Summary

• Data & innovation are very much targeted by Education today
• Growth Hacking could and should actually be used by educators to improve their programs and courses
• Growth Hacking applied in Education becomes Hacking Learning: the application of learning processes aiming at accelerating knowledge integration for students. And aiming at optimizing courses towards more soft skills application in projects/initiatives. All of this backed by data analysis and constant feedback

It's been years since Growth Hacking became one of the most searched terms in the field of Marketing, start-ups and entrepreneurial activities. Big companies like start-ups are now screaming out loud to find a "Growth Hacker" without really knowing what it is, which is particularly fun to watch.

Wait, back to basics:

• Let's define "Growth Hacking" as the use of data and simple processes in order to make your company grow as hell thanks to short, fast actions and with little money invested. Growth by all means is... well the goal of Growth Hacking.
• Then you have Growth hacking process, which is kind of based on design thinking. Its goal is to optimize and organize your team so that there's constant ideation, constant testing, rapid product development, and data collection in order to ensure a product-market fit and.... well, obviously, the success of your company.

More and more academies and agencies come out on the stage teaching, particularly interesting Growth tips, the most interesting being, I think, the Dutch academy Growth Tribe. And now things begin to be interesting. Universities like The University of Amsterdam teach students Growth Hacking, and it's not the only one. That's a good thing.

But what if Education, from primary schools to universities, was powered by Growth Hacking?

In a way, it's more and more the case and several elements, currently being used and developed, prove that Growth Hacking can actually work well with learning processes.

A Focus on Data to Improve Learning

The focus on data for Education came in 2011 approximately, under the name Learning Analytics. You probably know this term, it is ?the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of data about learners and their contexts, for purposes of understanding and optimizing learning and the environments in which it occurs?. The original goal? Giving the tools to professors that'll let them ensure that their students learn, that their course content is adapted to students and to make sure the professors can improve it thanks to data. It works as hell for online courses. For in-class environments, it takes maybe a little bit of creativity to collect and analyze data...

Continuous Improvement of Learning as a Factor of Success

If you take a look at some accreditations for business schools, universities, corporate universities etc. like AACSB, EQUIS, EOCCS, you'll understand one thing: the only schools/universities that get to be certified are the ones that demonstrate a focus on the continuous improvement of learning. They need to show that they constantly ask themselves how students are learning and not how professors are teaching. An angle that triggers data-backed decisions to improve course content, syllabus, exams etc.
These two elements show well that...

...Yes, Growth Hacking could be applied to Education. The question now is: Should it be?

I mean, a university, a school isn't a company. Its goal isn't to grow as much as possible.
Let's not think about revenue and let's change growth KPIs to learning growth and innovation growth. More than money (because, yes, we all know that, money rules schools too), the goal of a school is to form future professionals that'll disrupt or succeed on the market, right? The more you help shape great professionals, the best it is for your school right? It ain't that different from the goal of growth hackers, a school should aim at hacking learning. Hacking Learning?
After all, if students can learn and retain more in a shorter amount of time, they could get more out of their time at school as well as have time to experience extracurricular activities where they will learn essential skills which aren't taught in the classroom.

Ok so why should educators use "Hacking Learning"?

Hacking knowledge, Learning Soft Skills

Knowledge is everywhere and most of the time (especially when you're a student) for free. Rather than sticking with programs that are easily doable in less than a month instead of a semester, why not get things exciting a little and telling your students they're going to learn as hell thanks to easy tips?
Growth hacking is also the art of doing more with less. The best example of using it in learning is by looking at Tim Ferriss.

Famous growth hacker, entrepreneur, author and investor, this man learned in no time how to become a chef, a martial art champion, bestselling author etc. For this, he has methods based on efficient, realistic processes that could totally be adapted to Education whether it is about learning how to learn in a particular domain, learning to process projects or else. Learning efficiently is hacking knowledge. Why efficiently? To save time for more important things, learn and apply soft skills in concrete projects, initiatives, innovations, contests. All these skills that will shape students as innovators and successful professionals and human beings.

It's all about creativity

The core of every Growth Hacking structure/ process is always the same: Creativity and Ideation. Based on your observations and previous data analysis, you must come up with ideas to improve what do you. Classrooms or online classrooms are the perfect places to test and observe things while following a syllabus.
Professors can change their course content or class formats as much as they want: from doing a simulation, role-playing games, to classic conferences, the same course can be adapted to many different contexts and formats.

It gives autonomy to professors and lets them focus on pedagogy

UUsing these processes and techniques give professors a complete autonomy on how they'll teach and their syllabi.
Obviously n°1, as their experiments with students are always backed by data, as long as students learn well and show progress and engagement, a professor cannot be criticized or strained to change its program.
Obviously n°2, by putting an emphasis on creativity and in-class/online experimentations, professors focus on pedagogy and innovative ideas. We have tools today to automate whatever isn't pedagogy, from exam creation/grading (TestWe) to campus management etc.

Let's not waste time and focus on what's more important: your students learning and experimenting!

Make the faculty work as a team

Just like it works for companies, Growth Hacking works for faculty and professors. Collaboration is key to improve not just a course but the entire school's learning processes. A whole process that can be adapted to any kind organization. Pretty much based on Design thinking, this process ensures continuous ideation, testing, progress and it is teambuilding!
Moreover, Growth Hacking/ Hacking Learning, according to this process ensures a culture of innovation and experimentation that keeps an institution always at the top of Education's innovation.
Finally, as ideas get ranked according to their feasibility or money needed, you get the better out of nothing --> doing more with less just like less is more.

Offering a competitive advantage to students

Teaching in a Hacking Learning way means also integrating students in the process of improving the course, finding ideas and new ways to learn and practice by asking them feedback and by understanding how they work... By doing this, students inevitably learn the creative processes they'll have to use during their professional activities. Simply put, it gives them a competitive advantage.

What's Peergrade?

Peergrade is a free online platform to facilitate peer feedback sessions with students. Concretely, it allows professors to create and manage assignments that will be reviewed and commented by students between them.

During that feedback session, professors can track all feedback shared between students as well as the progression of their students on a specific subject.

Thanks to an intuitive design and efficient way to improve students' learning experience, Peergrade has been able to attract numerous universities like UCL, Copenhagen University, Copenhagen Business School, Texas A&M University and others.

Although Peergrade is mostly used in and designed for higher education, it is also used in K12.

Peergrading is an alternative type of assessment

In our previous white paper, we already talked about peer grading and showed how efficient it could be for the learning experience. As we try to change the way exams, tests, assignments or assessments are given and taken, we obviously are very interested in alternative assessments such as peer grading.

That is why we first contacted the Peergrade team to understand their product better. We quickly became fans of their work and understood that our two products, TestWe and Peergrade, had a match.

After several introductions and discussions, we decided to team up.

What's the partnership about?

What we figured out was that we could propose our solutions as a package. You may need an e-Assessment solution like TestWe to optimize and digitize your assessment process on a global level, but you'll maybe need more tools to diversify as much as possible your formats of exams. Here, you can get Peergrade with TestWe.

On the other side, you may need Peergrade to test and change toward more alternative assessments, but you may also need a solution to help you manage on a global level the digitization of your assessment process and still use more traditional types of assessment. Here you can get Peergrade and TestWe as a package.

So here you go! If you have more question, simply contact us!

Check everything about Peergrade here

And on their social networks:
Facebook: here
Twitter: here
LinkedIn: here
Medium: here

• Svetlana Meyer is a cognitive science researcher associated with the Psychology and NeuroCognition Laboratory. She is also the scientific manager at Didask.
• Didask is a French startup, of Edtech (obviously), which offers an online learning method that has the particularity of offering a pedagogy anchored in the cognitive sciences."
• We particularly like what they do for the world of Education.

On March 13, 2019, Svetlana Meyer, Scientific Director of Didask, published Teaching Efficiency # 2: Beware of Misperceptions. First, we recommend reading it and even reading their blog DisDonc Didask.

