At Vivaldi, we see Interaction Fields changing most industries around us. This fundamentally new value creation model brings together key participants in a given industry and creates value through exchange. It replaces the old pipeline model that was focused on competitive advantage through optimizing the value chain and leveraging physical assets. It also supersedes the […]

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At Vivaldi, we see Interaction Fields changing most industries around us. This fundamentally new value creation model brings together key participants in a given industry and creates value through exchange. It replaces the old pipeline model that was focused on competitive advantage through optimizing the value chain and leveraging physical assets. It also supersedes the more recent platform business model.

Businesses like Airbnb and Uber shifted the paradigm in their respective industries from leveraging physical assets such as hotels or cars, to bringing together drivers and riders, travelers and owners, to create value through exchange. This phenomenon, which goes beyond these examples and is reshaping entire industries and creating new kinds of successful businesses, has been described by Vivaldi’s founder and CEO Erich Joachimsthaler in his book The Interaction Field.

This series will be of interest to any industry observer looking to pick up on emerging patterns of demand, and to the practitioner looking to spot opportunities for innovation or investment. To kick-off, Vivaldi Senior Partner Anne Olderog looks at why education is ripe for disruption by Interaction Fields.

Why Education is ripe for disruption by Interaction Fields

In Education, there has been a shift from an ‘authoritative’ top-down model to a ‘lateral’ or ‘peer-to peer’ model. We no longer think only in terms of a transfer from a “knowledgeable adult” to a “tabula rasa” learner. Students don’t simply learn to process and regurgitate information that they may or may not use later. They also  learn to develop meta skills such as formulating and defending a point of view, persuading others or appreciating perspectives from others.

The education business model has changed. Education has a high propensity to shift from a traditional (“pipeline”) one-to-many model to a many-to-many ecosystem where learning comes from everywhere and everyone. What has not yet been studied are the structural factors in education that create the conditions for disruption by an Interaction Field.

The BCG article, “Do You Need a Business Ecosystem,” examined several criteria that make an industry well-suited for an interaction field. Education industry presents a number of these:

1.     Modularity.

“In contrast to vertically integrated models or hierarchical supply chains, in business ecosystems, the components of the offering are designed independently yet function as an integrated whole. In many cases, the customer can choose among the components and/or how they are combined.”

Education is a prime example of an ecosystem where the key components are designed independently and yet need to function as a whole – from understanding, assessment, practice and ultimately application

In our research, a key problem from the student perspective is actually the dissociation of these key steps. Learning is often dissociated from practical application. Understanding is separate from practice. Academic concepts fail to be brought back to practical world problems.

The same is true from the instructor or institutional perspective. Teaching basic concepts is separate from assessing student understanding or even basic preparation. This is a well-known problem that is becoming particularly acute in light of today’s rising attrition rates.

2.     Customization

“In contrast to an open-market model, the contributions of the ecosystem participants tend to be customized to the ecosystem and made mutually compatible”.

Education requires a highly customizable approach – not just to different technologies and platforms, but also to different pedagogical methods and philosophies. Boundaries were already being pushed by EdTech, but the pandemic opened a whole set of new doors as new approaches are explored and old ones are being reassessed.

3.     Multilateralism

 “In contrast to open-market models, ecosystems consist of a set of relationships that are not decomposable to an aggregation of bilateral interactions. This means that a successful contract between A and B (such as phone maker and app developer) can be undermined by the failure of the contract between A and C (phone maker and telecom provider).”

Education is a great example of multilateralism in an ecosystem. The core interaction between a learner and an instructor requires support from an institution to be successful. This requires a testing/assessment system to certify its success. Ultimately, application in the real world will measure the value of the skill acquired. Without interaction between these multiple participants, success cannot be ensured or evaluated.

4.     Coordination

The last of our criteria is coordination. Education is by definition a holistic ecosystem requiring the collaboration various partners. Systematic issues faced by education cannot be resolved by any one player. Solving these requires cooperation from educational institutions, faculty, administrators, instructional designers, teaching assistants and of course students themselves. Beyond this, further coordination is needed with suppliers, software developers and regulators.

A coordinated model is required to solve problems that are so complex and profound that no one player will have the ability to find and implement a solution. Various actors must come together in order to innovate, create market power and offer a fertile ground for the spread of innovation.

Interaction Fields are best suited for industries that have high modularity (i.e. separate components that can beneficially be put together) and a high need for coordination.

The learning process is formed by a series of disparate – yet often disjointed factors – that together need to form a holistic learning ecosystem. It involves interactions between multiple participants – from administrators to parents and of course students and instructors – that together make learning possible. The combination of these factors creates both the need and the opportunity for Interaction Fields to be formed.

