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đŸ§±Transforming Education

Most Online Courses Are a Waste of Your Time — Here’s How You Know

September 27, 2021 by Eva Keiffenheim


A quick guide that helps you find the worthy ones.

Picture bought by the author via Canva.

This year I spent around $5000 on online courses.

Warren Buffet said, “the best investment you can make is an investment in yourself. The more you learn, the more you’ll earn.”

But his statement is flawed.

Not all learning investments are created equal. People who’ve excelled at their craft are often not the best teachers. Likewise, creators who write the best sales copy don’t offer the most value.

Here’s precisely how you can spot bad online courses so that you won’t waste your time and money.


1) They Tell But Don’t Show

Most online courses are useless because they focus on the why and what instead of the how.

In a Medium writer’s online course, for example, the instructors spend 90% of the time exploring what writing consists of. They have an hour-long conversation about the importance of consistency. Yet, they don’t show the students how they can write consistently.

The medium star could’ve talked about the roadblocks and how he overcame them. He could’ve shared his calendar or accountability system. He could’ve shared strategies for when you’re struggling to get started. But he didn’t. For me, the course felt like a time-waster.

“Never tell us a thing if you can show us, instead.”

— Steven King

What to look out for instead:

Look for how material instead of endless talks on the why and what. Valuable things often include templates, tutorials, spreadsheets, and screen-sharings.

Here are some examples, so you know how to tell the difference:

Source: Created by Eva Keiffenheim.

2) Instructors Teach in One Direction

“Active learning works, and social learning works,” said Anant Agarwal, founder and chief executive of edX, in an interview with the New York Times. To back this up, a recent study suggests social learning helps you complete online courses.

Yet, most online course creators choose alow-maintenance model. They pre-record videos so you can watch them at your own pace.

But what’s scalable for the instructors isn’t the best for you. Data from Harvard University and MIT shows only three to four percent complete self-paced online courses.

To increase your chances of success, you need a community.

I love Cam Houser’s comment in a joint Slack channel: “People don’t take courses for information. That’s what google and youtube are for. They take courses for outcomes, accountability, process, community.”

What to look out for instead:

A slack channel or Facebook group isn’t enough. Great courses offer structured space for social learning. You have an accountability group, comment on each other’s work, and have regular live touchpoints with your instructors or coaches.

Source: Created by Eva Keiffenheim.

3) They Ignore the Principle of Directness

Online courses are often distant from the actual application. You watch videos about your desired skill, but you never actually practice.

Let’s consider one of my favorite examples.

Imagine you’re a frequent flier. Before every start, you watch the video of a flight attendant putting on the life vest. You watch the video again and again.

But as this study shows, actually putting on the inflatable life vest a single time would be more valuable than repeatedly watching another person doing it. You acquire true mastery by performing the procedure yourself.

The author of ‘Ultralearning’ calls this principle directness. It is essential for mastering any skill. Yet, most online courses teach skills far from direct.

What to look out for instead:

You don’t learn by watching things. You learn by doing them. So the more you engage with the content, the likelier it will stick with you.

What’s your desired outcome behind taking the course? Check whether you have assignments that are directly linked to your desired skill. Pick a class as close to your end goal as possible.

If you take a course on e-mail newsletters, write your e-mail and ask for feedback. If you take a drawing class, do your first drawing. If you take a course on online writing, write your first article.

Just like the minimum viable product, find a minimum viable action. What is the simplest thing you can do based on what you’ve just learned?

Foster a bias towards action. You learn best when you do the work.


“Just keep working at it, and you’ll get there is wrong. The right sort of practice carried out over a sufficient period of time leads to improvement. Nothing else.”

— Anders Ericsson


4) They Don’t Understand the Science of Learning

Masters might not be the best teachers. More likely, they’re beginners when it comes to instructional design and the science of learning.

Most online courses are built on the assumption that our brains work like recording devices. But students don’t acquire their desired skills by consuming content. Instead, learning is at least a three-step process — we acquire, encode, and retrieve.