But a term particularly caught our attention. The positioning test. As soon as we read the article, we called them and hosted them as part of our WeTestEd session podcast, especially to learn more about it.

So, what is a positioning test? Simply put, it is a diagnostic test that is provided to the learner before and after a learning cycle. The goal is to know what is the starting point of each learner before entering the learning phase and its point of arrival post phase.

Until then all is well, this kind of test seems to be extremely useful and adapted to a pedagogy that could be described as "agile", or comparable to the Innovation Classroom Don Wettrick.

However, it seems that this test is generally, and strangely, neglected by the community of trainers. Why?

"In this kind of entity, the trainers have two main objectives: on the one hand there is pedagogical effectiveness and on the other hand commitment/ engagement. Their fear is that the positioning test is perceived by the learners as a context of performance evaluation," Svetlana Meyer explains.

"In our opinion, it is not the positioning test that will trigger this feeling of being evaluated, it is rather the context in which it is given; the trainers facing the learner and the language used which can be the trigger. If this test is considered as a simple diagnosis, the learner will never feel threatened, " adds Svetlana Meyer.

Too bad! Especially that this type of test has many benefits. First, it allows you to precisely mark the learning process of each learner and this for two reasons:

• first of all this test requires a cognitive effort to the learner who will have to mobilize knowledge which is potentially already existing and which will thus reinforce the trace in memory associated with this knowledge there
  
• then there is what is called the illusion of control. As long as one has not tested his knowledge, one can have the feeling of being "super strong" on a subject whereas it is only when he will be confronted with a situation where he will have to mobilize knowledge that we will understand that this is not so much the case. Here the positioning test can clarify the learning for the trainers but also, and especially for the learner
  

The positioning test is, therefore, an evaluation model with which trainers and teachers should reconcile themselves with because its contributions to learning seem to be more than beneficial!

The lesson for this test, as for any other type of assessment of a learner (whether professional or student), is that it is important to work on the context more than the evaluation format.

A detail can make a difference. "When we look at the grade for example. We see a lot of debates on the grades, on the forms they should have: do we have to put a number, a colour, an appreciation, etc.? Whereas what matters is its context. If the context in which a grade arrives is competitive, then the student will feel it and adapt to it, " says Svetlana.

"The student will adopt a competitive posture toward others. He will feel his worth judged and will feel the need to protect himself from bad judgments. So all his attention will be captured by this need for protection against judgments rather than on his learning, "adds Svetlana Meyer.

There is much food for thought when we know that the stress of grades and exams is very high among students, especially in higher education, and that it is one of the sources of skills deficit.

This week we are talking to Rémy Challe, the CEO of Edtech France, the new association gathering more and more startups of the French Edtech.

On the menu, the state of Edtech in France and elsewhere, its problems and opportunities for the future. Has Edtech really succeeded in changing Higher Education for the better? What are the inherent problems of education that hinder educational innovation?

Many questions to which Rémy answered through his analysis.

TestWe: So what is the state of Edtech in France?

Rémy Challe: We are at the beginning of something there. 6 months ago I did not really know what it was for various reasons. But there is clearly a growth curve that is emerging. Now, although this growth curve is double-digit in France, when we look at the massive investments in India, China and the United States, you realize we French still have a long way to go.

France is a country of education! We must be able to support our entrepreneurs much more and not just send them to CES in Las Vegas, if not in a few years, the tools we will use will be Chinese, Indian, American etc. That does not mean that they are bad, they are just, I think, less adapted to the system of values ​​of the French education. French Edtech becomes almost a question of sovereignty!

T: What is the French value system? What are we claiming?

R.C: There is a form of universalism, France is also the country of Human Rights. In a very pragmatic way: the protection of data, well, it is not known in the same way in France, China, India etc.

And that, we must claim it, we must protect these values ​​and promote them in France and abroad. I sometimes meet entrepreneurs from the French Edtech who make 100% of their profits abroad. So that's good, it means that they export easily and that the "French touch" is successful, but it's sad at the same time because it means they have difficulties offering their solution in their own country, and that's not normal.

T: What is the feeling of the actors of Education regarding Edtech tools?

R.C: (laughs) Well, there are various feelings. First, here, I would not talk about continuing education/ professional training, because Edtech is widely accepted and there are fewer dogmas. We are dealing with actors who are companies that are going through periods of significant digital transformation, and Edtech is already considered as a solution that one must be armed with to train all members of a company.

When we talk about school in France (ie K-12) it's complex, because there is a market that is a public market. In France, it is not the professors who buy for example, which is not the case in China. And even if they want to buy an innovative and relevant solution to meet their educational needs and those of their students, it is not they who will pay.

You want to sell to a primary school, you have to go to the commune, you want to sell to a college you have to go to the department and for a high school, you have to go to the regional administration. And then the one who decides is not the one who pays, the one who pays may not be the one who will use the solution, and he may pay for someone else to finally use the solution, so you see it's a little nightmarish.

And then there is more dogma. First, there is the argument that education is free while there is always someone who pays in the end, and then there is always a kind of a distrust of the private sector. There is often this vision of entrepreneurs as sharks of finance when in reality it is far from being the case. In Edtech, we find almost exclusively entrepreneurs passionate about Education or people coming from the world of Education who seek to solve real problems. Whatever happens, we do not go on this sector for greedy purposes.

Finally, there is this third silo which is that of Higher Education. Here we find private actors, public actors. Generally, in Higher Ed, there is a general awareness that Edtech could greatly help. This position is explained by several factors. First, there is an appetite for innovation, there is a climate of competition that pushes institutions to innovate. And then there are these 20-year-old students, who use their smartphone during their classes. So the question is not how to ban these tools but rather "the learner that faces me is not the same as one was twenty years ago, so I must adapt. " So there is a change of posture expected but also a change that is inevitable.

Basically, we are moving from a time when the teacher was the only holder of knowledge to a time when knowledge is everywhere and we just need to know how to access relevant information, a time where we must learn how to learn and the teacher plays a determining role there above. The teacher must become ... well, a coach.


TW: What do you think about teacher autonomy?

R.C: There are programs that the teacher has to follow, it's clear, but after all, teachers have a certain pedagogical freedom and you have to have that freedom, through which you can choose your own methods, your own textbooks, and so on.

TW: In the Finnish way? In Finland for example, teachers have total autonomy ...

R.C: So we're not there but besides I do not even think that we should replicate this model in France. Finland is Finland, and then it's a smaller country, the scales are different, the traditions are different. On the other hand, in France, there is still pedagogical freedom. The problem is that it is not at all extended to innovative solutions. So perhaps we should give more freedom to teachers as to their pedagogy, their methods ...

In Higher Education, on the contrary, there is more freedom! In the development of programs, the choice of methods ... that's why it's a space that interests me and that can perhaps by capillarity, disseminate this educational freedom to K-12.

So yes, there is a resistance to change, but as I said earlier, awareness is already there.

T.W: Let's get out of the classroom and talk about Education as a whole and more structurally. There is a crisis of Higher Ed that looms on the horizon, especially in the US and the UK. A financial crisis but also a crisis of knowledge via the skills gap phenomenon. What do you think?

R.C: So first, the situation in France is not quite comparable to the Anglo-Saxon situation. Firstly, because Education is "free" when we talk about universities for example, or costs a few hundred euros.

TW: On the other hand there are also more and more students going into the private sector, like business schools

R.C: That's right, there are these schools of commerce, communication, engineers where the costs are relatively high. To be clear, the cost of a student at university (about 13,000 euros) is about the same as that of a student in a management school.

So for the university, it is the community that pays and it's great, and in the big management schools it is the learners who pay and it's not stupid either.

So yes there is a student debt that exists but it remains very far from American or British cases, so the crisis that can be seen in these regions does not exist in France ...

TW: But can it exist?

R.C: It's a fact, tuition fees have increased significantly in management schools over the last decade, they have almost doubled. And yes to start in life it can be a ball to the foot.

Now there are lots of support programs and alternative programs like apprenticeships where it is the companies that pay for students who are also paid between 1,000 and up to 2,000 net euros per month!