II. What are the types of problems that Interaction Fields in Education could solve

Understanding

Many students in focus groups told us that they simply do not understand concepts the way their professor explains them. This fits with our research with instructors, who told us they consider this generation of students particularly challenging to teach. One professor described his current generation of students as “demanding and aggressive”; another talked about the need to “reinvent his game”.

All of this means that the need for better understanding runs even deeper than in previous generations. Students are likely to turn to explanations from their peers that they find more easily accessible. YouTube has become a de facto Interaction field not just in entertainment but also in education.

Engagement and focus

A recent study by Microsoft concluded that the human attention span has dropped to eight seconds – shrinking nearly 25% in just a few years. In Vivaldi’s own research, students reported time management – and beyond this, attention management – as a top pain point.

Social interactions are one of the factors that created the problem. They have the potential to create solutions. Interactions offer the possibility to reframe the old “no pain, no gain” mindset that our research found students like to challenge. Millennials and gen Z learners don’t see learning and fun as polar opposites.

The ‘Grit and Growth Mindset’ has become one of the most popular education concepts of our time. While the notion of challenge continues to be well understood and accepted, boredom is not.

According to an administrator that we interviewed from one of the largest college systems in the country, the holy grail is to make learning as engaging as social media or gaming. Interaction Fields have an opportunity to play a role here.

Real world application

The dichotomy between academic theory and real world practice is increasingly being challenged.  “Just in time” information is taking the place of “just in case”, and “once in a lifetime “ learning is being replaced with lifelong learning.

Interaction fields offer the opportunity to open up the learning process to many more than those who make education their profession. This includes real world experts and companies on the hunt for talent. Boundaries between academia and business or practical life could become more porous. Interaction Fields could create spaces for learning by doing, mentoring students while working, and always learning as one’s career grows.

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In Part II, Anne will share types of emerging Interaction Field models and what to expect going forward in Education. 

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The Metaverse in Education: Hype or reality? https://vivaldigroup.com/en/blogs/metaverse-education-hype-reality/ Mon, 17 Jan 2022 15:38:16 +0000 http://vivaldigroup.com/en/?post_type=blogs&p=6202 The discussions on the metaverse are as invigorating as they are perplexing. Is the metaverse the future of the Internet – or of reality? Or is it the reverse – old-fashioned hype? That is the question. A collective virtual space, bringing together physical reality, virtual worlds, augmented reality and the Internet – an immersive experience […]

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The discussions on the metaverse are as invigorating as they are perplexing. Is the metaverse the future of the Internet – or of reality? Or is it the reverse – old-fashioned hype? That is the question. A collective virtual space, bringing together physical reality, virtual worlds, augmented reality and the Internet – an immersive experience that might soon land on your desk (or into your life), that you might have trouble leaving. And that is sure to continue to dominate conversation.

Movies have explored this for a while – Inception where reality and imagination are interspersed, the virtual reality of The Matrix, the simulation environment in Avatar. Yet to the discerning scholar, the idea of a deeper, connected reality, that can be explored the way one peels an onion, the old as civilization itself – from platonic ideas that form the truth behind “reality” that is a mere shadow on a cavern, to the medieval view of the world where everything is a symbol of a deeper reality, to be scrutinized by the careful eye.

Unlike cyberspace that draws away from the real world, the metaverse allows its participants to be still aware of the real world around them – in fact, this real world is very much part of the metaverse itself. Mark Zuckerberg reflected on the omnipresence of screens – “We were not meant to live this way”, he commented. In contrast, the metaverse creates a richer reality – not an alternative one. For instance, Nissan is exploring adding virtual information on a car’s windshield, including an ability to summon 3D avatars, in a technology called ”invisible to visible”.

What does it mean for education? If reality is being reshaped – or at least reinterpreted – how can this affect pedagogy? A well-known essay by the venture capitalist Matthew Ball defined the key aspects of the metaverse. How do these, if at all, apply to education?

According to Matthew Ball, the Metaverse will be:

  • Persistent – “it never “resets or pauses”, or “ends” , it just continues indefinitely”.  Arguable, the same holds true for learning – the shift from “sporadic” to “persistent” is already happening. One well-understood aspect of this is the shift from a “once-and-for all” degree model to a lifelong learning model, as professional skills need to be replenished on a continuous basis – not just for the workforce to be productive, but for us as human beings to remain fresh. Education is never “over”, “done with” – there is no such thing a stillness in a nature – just like in physical fitness, we can only sharpen or loose our skills. Coursera’s valuation when it went public last year is testimony to the fact that this shift is well under way; traditional educational institutions such as Harvard or Yale were quick to pick up on this, through the likes of EdEx or a deconstructed panel of certificates that can accompany one’s lifelong career. However, a less understood aspect of “an education that never stops” goes beyond its lifelong aspect – it is learning woven into everyday life. Today’s students know this well; in focus groups conducted this year, students shared that they like to integrate learning into everyday routines. This is how YouTube became, among other things, an educational company. For instance, apps such as Vroom integrate early childhood learning into everyday life – making learning part of mealtime, bedtime or bathtime.