Learning scientist Roediger writes: “Learning that’s easy is like writing in sand, here today and gone tomorrow. Learning is deeper and more durable when it’s effortful.”

Learning through passive content consumption isn’t effortful. That’s why most online courses are a mere form of entertainment.

What to look out for instead:

Look out for active learning elements. Check whether the course uses evidence-based learning strategies such as:

  • retrieval practice ⇟ recall something you’ve learned in the past from your memory
  • spaced repetition ⇟ repeat the same piece of information across increasing intervals
  • interleaving ⇟ alternating before each practice is complete
  • elaboration ⇟ rephrasing new knowledge and connecting it with existing insights
  • reflection ⇟ synthesize, abstract, and articulate key lessons taught by experience
  • self-testing & calibration ⇟ answer a question or solve a problem before looking at the answer and identify knowledge gaps

“Mastery, especially of complex ideas, skills and processes, is a quest. Don’t assume you’re doing something wrong if learning feels hard.”

— Roediger et al.


Conclusion

Most online courses don’t help you reach your desired outcome. You can spend thousands of dollars and hours without learning anything at all.

Learning doesn’t help you per se — it’s taking the right courses that can make all the difference:

  • Check whether the course curriculum goes beyond why and what and teaches the how to do stuff.
  • Evaluate whether you’ve got regular touchpoints with your instructor and learning opportunities with fellow students.
  • Understand whether you’ll practice your desired skill.
  • Look out for evidence-based learning elements such as spacing, retrieval, or reflection.

I’m building a course on how to write online based on evidence-based practices to make the most of your time. You won’t sit in front of pre-recorded videos and struggle to stick with them. If you’re interested in joining a group of 25 people, you can pre-register here.

Filed Under: đŸ§±Transforming Education Tagged With: education, elearning, How to learn, Ideas, learning, oped

The 5 Best Platforms to Create Your Cohort Based Online Course

August 2, 2021 by Eva Keiffenheim


Teachable & Co belong to the past. Here’s what’s next.

Photo by ConvertKit on Unsplash

Whether you’re a serial course creator or entertaining, the thought of launching your first online course — cohort-based courses will likely disrupt the way you teach.

Platforms like Teachable, Podia, and Kajabi belong to the past. Say goodbye to course design that ignores social and active learning.

Your (future) customers don’t acquire new skills by consuming pre-recorded content. Learning is at least a three-step process: acquisition, encoding, and retrieval.

That’s why learning by doing is much more powerful than learning by watching. These platforms will help you create and sell learner-centric courses that help your customers master the skill you teach.

1) Teachfloor

Teachfloor combines all the tools you need to build a cohort base course. The platform equips you with a curriculum builder, Zoom and Stripe integrations, e-mail automation, a course landing page, calendar scheduling, on-demand videos, and peer-review opportunities.

Teachfloor offers a vast course creator academy with 24/7 support in 50+ countries. With more than 3,000 clients, Teachfloor belongs to the more seasoned platforms.

After a 14-day free trial, pricing starts at $49 a month (billed annually).

Screenshot of Teachfloor’s landing page by the author.

2) Maven

Maven is a very new cohort-based course platform started by the founders of Udemy, altMBA, and Socratic.

In a podcast interview, Maven co-founder Gagan Biyani shared how they aim to revolutionize education and replace universities with a more individualized approach to education.

Pricing is not displayed on their website. If you want to create a cohort-based course on their platform, you must apply to their course accelerator. In an intense 3-week program, you build and get feedback from a cohort of top-notch instructors and coaches.

Screenshot of Maven’s landing page by the author.

3) Virtually

Virtually provides all tools you need to run your online learning program in a single place.

Features include analytics, life conferencing, payment processing, calendar management, auto-attendance tracking, assignments and grading, student records, and content libraries. Plus, Virtually has integrations with Zoom, Slack, Stripe, Google Sheets, Airtable, Circle, Zapier, and Google Calendar.