Also, we must also not fall into the cliché of prestigious management schools as the places where we find exclusively rich spoiled brats! There are sometimes more diversities in the grandes écoles than in some lecture halls at the university. Even in the grandes écoles, one can have access to scholarships, one can work alongside his studies, one can borrow from the banks if need be.

While it is true that the costs increase, I do not think they can still go up, contrary to what others think, it would not seem reasonable to propose schools at a 20,000 euros yearly tuition fee.


T.W: And the return on investment remains positive?

R.C: Yes it is still positive, now ... It is not exactly the same either compared to 20 years ago. The more graduates we have, the less value our degree has in away. So hiring wages are probably less efficient than 20 years ago.

But I do not believe that the crisis that you seem to announce with reason will arrive in France. On the other hand, there are points of vigilance, we must be careful, education is not a commodity, at least not like any other, we must not fall into a trap as it can be observed in the United States. or elsewhere.

Teaching and pedagogy are not represented enough in the calculations

Depending on the rankings and knowing only three rankings are considered internationally relevant (THE, QS and Shanghai), the quality of teaching and pedagogic innovation accounts for more or less 30% of a university's overall grade.

This is problematic because:

• today, pedagogic innovation in Higher education has become the most important factor in the success of students, not research. Indeed, proving you have a good quality of teaching means that in the end, students who'll become researchers will have better backgrounds for their projects.
  
• it pushes the universities to invest massively in hiring professors pursuing trendy researches and not necessarily good pedagogic methods. Worse, it pushes tenured and non-tenured professors to produce a highly growing number of papers, researches, articles etc. Putting that much pressure on professors to ensure their status in the university prevents them from spending time with students or on pedagogy. In the end, it means less skilled students and a growing skills gap.

Too many students, too few universities

According to UNESCO, in 2030, more than 400 million students will enter universities compared to less than 99 million in 2000, so that's a more than 400% rise. The problem is that it means we need more and more universities to open or new ways to manage that many students.

See the problem? No? Well.

University rankings are a symbol of elitism. Generally, no one ever looks past the first 150 universities ranked on the list and most of the times, these are all from developed countries (mainly the US, China and the UK).

Knowing that most of the young generation is coming from Africa, the Middle East or South America or Asia, these rankings don't help existing institutions in these continents even if lots of them are incredibly innovative or give effective learning programs.

• It pushes these universities to adopt elitist measures to try to resemble universities from the ?upper class club?
  
• It doesn't provide a real opportunity for students to envision a future they'd like to reach if, for example, they don't have the means to get to American expensive institutions or if they just don't want to travel thousands of kilometres to study abroad

Rankings as they are, propose a grim future. With the growing population going to universities, does it mean some will have to study through online learning only and via poorly engaging MOOCs while the richest more lucky ones will have the chance to access physically to the ?best? campuses?

It shouldn't be like that.

These rankings aren't appealing to students

?I'd be curious to hear if one student ever found his university good, or even decided to apply for a university, according to its ranking,? says Victor Wacrenier, CEO and co-founder at Appscho, a French startup that provides a campus management app.

It is true that students consider these rankings as essential in the decision-making process, according to a QS survey, 70% said so. But the main reason is that rankings seem to be indicators of employability. It stays elitist.

According to this survey, students are either over-relying on universities rankings, either need more metrics to understand what university can be the best for what they're searching for.

There is currently a rethinking of universities' values as institutions providing skills and a culture of learning rather than access to jobs. ?It is a shift toward Lifelong learning? as says Patrice Houdayer, Vice-Dean at Skema business school. Rankings should thus adapt to these new values and propose appropriate guidings for a new generation of learners that have completely different expectations of their experience in universities and after.

In Conclusion, rather than spending massive amounts of money to go up or stay up in the rankings, universities should adopt another strategy and invest in pedagogy and the campus experience to make sure students are trained enough for having a life long learning discipline, skills for their future career. Naturally, these students will take care of the reputation of the school.

Rankings are needed though, but they must take into account much more variables like eco-friendly standards, pedagogic standards, innovation standards or campus experience standards. Accreditations are already on the move, so should rankings.

We Are Peers is one of the Edtech startups currently in vogue in France. It must be said that they propose an innovative, effective and damn promising solution.

What are they doing ? They develop Peer Learning within companies, in business schools and universities. They do this by hosting live sessions of Peer Learning and by offering a platform to manage peer learning projects, like a sort of LMS.

TestWe: In your opinion, which are the most innovative between companies and institutions of Higher Education?

Diane: It depends! What I can say is that with the companies it goes much faster, it is generally them who contact us to integrate the Peer Learning as quickly as possible. While with schools, it is we who must put ourselves in a position of proactive research and we must do a real job of education to reassure them in the benefits of our methods. But that's also why we started on these two very different profiles.

T: Do you have the same observation regarding the results of your projects with clients? That is, do you get positive results earlier in the businesses or in the educational institutions?

D: Well the results are observable after a single session. So in this case it's the same for companies as for schools.

T: 3 advantages and 3 disadvantages of Peer Learning?

D: So concerning the benefits I would say that:

• it's a pedagogy that is very empowering

• it greatly favors the engagement of learners
• there is a knowledge acquisition that seems to be much more effective than with other pedagogic methods

The inconvenients :

• it's very technical and it requires a whole lot of organization
• it takes a lot of energy in the animation of the sessions, you always have to keep up the pace
• you have to be able to let go and know how to underpin valuable information from learners

T: Should peer learning, in your opinion, replace a more traditional form of pedagogy like lecturing?

D: No I do not think so, I'd rather say it should be complementary. We can say what we want, the lecturing remains a method that can be very, very effective!

T: Let's talk about MOOCs. I do not know if you could see a bit of the disco on this subject right now, but overall we wonder if the MOOCs are a failed promise, a success ... What do you think?

D: MOOCs are an innovation among others. For me it brings accessibility, but it does not change the course pedagogy. Moreover, the average completion rate is not great, around 13%. Finally, generally, MOOCs are very effective but only for a minority of people who are usually the most "educated". So yes, it is an excellent innovation but must remain complementary to a more global educational strategy.

T: Are you aware of other uses of Peer Learning, observations about its effectiveness, elsewhere?

D: Yes! It must be known that this pedagogy is not new. The first, it seems to me, is the mutual class. This type of class allows children to learn to read and write in less than 3 years versus 5 years for traditional classes. But for ideological reasons this method was abandoned, especially because it called into question the place and authority of the teacher. Today some educators put the mutual class up to date like Vincent Faillet.

T: Could you tell us about a success story that marked you with We Are Peers?

D: Yes! You have to know that every success is the result of a collective work. Now for me a success story would be that of the course we created at EM Lyon Business School, which is still in progress. It is self-managed by the students and passed on to each other, ie the students of one session become the facilitators, the facilitators of the next. Some students have even become Peer Learning session facilitators in business. It was their internship or even their first job! I am thinking in particular of one of them who became part-time facilitator in a company of which he was a minority shareholder although still a student. He has facilitated sessions with more than 50 people, which has clearly offered him the opportunity to learn and proactively illustrate his skills, it is an example of empowerment! Beyond that, he also accompanied other courses at EM Lyon ?

T: What do you do when a student is simply not engaged nor excited by the peer learning session? Does it happen often?

D: Yes it happens sometimes, inevitably. But it's absolutely not a problem. First, we try to figure out if this student might kill the vibe of the group. So basically we just go and see them talk and tell them? Are you feeling ok with this? If not what's the problem? And you know this course isn't mandatory so if you don't want to come back, please do. In most cases, we try to motivate them in other ways and by explaining them more clearly what the exercises are about. But you know sometimes students feel simply too disrupted and you just have to let them go.

To be sure everyone wants to be part of this course, we ask students to prepare a cover letter to show their interest in that type of learning experiment... And it's quite effective!

T: What do you think about the skills gap impacting Higher Education? Do you think it's real? If so, then what's the reason of this skills gap according to you?