The metaverse can provide an ideal ground for educational experiences that never end and always draw you further – because every real life experience, from a hike in the woods to a museum visit or even everyday science experiments in the kitchen, can be deepened and enhanced, the way hypertext enhanced every reading experience in the early days of the Internet. This is very different from today’s internet that takes us away from reality or social media that perhaps reveals the undercurrents of social relationships rather than enhancing them. With the metaverse, could we one day talk about a rich living experience the way we do about a rich reading experience?

  • Be Synchronous and live. Just as the pandemic caused every museum in the world to open their doors to virtual visitors, and suddenly made all the riches of human culture accessible to everyone, without the need to travel – in the metaverse, one might have the opportunity to attend any virtual event, anywhere in the world, in (avatar) person. Lecture by a renowned Stanford professor? Gallery opening in Berlin? Concert at the Vienna Philarmonic? Panel at Davos? Debate at Aspen? Trip to Mars with Elon Musk? You name it, you can go. Limitations of space, geography, access, class or connections – can be removed in important ways. A professor will be able to invite experts from around the world to a panel. Researchers can get together in a live symposium to advance thinking on critical topics. In a trend that is already under way, as Stanford and MIT made their courses available for free (in an asynchronous way) , education that was once available to a few becomes accessible to many– with a new kind of immersive experience. There was recently a discussion on how gaming companies keep upping the ante on endorphin release (and inadvertently create a breeding ground for depression as a biological balancing mechanism). Tired of old-style immersive gaming? Try the most immersive experience of all – nature and reality.

We are talking about a convergence of education, content, entertainment, technology and gaming – forming partnerships to create these new kinds of experiences. It is likely that none of the current players have what it takes to do it all. What EdTech platform will be best positioned to create an interaction field, in Erich Joachimsthaler’s words, that can bring the metaverse ecosystem together on one platform, and optimize interactions for all?

  • Be an experience that spans both the digital and physical world, private and public networks/experiences, open and closed platforms. This is the very definition of an interaction field. What will be the role of educational institutions and players in this new universe? Will they become orchestrators of learning experiences – leading virtual visits to public museums, providing a stage for private companies looking to hire their graduates to assess their skills in a real-life project? Will they become curators of everyday educational challenges? How will they react to the emergence of a new set of players, as Google and other tech giants expand beyond offering certificates into offering a platform for entrepreneurship and creativity?
  • Offer unprecedented interoperability of data, digital items/assets, content and so on. Will there be a market for “second-hand” virtual objects? “Unused” digital experiences? With the scarcity factor of limited space and inventory removed, how will this affect pricing models – pressing down prices due to increased availability or eliminating last-minute price sinking? As objects and experiences can be likely reused within the metaverse, an artifact created as an educational project could gain a second life in the post-educational world – will educational projects become the new stage for experimenting? Most likely, the very boundaries between education and the post-educational world will erode.
  • Be populated by “Content” and “experiences” created and operated by an incredibly wide range of contributors, some of whom are independent individuals, while others might be formally organized groups or commercially focused enterprises. This is the very definition of an Interaction Field, according to Erich Joachimsthaler – an ecosystem where participants derive value from the exchange. With entry barriers dramatically removed, the metaverse will create many such opportunities for exchange. Will students start their own coaching practices? Will NGOs and non-profits enlist student volunteers into solving the world’s biggest problems? Will new associations and industry coalitions emerge, allowing to individuals or companies to find more like-minded thought partners working on similar problems? Will educational companies be run more like networks that product companies?

Discussions about the metaverse can have a polarizing effect. Many of these effects can seem far-away or outlandish, before one realizes that many of these are shifts that are already under way – and offer fertile ground for the emergence of new types of interactions and value exchanges. In a way, education is too central a part of life to be untouched by the metaverse, or what will be the next stage of today’s cyberspace. For a new generation that will experience these newly immersive experience, this will become not a choice but a sine qua non – with the attention of young minds at stake, education and pedagogy will have to rival the attraction of the newly emerging platforms. The good news is that that time around, learning and life, virtual reality and nature will not be stacked against each other – they will be part of one. If you talk to your kids about how the virtual world can be a distraction from learning, wait till they talk to their own kids about daily routines as a distraction from education so immersive, so exciting, that it will draw learners in and leave then always wanting more.

This exciting world already exists. It’s called learning.

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