According to their website, creators such as Ali Abdaal and Tiago Forte built their courses with Virtually.

If you join the beta, pricing is $50 a month for your first 250 students and $0.25/month for each additional learner.

Screenshot of Virtually’s landing page by the author.

4) Graphy

Similar to Teachfloor, Graphy is an all-in-one platform to help you set up your live courses, grow your community, and monetize your knowledge without any barriers.

Yet, Graphy doesn’t include features or integrations for asynchronous communication. Instead, they built a tool similar to Zoom that can be used for online live teaching.

The platform doesn’t charge upfront. They make money only when you make money with a flat 5% platform fee only on successful enrolments in your courses.

Screenshot of Graphy’s landing page by the author.

5) Classcamp

Classcamp is a mobile-first, interactive learning platform for creators. Unlike the other platforms, your brand will serve as the center for the learning experience.

Features include the option for pre-recorded or live lessons, fan assignments, submissions, and reaction videos.

The platform launches in September, but you can already sign up on their website.

Screenshot of Classcamp’s landing page by the author.

Excluded Platforms

While researching this article, I stumbled upon a few sites that were recommended as cohort-based-course platforms. Yet, upon further review, I found these sites to be misleading.

Airschool

Airschool is a course creation tool. As a creator, you start a landing page and launch with them, then share the link with your community. Initially, I found their claim to “Sell Courses, Make Money!” a bit sketchy, but the team reached out and clarified all my doubts. The tool is free to use but charges 9.90% of the product’s price if it’s priced higher than $30.

Airtribe

Airtribe aims to help the world’s top instructors start cohort-based courses which are live, engaging, and community-driven. While the claim sounds promising, the platform is very early-stage, and it’s not clear how Airtribe intends to achieve its goal.

Disco

Founded in 2020, Disco helps creators build live learning experiences. It comes with integrations to Stripe, Mailchimp, and Zoom. From their website, the exact features and the pricing are not listed yet. Similar to Maven, you can apply to get creator access to build your own course.

Eduflow

Eduflow is a well-established collaborative learning platform. I didn’t include their solution in the list, as they targeted higher education and corporate training. For example, they don’t have payment provider integrations, and you’d have to go with the $400/mo subscription to add your personal branding to the course.

TopHat

Founded in 2009, TopHat provides an all-in-one teaching platform purpose-built to motivate, engage and connect with students. TopHat offers interesting features (e.g., interactive textbooks, simulations, testing as a tool) but is targeted at higher education institutions.


Conclusion

Most educational video content is available free — learners watch content on YouTube 500 million times every day. But while the means for learning online are abundant, community-based experiences are scarce.

The list of online creators who successfully scaled their business by running cohort-based courses is long:

  • Tiago Forte with Building your Second Brain
  • Li Jin with The Creator Economy
  • David Perell with Write of Passage
  • Ali Abdaal with Part-Time YouTuber Academy
  • Will you be next?

Want to feel inspired and improve your learning?

Subscribe free to The Learn Letter. I read a book and 50 articles a week, and each Wednesday, you’ll receive the best in your inbox. This newsletter will make you find tools and resources that help you on your path to health, wealth, and wisdom.

Filed Under: đŸ§±Transforming Education Tagged With: cohort based courses, education, elearning

How Cohort Based Courses Can Help You Master Any Skill You Want

July 28, 2021 by Eva Keiffenheim


MOOCs are dead. Here’s what’s next.

Photo by Joshua Sortino on Unsplash

Having access to content is not enough to master a subject. Learners ace a skill via direct practice of the skill they’re trying to master.

In 2011, people believed massive open online courses, so-called MOOCs, would revolutionize online learning.

Yet, data from Harvard University and MIT revealed three devastating data points against these courses:

  1. Completion rates. Only three to four percent complete MOOCs — a rate that hasn’t improved in the past six years.
  2. Retention. Only seven percent of MOOC learners start another course after their first year.
  3. Accessibility. While MOOCs promised to bring high-quality education to all corners of the world, only 1.43 percent come from countries classified as “low” in the Human Development Index.