D: Obviously it exists and I think it's because of the slowness of the educational system. It takes too much time to renew pedagogical programs and curricula. Take for example entrepreneurship. Ok, today you have many programs and courses of entrepreneurship but it's not enough. We need more focus on data and growth techniques, we need to teach students pragmatic activities in a way that facilitates self-renewal. However, it's changing and schools are aware of this. The thing is, students could learn much faster rather than spending two years on fundamentals.

T: What's your advice for Higher Education?

D: Alright I'll answer to that question in four points:

• Stop ignoring pedagogic innovations and models that work like Vincent Faillet's. Schools should spot these pedagogic innovations and test them through pilots programs. It's the case in Finland for example.
• Change the classes environment and rooms' designs to make it more adapted for engaging sessions.
• Then, I think it's worth wondering why Higher education exists and what are its values and goals today.
• Finally, it would be interesting to work and teach around grand themes. It's what we call phenomenal education, it's very much used in Finland now, and the goal is to teach several subjects (geography, math, history, economics, neuroscience etc.) through one theme, one set in an interdisciplinary way.

More and more business schools are trying the We Are Peers experience, such as Rennes Business School or more recently Grenoble School of Management on a geopolitical theme. We Are Peers is a figurehead of Edtech and Transformation and we recommend you to take a look at what they do.

You can follow WAP on Twitter
Or follow Diane

Basically, it's going to be podcasts and videos in an attempt to give you great, really great content to listen to or to watch.

WeTestEd Podcasts

Every week or so we're going to interview actors of Education (students, professors, administrators, entrepreneurs, researchers) to talk about projects, innovation and about the state of education today and what we should change.

The goal here is to offer a critical view of Education and go deeper than simply introducing people and their projects/research.

The first episode is coming out very soon!

WeTestEd Videos

That's the real challenge here. At TestWe we're particularly fans of Vox videos. We're fans of how they make it easy to understand complex subjects. We decided to try to do the same.

We're going to analyze Education, the problems of its system, its new pedagogies and methods with the help of experts we're going to interview!

The challenge here is to make the complex world of Education understandable for students as for professors and entrepreneurs.

We hope you'll like it, we're going to do some in French, other in English, but always with subtitles! Be ready, it's coming soon!

So what are the promising types of assessments for 2019?

Self-Assessment/ Peer Grading

Why? Because empowering learners by giving them the opportunity to self assess their work or assess their peers' work is greatly helpful at triggering engagement! You simply make the assessment become a whole part of the learning process.

You should definitely take a look at We Are Peers, the French provider of collaborative assessment system and peer learning management system. Or for more inspiration, have a look at what Don Wettrick has done with his students through his Innovation Classroom!

Assess by Teaching

Why? Because studies show that students put in the place of their professor, that is, making themselves the provider of knowledge, help them to better learn.

What you can assess here is the precision, efficiency and concision of a student's presentation to his peers as well as how well others have understood one subject. This formative assessment encourages communication between students and to that, we can only say ?YES?.

Quizzes

Why? Because Quizzes are a perfect formative assessment that can be multiplied throughout the year, which gives the opportunity to have access to data on students' learning.

Moreover, quizzes are very engaging for learners and bring interactivity and entertainment to the class. A very good example of a working solution is Wooclap. This Belgian startup makes smartphones great learning tools! A professor creates quizzes that will be sent to students' smartphones during the class. The result is that it has been proved that it helped students facilitate long term memory.

Roleplay

Why? These are the most engaging assessments through which learners impersonate a situation to show what they have learned? in action! Concretely, it's learning by doing. Thus, it gives an on-the-spot look at how much learners developed their skills. Here's a study on the benefits of roleplay assessments!

Pecha Kucha

Why? Pecha Kucha is a Japanese method of presentation in which you must present 20 slides while spending not more than 20 seconds per slide. Efficiency, being straight-to-the-point, Pecha Kucha are assessments that can put under the spotlight skills that are very much required on the job market today. Here's our study of it!

eAssessments

Why? Because it's the most hybrid solution for assessments. Because it works with alternative assessments, it works with standardized assessments and it provides data on the learning process, indicating professors what to do to improve their pedagogy and better adapt their assessment/learning experience. Plus, eAssessments provide flexibility to professors who can manage their exams as well as learners who can take their exam on their own device, anywhere or anytime. TestWe? well? is a good example ;)

?Students are evaluated on skills that don't match what most of the employers need,? says Keith Pond, ?and there are ways to change that, notably by changing the way we assess students.?

?I'm trying the Pecha Kucha method of presentation, did you hear about that??

Pecha Kucha is a Japanese method of presentation in which you must present 20 slides while spending not more than 20 seconds per slide. This method, in fact, is full of learning opportunities for students. Here's how.

1. It engages students in their presentation

"Obviously, students have to be concise in their arguments and learn by themselves how to convey people in a limited amount of time," says Keith Pond. Precision and efficiency are of great value. PechaKucha, more than any other traditional methods of presentation, engages the student in his project.

Through his work, students will have to understand the concepts and information they'll have to communicate, repeat many times to ensure a clear flow of information and eloquence. This work and repetition are engaging, and engagement is great to ensure long-term memory, that is, learning.

2. Easy to grade, easy to communicate

Giving a grade on presentations like these is not difficult. Variables are here. Better, inviting students to peer grading can be a great opportunity for learning. Indeed, it has been shown that peer grading could trigger active learning more easily.

Moreover, it is also very easy for students and professors to communicate with each other on presentations and what they understood from it. It is thus a great opportunity to engage everyone to communicate, get feedback on practical points.

2. It develops pragmatic skills that will help them professionally

Finally, Pecha Kucha is a great assessment model to test skills that are most needed in the job market. Knowing how to communicate clearly and efficiently is one of the most demanded soft skills today. Indeed, according to Dr Poonam Madar, a lecturer at the University of West London, Pecha Kucha is an assessment, a learning tool and a great way to prepare students for their future jobs. A three in one method that just can't be neglected!

According to Keith Pond, ?you can address different elements skills with different sorts of assessments, rather than expecting undergraduates to know just how to write an essay. You've got to train them through these elements,? and that is how they acquire skills that will greatly help them in the job market.

We posted an article last week, talking about the rise of hybrid jobs on the market and its impacts on higher education. Have a look at this chart from Burning glass technologies and you'll understand.

Here you go.

Obviously, the impacts that hybrid jobs will have on higher education are many and changes are needed in terms of learning/ pedagogy, of internal organizations. Basically, as Joseph E. Aoun writes, "If the new jobs that are emerging are increasingly hybrid, then the programs of study may need to become hybridized as well."

Let's dive a bit deeper into how a university or a school could prepare its students for these new kinds of jobs.

1. Propose projects and learning paths that aren't siloed

Although it is already changing today, learning paths are still very much siloed. If you're a student in History, marketing, finance, biology, you won't be able to learn or use knowledge from other fields to discover and propose solutions to problematics.

In fact, as Joseph E. Aoun explains in his article, it is much more enriching to base learning on problematics rather than on a defined field because it is the way students are going to be confronted to different kinds of situations in the real world.

Having access to one particular kind of knowledge isn't a problem anymore, knowledge is available almost for free at any time, anywhere. Thus, it is about using different kinds of knowledge to solve problems. This is one of several skills that are at the core of hybrid jobs.

A good example of a structural and pedagogical transformation, from siloed to hybrid education, is Finland. From their youngest age, students don't learn subjects, they don't take courses, rather, they take part in projects around themes and problematics.

2. Insufflate a culture of a growth mindset

As Jennifer Gonzalez writes, ?most teachers know that one of the best things we can do for our students is to help them develop a growth mindset, the belief that they can get smarter through effort. But many teachers are at a loss for what exactly they should do to promote this mindset.?

The growth mindset is the idea that the brain has the ability to change throughout your life, writes Katie Brohawn. Already very popular in the entrepreneurial community through expressions like every mistake is an opportunity to learn, it is still hardly applied to higher education where performance is perceived by students as the end-goal over learning.

Teaching a growth mindset to students can have positive impacts on them in terms of methodology, engagement and retention. Gauthier Lebbe, Inbound Marketing Manager at Wooclap, a Belgium startup that makes smartphone engaging learning tools, proposes 5 ways to help students develop a growth mindset.

3. Propose Innovation Class

We previously talked about Don Wettrick's Innovation Class and the opportunities it offered for higher education.

• Innovation classes help students to engage a lot more with the learning process.
• They help them develop a high curiosity for problematics they want to solve.
• They also help them develop a high expertise in a short time that is quite remarkable. They help them use tech tools and new practices to attain their goals.
• Finally, they help students to work together on projects and manage goals they set themselves.

Innovation classes match 100% with what is needed today on the labour market and in new functions such as hybrid jobs.

4. The Growth Tribe model

Growth tribe is the first European academy of growth hacking based in Amsterdam. More than growth hacking, the academy trains people from all ages to master a mindset that will them adapt fast to many kinds of hybrid jobs.

Seeing the rapid growth of this academy in such little time (2 years), it is interesting to analyze its case and extract ideas and structures that could be applied to higher education institutions.

What works as hell with Growth tribe is their project based learning pedagogy. The academy is contacted by companies (generally large companies) who need to optimize their processes, solve problems or attain certain goals. Thus, learners form teams and apply immediately what they learn through conferences and discussions.

What's more interesting in the Growth Tribe's model is the culture of data, feedback and optimization learners need to integrate in order to be able to benchmark their learning or adapt to those many situations where they'll have to solve companies' problems.

An academy like Growth tribe not only provides its learners with a large panel of skills, it ensures the companies with which it works that its ?students? have a high mastery of these skills and are adaptable to many complex situations. Many find full-time jobs in these companies afterwards (or get promoted in case of a professional formation).

5. Hybridize the administration of the institution

Finally, going back to the argument of Joseph E. Adoun about the need for institutions to hybridize their learning programs, we can go even further. Institutions can change their own internal process and organization to entertain a continuous improvement of their learning programs and a perfect match between what their students learn and the current and future needs of the market.

It means building teams of administrators, like a growth team, that could benchmark the market and latest innovations in order to adapt the curriculums accordingly. It means also training its faculty and administrators to get the skills needed to help students evolve and learn quickly. This a basic of hybrid functions.

We'll go deeper into that question in our next post. Keep in touch!

You probably have this time problem right? Well, take a piece of paper, draw a line in the middle, one column for high added values activities, one for lows and write. Once you've done that, find some tools that might help you optimize and automate all these low added value tasks. AHH! We did that for you. Guys, here are 3 tools that will do the job no question asked.

1. Slack: Ease communication, ease your day, save time

Communication between professors and administrators can be hard. Communication between professors and students can be also quite messy. Generally, all of them happen on one messy platform, the university's email platform. Clearing this up is thus a priority. Slack is the best friend here. Originally, the tool was labelled the startupers way of communicating. Now, it's an awesome giant com' tool that could be used by any kind of group. You can automate message, separate groups via channels, ensure private conversations, set up notifications in a cool and user-friendly environment.

2. Sense: Optimize marking and feedback

Sense is a very interesting company with quite amazing technology. Basically, the solution analyzes all the assessments you have received and detects patterns out of them. With these patterns, Sense gives you several profiles of answer that will represent faithfully a whole lot of copies. Say you have 7 profiles, you'll give feedback on 7 types of personas rather than thousands. Now, you say thank you and we say no worries.

3. Domoscio: Automate your data visualisation reports

BigData and adaptive learning seem to be at their debut in Higher education. Nevertheless, more and more institutions understand their importance. Generally, when we interview schools and ask about it, they say? Yes, but it's a hassle.? Understandable, collecting data manually, giving it a sense and interpret it in order to improve learning is a formidable, hard task. That's why there's Domoscio. Basically, they automate data collection and update data visualization reports. They offer more than that, check them out!

TestWe in fourth?

TestWe can also help you at automating grading, optimizing exam creation and getting data out of them to improve learning. But that's for another time?

It is a tough thing to do for deans although the reward is more than interesting. It's all about having efficient processes.

Although it's a hard time for faculty to adapt and play the game collectively, it is an even harder time for accreditation managers.

Indeed, we asked more than sixty accreditation managers what were their most annoying pain points. 83,3% of them told us their most difficult phase of accreditation was the implementation of processes and data collection phase.

Two problems stood out: 37% said getting everyone on the process to be involved was their biggest challenge. 51% said data collection techniques were the one challenge that made their day? well, not a good day.

In the meantime, it is important to remind that this function is still significantly new in universities' structures. With tech coming into the game and the growing importance of reputation internationally, accreditation managers will see their job greatly evolve through the coming years.

How? How can they get through these pain points and ensure AoL? We asked these questions to Keith Pond and Stephanie Lambert, director and administrator at EOCCS, a promising and innovative accreditation and a part of the EFMD group.

The institution's brand strategist

Accreditation managers have access to data. A lot of data. They collect, centralize, simplify the visualization of these data for directors.

They have a viewpoint on everything. ?Having a lot of data is great, but what do you do with it?? says Keith Pond, ?they must wonder how do they maintain data, how to use it in management decisions.?

And that's where the role of accreditation managers is getting very much exciting. They could be seen as the spearhead, the strategic brain of an institution.

?Higher education is becoming more and more like a market. Thus, the accreditation manager has got to be very strategic with accreditation. He's the one who knows how to show that university in its best light.?

Opting for one accreditation or another, thus, has a concrete significance. Whether you want to be part of the elite with the triple crown, or whether you want to show you are innovative and provide online courses with EOCCS, or whether you want to show your deep attachment with ethics with PRME and learning with ABCSP.

According to Keith Pond, in the end, it's the whole university's identity and image depend on what the accreditation manager thinks could be smart to do. More than just the accreditation, "data collected by managers are now used for the school's marketing."

More implication on the learning experience

The need for measurement, for qualitative and quantitative data on the learning experience (reflected by students surveys, team excellence frameworks or teaching processes) are at the heart of Assurance of Learning (AoL).

AoL is a process and a methodology for continuous improvement in learning, it is also an indicator of how well you do with your students. There, an accreditation manager will be more and more important and implicated in the "what you do with data. That's what an EQUIS panel will ask you when they come to your school," Pond adds.

"For EQUIS, accreditation managers are responsible for proposing ways to use data in order to show improvements in the learning experience."

"So definitely, the accreditation manager is going to become a far more important role in those institutions that want the reputation and that want to recruit students from outside of their local area," Keith pond affirms.

Simply put, a lot of schools are going to need to put this position at the heart of their decision making, their pedagogical and their marketing strategy.

Nevertheless, this position still faces a problem of recognition in schools. "Accreditation managers are far far more important than they ever used to be, but I'm not sure if universities are very good at seeing academics and administrators on the same level. You have academics and then there are administrators," Pond says.

In the survey, we conducted with sixty accreditation managers, one of the issues that made difficult data collection and interpretation was that it was hard for them to get everyone on the same page and get help the right data from everyone.


The game-changer

In conclusion, the ever-evolving position of accreditation manager is going to get more importance in schools' structures. It is in the interests of these schools to help them facilitate the decision-making, the analysis and the use of learning data for AoL.

Innovation and tech can play a role in it. That is one of the visions of EOCCS. More innovative initiatives from schools help at two things: improve learning and ease decision-making.

Hence the deep attachment of this one-of-a-kind accreditation that provides schools with strategies and guidance to achieve this goal.

This is where tech tools can help, not by trying to replace pedagogy and trigger the "dark version of a tech-based Education," as Keith Pond says, but by helping academics and administrators like accreditation managers to improve the learning experience.

In the case of the latter, it would mean save him time to ease the data collection, letting him more time to focus on the big challenge: "what to do with data."

If you're an accreditation manager and feel sometimes in difficult times with your task, fear not, your voyage is full of promises and excitement.