As a result, the future of education doesn’t belong to MOOCs any longer. Instead, a new model emerged. Whether you’re a content creator or a lifelong learner — here’s how Cohort-Based Courses can help you master any skill.


What are Cohort-Based Courses?

In Cohort Based Courses, so-called CBCs, a student group moves at the same pace through the same curriculum. Typically, CBCs include a mix of life lessons, remote assignments, and peer learning.

If you ever attended school, you’re familiar with cohort-based education. Schools and universities rely on cohort learning models — students take the same lecture, assignments, and tests simultaneously.

Both have in common that you don’t pay for the content’s quality. Studying with free videos can teach you as much as attending universities or CBCs. What you pay for is the likelihood of completing the learning track and achieving the desired outcome (e.g., land a job or acquire a specific skill).

Why CBCs Are Better Than MOOCs

Socrates tutored two learners at a time; a MOOC scaled learning up to 100,000. With CBCs, the teacher-student ratio increases, and relationships are at the core of the learning process again.

If you want to master a skill, access to instructors will help you stick with the course.

A study found interaction with instructors affects MOOC learner retention directly. CBCs use online tools like Zoom or Slack to give feedback and help students complete the course.

“Active learning works, and social learning works,” said Anant Agarwal, founder, and chief executive of edX, in an interview with the New York Times.

Seth Godin’s altMBA, a cohort-based online MBA, supports this fact with a completion rate of 96%. Other CBCs report, the completion rate is up to 85%.

Building relationships with instructors and peers, plus the limited time factor, is a way to force yourself to complete a course. Through more teacher-student and student-student touchpoints, you’re more likely to hold yourself accountable.

The Distinctive Learning Features

There’s more to CBCs than the tutoring and completion ratio: collaboration and community.

While you go through the course, you interact with your peers. Thus, learning is not one-directional (teacher to student) but also bi-directional (student to student).

Through regular collaboration, you form a community. You network with like-minded people from across the globe. As you follow the same learning goal, these relationships can be very powerful.

If you join a community of future data scientists, this network can give you access to opportunities and resources in the future that will enhance your career.

How You Can Distinguish Average from Great

You don’t absorb information and knowledge by consuming content. Instead, learning is at least a three-step process — you acquire, encode, and retrieve.

Learning by doing is much more powerful than learning by watching. When you pick a course, evaluate whether the curriculum design will help you achieve your desired outcome. Here are key features to look out for:

  • Real-time feedback on learning progress.
  • Assignments that are directly linked to your desired skill.
  • Structured access to a subject-specific community.
  • Evidence-based learning design, e.g., spaced repetition features and testing mechanisms.

7 Promising Cohort-Based-Courses

Here are seven courses you might want to consider:

  1. Career Advancement
    Reforge teaches the systems and frameworks that help you take the next step in your career. CBCs include product management, marketing, and growth strategies.
  2. Writing (Beginner level)
    Ship 30 for 30 teaches online writing through active learning. You will establish a writing and publishing routine with 500+ other writers.
  3. Writing (Advanced level)
    Write of Passage helps you develop a process for cultivating ideas and distilling them into writing.
  4. Knowledge Management
    Building your Second Brain can support you in saving your best ideas, organizing your learning, and expanding your creative output.
  5. Video Creation
    Minimum Viable Video is a 5-week live cohort that helps you creating and publishing professional videos that move the needle.
  6. EdTech, NoCode, Deep Tech, Scale, and More
    In 2021 Be On Deck launches 120 cohorts of 25 programs. They attract top talent to accelerate your ideas and careers, surrounded by a world-class community.
  7. Youtube
    The Part-Time YouTuber Academy teaches you how to grow your YouTube channel from 0 to 100,000+ subscribers and transform it into a sustainable, income-generating machine while keeping your day job.

In Conclusion

In a podcast interview on the future of education, Udemy founder Gagan Biyani stated how in 2009, nobody believed in online learning. Since then, everything has changed.

Apart from MOOCs, like EdX or Coursera, other EdTech solutions emerged. Platforms like Udemy or Skillshare created marketplaces for online education. Teachers competed with keywords and content and shared their earnings with the platform.

Then followed a third iteration: direct-to-customer solutions, such as Teachable, Kajabi, and Podia. On these platforms, online educators bring their own audience while keeping most of the revenue.

The new iteration towards CBCs is more student-focused than any previous solution, and it’s one of the most effective ways to master skills online:

  • Accountability through communities and instructors helps learners follow through when things get hard.
  • Because CBCs are outcome-focused (e.g., mastering a skill, landing a job, growing an audience) instructors focus on the how instead of the why.
  • CBCs help learners build skill-relevant communities that will support them in their future endeavors.

Want to feel inspired and improve your learning?

Subscribe free to The Learn Letter. I read a book and 50 articles a week, and each Wednesday, you’ll receive the best in your inbox. This newsletter will make you find tools and resources that help you on your path to health, wealth, and wisdom.

Filed Under: đŸ§±Transforming Education Tagged With: cohort based courses, education, elearning, Ideas

3 Promising Opportunities to Teach Your Kids From Home

July 22, 2021 by Eva Keiffenheim


These organizations innovate homeschooling.

Photo by Marga Santoso on Unsplash

“What is most important and valuable about the home as a base for children’s growth into the world is not that it is a better school than the schools,” educational theorist John Holt said, “but that it isn’t a school at all.”

Holt argued schools work as oppressive environments and turned kids into compliant employees. And that’s how in the 1970s, the modern homeschooling movement began.

The debate is still ongoing, and many people argue schools enforce and prioritize compliance and consumption over critical thinking and creativity.

Learning in home education is often less formal and more personalized than school education — ranging from traditional school lessons to free forms such as unschooling.

Reasons for homeschooling vary from better educational opportunities, a healthier learning environment, special needs, or being the only option in remote areas.

Homeschooling is legal in many countries (e.g., Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, the United States) but outlawed by others (e.g., Germany, Japan, Brazil).

Homeschooling legality Source: Fobos92 and Svenskbygderna

What follows are three organizations that rethink the way children learn from home.


1) Primer — A home for ambitious kids.

Primer is the world’s first community built for curious and ambitious kids to find and explore their interests together. Their goal is to “free the next generation of kids to be more ambitious, more creative, and to think for themselves.”

Unlike connected learning networks that replace core curricula, Primer is supplemental. To foster kid’s curiosity, the team offers various learning formats:

  • Clubs. Students collaborate on projects such as writing, storytelling, coding, inventing machines, music, or nature.
  • Rooms. Live audio chat spaces allow students to experiment with new ideas, solve problems, and tap into their interests (e.g., debating, writing, puzzling, coding, starting a business).
  • Journals. In journals, kids can document their projects by creating and organizing blocks of text, images, videos, and links.

There is no set schedule for a day with Primer, as all their activities happen in addition to set curricula.

After a free trial month, Primer is $49 a month for the first child and $19 a month for each additional child.

Primer was founded by Ryan Delk and Maksim Stepanenko, who both have been homeschooled. Previously, they helped build companies like SpaceX, Square, Gumroad, Lyft, and Coinbase.

“We studied the American Revolution by driving to historic locations in the original 13 colonies and crawled through cardboard tubes to learn how the digestive system works.”

— Ryan Delk, Co-Founder of Primer

Screenshot of Primer Landing Page

2) Outschool — Where kids love learning.

Outschool online marketplace of virtual classes for children aged 3–18. Outschool’s goal is to engage and inspire learning through various classes and subjects.

The platform offers kids the opportunity to explore their interests in-depth with interactive classes taught via live video by experienced, independent teachers.

Like Primer, Outschool doesn’t suggest a fully-fledged curriculum. Instead, the platform offers more than 100,000 live lessons to more than 900,000 learners in 174 countries.