She views some technology advances as tools to run towards and others to avoid. She sees a near future of faculty working collaborative across expertise areas to provide a high-quality student experience and the integration of edtech tools such as learning analytics and VR immersive environments in the classroom.

Dr. Palmer believes colleges and universities will need to differentiate what experiences they are providing to students: creating new knowledge/research, preparing individuals for jobs, and/or building well-rounded global citizens.

Education is changing fast and the consequences of this change can already be felt today.

Boom!

It's quite cliché I know but still, it's true and it's also a punchy intro. Apart from AI making its way into professors lives, apart from Edtech tools making their way into professors, apart" OK! Apart from all that, the whole job of teaching whether we talk about primary, secondary or higher education will completely change. Due to technology development but also due to the change of generation of students to whom professors must adapt, as Karen Gross writes in Thrive Global.

According to these transformations, what will change for teachers in Higher education" How will it change" What needs to be done" We asked Dr Kristin Palmer, Director of Online Programs at the University of Virginia (UVA).

The breaks in the system
"There are several breaks in the system that will be the big triggering of a change in teaching in Higher education," says Kristin Palmer. Institutions will shut down, students not finding jobs after having completed their master degree, a growing brain drains from Asian universities (notably South Korea, China and Japan). Indeed, it is estimated that more than 500 000 international students will be studying in China in 2020 (the country is already second in terms of international students getting a degree there behind the US). This general context has 3 consequences that schools have to take into account. "There is this argument that Higher education has three disparate goals" affirms Dr Palmer, "creating new knowledge, creating well-rounded individuals and creating people that can do jobs".

The thing is those goals aren't always interlocking well with one another. "It would be great for institutions to differentiate more upfront what goal they're after". By not declaring what speciality a school is focusing on, everything becomes general and because today, the majority of schools declare ensuring a holistic experience, mixing the three goals, which is much more difficult to ensure although possible, 1) students can't find themselves a path on the professional market and 2) many schools will have to shut down.

Talking with Dr Palmer is enriching. Her views are critical, well thought as well as optimistic. Her knowledge and vision of tomorrow's Education and tomorrow's teaching, although coming from an American person, can be greatly inspiring for educators in other countries. Really.

Beautiful, vigorous athletes. But there's this thing, we don't really understand why but their trainers give them these weird shoes to train. Ski shoes. They tell them to run faster than Usain Bolt with these. Quite hard to do right?

Well, this is the problem with Education today. Many things have changed and innovation changes the style of Education but students still have these ski shoes, represented by paper-based exams. And consequences are many.

Apart from being a hassle for professors in terms of logistics and academic data management (in this I mean getting all the data compiled and visualized in one place), assessments and grades have more concerning impacts on students and learning.

According to some studies, due to social pressure and the need to get good grades to get higher-paying jobs, students tend to develop highly pressuring anxiousness and tend to focus only on their grades which, according to a study, tends to prioritize memorization over learning.

Worse, they tend to choose the easy path, that is, a diploma where they could get better grades and chances to find a job in the end. No more interest for real learning, for building expertise on what they love. And we push them to act like it.

Nice.

Thus we have a deeper problem here. There is no connection between learning and grades (and assessments). To answer this problem, new methods of assessments have been developed. Among these methods is the use of other forms of grading and assessment methods like engaging assessments, mastery-based learning or self-assessment teaching.

These innovative methods are invading the world of Education and are proven to be effective.

However, grades and assessments as we know them won't get out of the Higher education's horizon soon and it's not a bad thing.

Why they won't get out?

Simply because grading, in all its forms, helps to understand the competencies and masteries of a student on the labor market. That, we know.

Still, because there's a gap between learning and grades, the goal should be not to erase them, but rather to unite them.

We're getting there.

While new ways to grade and assess are rising and growing in importance, we still need an environment to make sense out of it, to manage these grades and integrate them into the learning process in order to help educators analyze them and improve the learning experience.

Hence, e-Assessments. These solutions are not new, on the contrary, they're quite ancient. They help you digitize your assessment processes, they optimize grading time, they propose secure environments.

Addressing these issues is interesting but e-Assessments are not really solving the problem and grew to be considered a slow and quite a crowded market?

It needs a little evolution.

Because e-Assessment in its core has everything to be that platform to manage to learn with grading, to manage the learning experience and keep an eye on competencies acquisition by students.

It lets professors manage competencies per test, lets them optimize their grading, manage their tests schedules.

Add to it scalable data visualization (student, group of students, class, program etc.) and that is how you make e-Assessment a tool to focus on learning using grades.

Add some spices, bring up tools to automatically give advice to students on their learning based on the grades they had.

Finally, make it adaptable to any kind of assessments, even self-assessments, and you have a platform adapted to today's students.

In France, there are debates about whether a digital education is relevant, whether tech in school is only a matter of "trendy thing". It is true that Education shouldn't be about tech.

Nevertheless, giving the chance to better educate and better managing learning through tech, now that's unavoidable!

That's a fact, according to our study on a hundred school deans and directors, 50% said digitizing their processes was unavoidable, 50% said it was urgent. 75% said using new assessment techniques was on their agenda, adding data management as a criterion they need to improve for learning.

e-Assessment is evolving and shows the opportunity to solve the grade/learning issue and give the right shoes to students in order to let them break records. We just need to give it a look and give it a try.

What do you think? What's your solution to solve the grading/learning issue?

Hey! Take a look at our new white paper on the problems with assessments and grading, we went deeper and analyzed the new ways to grade and assess students!

Summer is about relaxing, of course. It's also a great moment to get inspired for Back-to-school and fill yourself with ideas you'll use to innovate in your pedagogy. You know, be prepared to impress them like never before.

For this purpose, we found for you some great learning content and blogs you should follow to get that most wanted inspiration. Some are directly related to Education some are not.

We selected them because of their format, because of the content they offer and the ideas they share.

Here we go!

Nerdwriter

This is Evan Puschak, the Nerdwriter. He does magnificent video essays on several subjects going from political and economic analysis to film and art analysis.

His videos became so popular that his editing style influenced many, many, many Youtube essayists..

Apart from delivering interesting learning content on so many subjects, Puschak is inspiring for a teacher who wants to innovate and propose other formats of assignments or projects to his students.

We wrote here a study on video essays and how it is a powerful tool for Education.

Don Wettrick's StartEdUp Innovation

Now, this is Don Wettrick. His pedagogical approach is totally innovating, disrupting, incredible.

Wettrick is proposing very promising methods of assessments, grading and students' self-development. So much that it turns Education upside down.

You must follow his blog here and vlog here and here.

We wrote another study about his methods, notably the ROTH Ira process he uses with his students that kind of resembles Growth hacking.

Believe us when we say this man helps students exploit their full potential, master skills and become experts, activists or entrepreneurs in various domains.

It's just impressive and inspiring. There's nothing better for teachers than watching examples like this.

Cult of Pedagogy

This blog is like a cave full of treasures. Founder and Editor in Chief of the blog Jennifer Gonzalez (that' her below) gives with her co-authors passionate and resourceful insights and interviews on Education's most interesting innovation as its most alarming issues.

Jennifer Gonzalez is a gem for every teacher, education innovator or student who wants to go further, to know more about what's going on in the alternative side of Education.

Her interviews gather true entrepreneurs of learning who experiment learning techniques with their students and met success. Gonzalez's (and the other writers of this blog of course) interviews and reports will inspire you to act as soon as possible. Simple, just subscribe to Cult of Pedagogy.

Tim Ferriss

Tim Ferriss is kind of a growth hacker, master of processing things in order to accelerate learning.

To summarize his accomplishments, apart from launching successful businesses and investing, he wrote several bestseller books and became a Chinese kickboxing champion, among other things, using accelerated learning techniques.

We really recommend you to follow his blog, you will find interesting methods you could try to implement with your students.

Accelerated learning is an incredible domain that everyone should study.

Vox and Vox - Borders

Vox videos and blog offer a superb analysis of current affairs and many diverse subjects (like the (Mostly) true story of hobo graffiti you will definitely learn something great here). Vox is a media that investigate a lot and that try to go deeper than the rest.

The Vox - Borders subchannel is (for us) even more interesting as the Emmy-nominated journalist Johnny Harris (below, swimming between Haïti and the Dominican Republic) goes at borders between two countries and analyses the geopolitical situation (cultural, social, economic, etc.) and its impact on the culture and the day-to-day life of people.

This learning content is a resource and a blog you should use to try to innovate or to propose new sources of knowledge and discussion in class with students, as well as new formats of assignments and group projects.

There are many other content and resources you should take a look at, but these ones just slapped us in the face. We leave you pleasure to take a look at them and enjoy this late Summer period.

Learning analytics is still in the air tonight. I previously delivered a report on Learning analytics and the infinite opportunities it offered to the world of Education. If you still have difficulty to understand what it is or how it works, I invite you to have a look at this document. It might help you!

Learning analytics is a vast, vast area in which we find very different tools accomplishing very different tasks. Still, they can be considered as Learning analytics solutions.

Let's remind ourselves that Learning analytics is the application of data collection, analytics, measurement and reporting to Education with the goal of improving and optimizing learning and learning environment for students.

I'd like to stress the word "optimizing" because this is the final goal of this sort of solutions: making teachers' lives easier to help focus on what matters the most, students and learning improvement.

So here's the list of 5 Edtech-Learning analytics-tools that will greatly optimize your workload and in the end, help students progress.

1. Yet analytics

Yet Analytics is in some sort one of the most complete Learning Record Store/ Data visualization tools on the market. Using xAPI to develop its platform, Yet provide a whole lot of different visual analytics to help you improve your learning content and help your students learn as well as possible.

• Yet provides insightful analytics on talent development, role readiness and career pathing


• It provides rich engagement analytics through different learning ecosystems


• It provides precise predictive analytics solutions

2. Wooclap

I previously introduced Wooclap in this post. The audience response system app is one of the best tool to improve in-class students' engagement. The Belgian startup proved they could greatly improve students' learning via their playful system of in-class quizzes app. All thanks to students' smartphones. The fact of the matter is that this app is also a Learning analytics tool. Why?

• They provide analytics to professors. Indeed, they can easily check who responded to what and how much time they took to answer.


• They provide a feedback wall so that students can communicate (during the course and after) to their professors and tell them what part of the course was difficult to understand, or which part was great etc. Thus, it's a great qualitative data provider.

3. Bright Bytes

• Their analytics tool lets you evaluate how teachers and students use technology for learning.


• It studies the availability of devices and Internet access throughout the school and at home.


• It measures the skill levels of teachers and students with multimedia.


• It evaluates the school culture, professional development, and technology needs across the organization.
  
  Part of 2018's learning analytics tools watchlist, BrightBytes is a great solution to match your needs with the tools you use.

4. Clever

Clever is one the US most growing startup in Edtech right now. Providing a single sign-on tool to students and teachers in order to navigate between all software and learning resources (among other products), Clever recently launched Goals.

First, Goals tool lets teachers set objectives for each of their students like activities to do, resources to use and so on. Then, it lets professors track the progress of their students with accuracy (students can follow their progress too).

Although data analytics with Clever don't go as far as Yet analytics, for example, it is still a very interesting solution to assist students in their learning process and to check their personal engagement with learning resources.

5. Knewton

Knewton is an impressive US startup providing a platform that aims at facilitating adaptive learning through data analysis.

By analyzing real-time performance data of students, Knewton Alta, its higher ed solution, helps professors adapt their courses to each of their students and track their progress. Knewton provides also its own verified online courses that will automatically adapt to students' progress.

Finally, Knewton provides a complete Learning analytics solution for enterprises, focusing on the best data and insights to help educators adapt and improve their content according to learners' needs. Knewton is already quite famous, but their continuous improvement is just fantastic.

More and more universities (ex: Yale, Columbia) in the US are dropping standardized tests as a requirement in students' applications, making them optional. The reason is those top US universities until today had very low acceptance rates while students complained about the costs of required standardized tests like ACT or SAT. The results were that although few students (fewer than 10% of applicants) were admitted into the universities of their choice, many others just spent money on being refused in the end. Without entering higher education, learners are thus already spitting money.

Nevertheless, there's a deeper problem to that. One test, or even a few tests, should absolutely not rule them all. As James G. Nondorf, UChicago's dean of admissions and financial aid told the Washington Post, "Testing is not the be-all and end-all". Indeed, when we think of these types of tests, one word comes out: scary. One test should not be able to determine the whole future of a learner.

The Problems of Standardized tests

Exam phobia is a real thing everywhere in the world. The thing is that scaring students is not the best way to help them prove they deserve to be admitted in the university of their choice, universities may miss the best students because of a simple test and that is unfortunate.

Making standardized tests optional and prioritizing more diversified tests, continuous assessments and skill tracking show that, according to universities, assessments are a key element in adaptive learning, something we just did not think of up until today (well at TestWe we did of course). More than performance, they focus on integrating assessments in the learning process.

e-Exams are an opportunity to better assess students

While standardized tests are made optional, asking ourselves how we could make exams less scary and more able to spot "golden brains" from every background is the right thing to do.

But pushing this idea further is also crucial. It's time to make exams more than just performance indicators. It's time to give exams the tools we need to better follow students, the way they learn and how we can better help them reach their goals. Better assessments benefit everyone and encourage active learning. And for this, e-Exams are the answer. By giving professors the way to facilitate their insights, by optimizing their time to improve their learning content (exam creation/ exam grading), e-Exams help them get what matters in assessments: how a student is doing and what could professors improve. Concerning standardized admission tests, e-Exams are also very useful and for certain reasons:

• Because they drastically reduce logistics, creation & grading time, e-Exams reduce the costs of assessment, reducing in the end students' spendings


• Grading automation or easy grading tools accelerate admission processes


• The secure environment provided by e-Exam solutions offer more flexibility to applicants that can stay at home while taking the assessments

Learn more about e-Exams here.

So: the end of standardized tests?

Making standardized tests optional for more flexible, accurate and adapted tests that show more a student's skills is making more top education opened to students from many backgrounds and giving them equal chance to develop their thirst for knowledge and skills.

But wait! It doesn't mean we should stop standardized tests, it's more about rethinking them. Because, anyway, tests like ACT or SAT are "too big to fail". Nevertheless, there is definitely a need to lower their importance, lowering thus extreme stress rates from applicants.

Assessments are like a construction site. We understood the problems it represented and, right now, many interesting opportunities, like e-Exams, are popping up. We are slowly integrating tests into the learning process, making them less and less standardized, more and more adapted.

So is it the end of standardized tests? It's not the end, it's not even the beginning of the end. But perhaps the end of the beginning.

• They want data-backed (quantitative & qualitative) decisions
• Rapid execution and testing
• Constant feedback
• A focus on how students learn
• A culture of innovation

You probably know that the goal of getting accredited is to open a loop of continuous improvement that you'll be able to close and continue to improve if the committees of the accreditation decide that you nailed it. What they want to you to do is to ensure them that students are learning well. That's Assurance of Learning (AoL).

As the process of accreditation is tough!


AACSB is first about reading and understanding it

Understanding the organization, its values and processes are not that hard. There's a whole library of documents that just wait to be read. Nevertheless, it's complicated to understand but it's the best thing to do before applying to the accreditation.

It is about integrating EVERYONE in the process

Often, the complexity of the accreditation process pushes accreditation and school managers to isolate themselves in a high tower trying to sort out a way of getting things done. First and definitive mistake. AACSB, like other labels, is a matter of teamwork. Everyone must be on the same page, from the top management of the school to the students themselves. How?

• By forming the school management and the faculty to learning optimization
• By forming teachers and faculty to innovative solutions to give them autonomy
• By calling students to rally around the flag and motivating them to take initiatives, from entrepreneurship to student life projects

Basically, it means telling everyone what's going to happen and why it's good.

It is about managing a team!