Pricing starts with $10 a course, and the most expensive multi-week course I found on the platform costs about $75.

The platform was founded by Amir Nathoo, who is a former investor and holds various patents.

“If we just stick to the core curriculum, then it is very difficult for kids to develop differentiated skills. More of the school day needs to be spent on kids pursuing their interests with the benefit of increased autonomy and self-direction — with this, kids’ motivation to learn can increase. There’s going to be so much change in technology and society in the next 10 years, I think we will head in a direction of hybrid core + self-directed.”

— Amir Nathoo, Founder of Outschool

Screenshot of Outschool Landing Page

3) Synthesis — Where kids become
problem-solvers.

Synthesis started as a school spin-off from Elon Musk’s AdAstra school. As of now, it’s a weekly, 1-hour enrichment program for students who want to learn how to build the future.

They offer a simulation-based learning experience built around complex team games. Students work through case studies, simulations, and game-based challenges.

Synthesis doesn’t design simulations for content but the experience. Simulations are complex and have no right answers. For example, 18–20 kids work in groups with one facilitator. But facilitators don’t lecture. Instead, the student groups explore and learn game rules on their own.

The idea of the simulations is to change the way kids approach real-life problems and prepare them to navigate the complexity and chaos that comes with life.

While playing, kids teach themselves how to win. In the process, they learn new problem-solving skills. Here are two game examples:

  • Art for All. Students compete in an auction game for the best art exhibits. The simulation covers negotiation and covers mental models such as auction theory and the winner’s curse.
  • Fire! In this collaborative game, students fight forest fires with varying conditions. It covers mental models such as positive-sum vs. zero-sum games.

Pricing is $180 per month, and a sibling discount is available.

Synthesis is led by Chrisman Frank. On a visit to Elon Musk’s AdAstra school, he fell in love with Synthesis.

In 2020, Frank convinced the AdAstra principal and his former colleague Josh Dahn to spin-off Synthesis as a for-profit company. Frank’s vision was to scale the learning software and develop a generation of super thinkers.

“When mistakes are not penalized, people are more likely to just keep trying. And if you keep trying, then naturally, you have more chances of eventually succeeding.”

— Ana Fabrega, Chief Evangelist at Synthesis

Screenshot of Synthesis Landing Page

Want to feel inspired and improve your learning?

Subscribe free to The Learn Letter. I read a book and 50 articles a week, and each Wednesday, you’ll receive the best in your inbox. This newsletter will make you find tools and resources that help you on your path to health, wealth, and wisdom.

Filed Under: đŸ§±Transforming Education Tagged With: education, Ideas, inspiration

9 Influencers Worth Following That Tweet About the Future of Learning

July 15, 2021 by Eva Keiffenheim


A curated list of inspiring edupreneurs.

Created by the author via Canva.

Anything you read, watch or listen to shapes your thoughts. Hence, it’s worth paying attention to what you consume online.

I left teaching in Summer 2020 to make education fairer and better for as many learners as possible. Parts of what I do now includes connecting and reporting about education transformation.

Here’s a selection of thinkers who inspire me through their thoughts and projects on the future of learning.


1) Salman Khan

Salman Khan is the American educator who founded Khan Academy. His online education videos have been viewed more than 1.8 billion times. On Twitter, he shares ideas about bridging the digital divide and education transformation.

“Shying away from something where you are well suited to make a positive impact — especially because it is risky or can draw criticism or unwanted attention — is just as damaging as not realizing areas where your actions are counterproductive.”

— Salman Khan


2) Alain Chuard

Alain is the Founder & CEO of Prisma, a connected learning network that fully replaces regular school. Prisma didn’t transfer the core curriculum to the online world but created its own learning framework. On Twitter, Alain shares ideas on how to create learner-centric online schools./media/4dc1ab9cd7b5e747464e2f6d1a17abea


3) Richard Culatta

Richard is the CEO of ISTE — a community of global educators who believe in the power of technology to transform teaching & learning. He recently published the book ‘Digital for Good: Raising Kids to Thrive in an Online World’ and is a popular speaker on EdTech and innovation. On Twitter, he shares opinions on the digital divine and responsible device usage.