Calling everyone for participation is great. Organizing each group and process actions is even greater. The goal is thus to plan and attribute roles and problem-solving methods between all the actors. But hey! You’re not alone. Never forget it. Mentors and committees are here to help you carry this out thanks to their pragmatic experience.

Organization and processes to adopt vary a lot according to schools and their cultures. Nevertheless, adopting an organization and processes based on constant communication and rapid execution between groups is crucial.

For example, you can do:

• A first analysis of the state of the school according to the criteria, goals, given by AACSB (or another accreditation) and a benchmarking of all issues or things to improve. That's opening the loop.
• Prioritize your goals and communicate them to the faculty and professors, assign them roles and goals per program.
• Communicate with your Data analytics department (if you have one or do it yourself) a data collection and analysis process (we’re talking about Learning Analytics). Decide which data you’ll record to follow the evolution towards the achievement of your goals. That's the innovative management part of the loop.
• Professors must be formed with the platforms if they’re not already, you’ll use to follow data and feedback. They must organize their courses according to the goals you prioritized and communicate them to students in their syllabi, learning goals, learning objectives and learning outcomes and in any other ways possible. Let them be creative.

  - Their results will show up through data and feedback they get from students.
  - Then, do a regular follow-up to add qualitative feedback and ideas on how to improve your learning processes. That's the pedagogic innovation part of the loop.

• Call for initiatives and projects from students to let them be active in continuous learning improvement. Remember, letting them engage and produce knowledge and innovation is ensuring they learn and are prepared for their present or future projects. Most importantly, by letting them do, you give impact to your school, you get access to more qualitative and quantitative data, you're being innovative, you ensure your AoL.

  - Then, do regular follow-up to add qualitative feedbacks and ideas on how to improve your learning processes. That's, again, the pedagogic innovation part of the loop.

Process this organization and cleanly close the loop, you're ready to be an accredited, top innovative institution!

Get a learning optimization process

Take a look at this process. Part Design thinking, part Growth hacking, we adapted it to learning processes. The goal is to quickly operate tests and changes following feedbacks from professors or students, thus you can easily accelerate your accreditation process and improvement cycles.

Learn more about learning optimization here.

Finally, hear what your mentor has to say. This one seems super easy but still is crucial. Mentors are here to help you get that accreditation. Plus, the school he or she comes from already is, so they know how to do it.

TestWe helps you optimize your learning processes!

Closing the loop means entering constant optimization and improvement of your learning processes. Whether you're applying for an accreditation like AACSB or if you're already accredited, TestWe helps you optimize learning.

First, because we offer a solution that let's collect, store, analyse and report one of the most precious data you need to benchmark your AoL and continuous improvement: academic data. Simply put, to get or renew easily your accreditation. That solution is e-Exam.

By digitizing your exam processes, we do not only save you time for your exam creation or exam grading. We do not only let your students take their exams on their own laptop or tablet in a secure way. We let you have access to their academic data reports through a data visualisation tool, facilitating thus analysis.

By inputting learning outcomes, learning goals and objectives as well as professors qualitative feedback on each of the students' assessments, we help you track their skills acquisition, thus facilitating learning processes improvement.

Want to know more? Sure, take a look at this white paper, you'll find other tips and testimonies from accredited schools.

In a previous article, we told you about our 10 apps and platforms we used to learn and among these was Youtube.

Youtube not only made a platform that lets people share videos from everywhere around the world on a particular topic, it also made knowledge totally, mind-blowingly exciting.

And there's a specific area that has been transformed and adapted to our new ways of behaving with learning. Essays. According to Collins Dictionary, an essay is a short piece of writing on one particular subject written by a student, writer or journalist.

As Meghan Daum said: "The point of essays is the point of writing anything. It's not to tell people what they already think or to give them more of what they already believe; it's to challenge people, and it's to suggest alternate ways of thinking about things."

Adapting essays to today's sauce and to Youtube, you find video essays. And these are not unsuccessful on the contrary.

As Christy Wampole tells in the New York Times: "It seems that, even in the proliferation of new forms of writing and communication before us, the essay has become a talisman of our times."

This is just true. Watching videos essays give you thrills, excitement and let you meditate on questions you want to elucidate. Watching them, in a way, shapes a path through which we never stop learning.

But why? Why do we learn so much from video essays? Well, video essays are essays. And both have the same benefits.

They aren't giving any concrete and absolute answers to a question so it changes a lot from the Manichean environment we usually live in and from dogmas imposed at schools.

They shape our critical mind by pushing ourselves on the quest for truth or for answers. We dig in many different sources that train us to filtrate the info we receive to fashion our way of thinking.

Finally, essays are great because they're "essais", authors try to meditate or solve questions and do not impose their way. It is a discussion that is launched between the author and the reader and we love, even more, millennials and younger ones, being integrated into projects and quests.

But how do video essays differ from classical ones? First, because they are video. And videos, you know that as we do, is a media format that is particularly adapted to our tool in our quest for knowledge, Internet. Stats are here: it is projected that in 2019, 80% of all web traffic will be claimed by video. What do you want? Videos excite us like a kid looking at Christmas presents?

En quoi les vidéos ajoutent un plus à l'essai écrit ? Bon déjà ce sont des vidéos. Un format très adapté à l'apprentissage et à notre utilisation d'Internet. Les stats sont là, il est prédit qu'en 2019 plus de 80% des contenus et traffics sur le web seront captés par la vidéo. Que voulez-vous ? Pour nous, regarder une vidéo c'est comme être un enfant découvrant ses cadeaux de Noël... Then, video essays are maybe more effective than written ones. As Digital marketing expert James McQuivey estimates that a single minute of video content is the equivalent of 1.8 million words. Indeed, mastering visuals and sound create a whole environment around your arguments that help people understand more and focus more on the content of a video. And it is delightful!

Nerdwriter1, through his investigations of certain themes through movies, books, music or even political and mediatic events, delivers an argumentation punctuated with gorgeous visuals and music that rhythm his dialogue with us.

The essay here becomes a true art that makes us want to walk the same path. The eloquence and beauty of how arguments are put in place are very important to provoke curiosity from the reader/ viewer. Steven Fry said that "a true thing poorly expressed is a lie" and there it is quite matching.

The attention to details underlined in video essays make it a very much interesting way to diversify learning and deepen curiosity and engagement from students and teachers in specific subjects.

As Christy Wampole said, there is an "essayification" of everything. Mastering it seems more and more to be a factor of influence and traction, particularly through the Internet web. Notably, more and more online tools are making video and written essays easier to produce and communicate, like Medium, the famous platform that let people write and share stories.

Aren't you curious about how it will develop and how video essays (like the one we talked about but also the making of it) will be integrated into e-Learning or blended learning? We definitely are...

1.1 billion dollars, that's what the eSport industry will represent next year. Understandable when you realize it attracts millions of fans around its exciting and engaging games and champions. From the epic adventures of World of Warcraft (Blizzard) to dynamic and strategic face-to-face team fights of League of Legends (Riot Games), it hasn't been that difficult for these entertaining games to become worldwide watched fights into arenas where "wows" and cheers resonate in stadiums and where athletes display show incredible intellectual and team management skills.

Without talking about gamers, eSport gathers today an audience of approximately 300 million people, nearly the size of the US population. Not bad for only a decade of existence. The game becomes now something else, an industry that includes marketing, management, innovation, media, betting. And now eSports unrolls its red carpet into the education world.

Indeed, in the US for example, more and more universities create their own teams and academic programs concerning gaming but also marketing of eSport, management, communication, project management, game development etc. For example, the University of California at Irvine is the first public university that took the decision to welcome eSport in its education programs and decided to build a beautiful gaming hall for its students, thanks notably to donations from Riot Games and others. The results are obvious: universities that propose eSport programs like UCI rapidly see growth in terms of applications. The same case can be seen in China with schools like Hunan Sports Vocational College or in the UK with universities like Staffordshire.

Introduction of eSport in education comes at a day when we can observe a trend of gamification and innovation into pedagogy. Effects are numerous.