4) Ana Lorena Fabrega

Ana Lorena left teaching in 2019 to explore alternatives to traditional education. She’s now the Chief Evangelist at Synthesis, an online program partly initiated by Elon Musk. I love her Fab Friday newsletter, where she explores the future of education./media/57742cf1e5f6d6fdf684a7ed93cf0da0


5) Jelmer Evers

Jelmer is a history teacher, author and was nominated twice for the Global Teacher Prize. He is currently building an international teacher leadership network. If you understand Dutch, you can follow him on Twitter. Alternatively, watch his TEDx talk on flipping the education system.


6) Vlad Stan

Vlad is a serial entrepreneur and co-founder of Galileo — a global learning community for 8 to 18-year-olds. At its core, Galileo strives for self-directed (the freedom to choose what you want to learn) and self-organized (the freedom to design your daily schedule) education. Vlad tweets about homeschooling and EdTech./media/90cc016a4213594bfd498a8af5345e52


7) Saku Tuominen

Saku is the founder of HundrED — a not-for-profit organization that seeks and shares innovations in K12 education. I love to be inspired through their yearly global collection. Saku isn’t very active on Twitter, so instead, you might want to explore innovations curated by his company.


8) Wes Kao

Wes co-founded Maven, a platform for cohort-based courses. While MOOCs completion rate is just 3 to 6 percent, CBCs aim to improve completion rates through active, synchronous, hands-on learning. Wes published an excellent article on a16z and tweets about learning and thinking./media/98a3c16f3957046274b53bcbe649d16d


9) Jo Boaler

Jo is a professor of Mathematics education at the Standford Graduate School of Education and co-founder of youcubed. During my two years as a full-time Math teacher, her books drastically improved my teaching. On Twitter Jo shares insights on the growth mindset and mathematics.

“A lot of scientific evidence suggests that the difference between those who succeed and those who don’t is not the brains they were born with, but their approach to life, the messages they receive about their potential, and the opportunities they have to learn.”

— Jo Boaler


Want to feel inspired and improve your learning?

Subscribe free to The Learn Letter. I read a book and 50 articles a week, and each Wednesday, you’ll receive the best in your inbox. This newsletter will make you find tools and resources that help you on your path to health, wealth, and wisdom.

Filed Under: đŸ§±Transforming Education Tagged With: education, Ideas, inspiration

How Connected Learning Networks Shape the Future of Education

July 7, 2021 by Eva Keiffenheim


Learning innovation with Sora, Galileo, and Prisma.

Image created by Eva Keiffenheim via Canva.

Education visionary Sir Ken Robinson once said:

“Our task is to educate their (our students) whole being so they can face the future. We may not see the future, but they will and our job is to help them make something of it.”

Yet, many kids grow up in an education system that stems from the industrialized age. Most schools batch children by age and expect them to learn at the same speed with the same means.

Connected Learning Networks follow a new paradigm. The approach to learning is defined as “learning that is socially connected, interest-driven, and oriented towards educational, economic, or political opportunity.”

Here are three schools that build on Connected Learning Networks and how they might shape the future of education:

1) Sora — High school built for you

Sora is a virtual high school that aims to accelerate students toward their wildest dreams.

Teachers are no longer teachers who deliver lectures but so-called guides who challenge students, structure individual curricula, and facilitate learning.

Sora offers various learning formats:

  • Independent projects. Students follow their learning interests (e.g., computer science or 18th-century Victorian fashion) and work towards their project goal.
  • Learning expeditions. Live learning sessions (e.g., saving the coral reef and shellfish industry) happen three days a week. These expeditions have deliverables, and students are assessed based on a mastery scale.
  • Career tracks. Learning advisors help students design their school experience around their desired career track, e.g., engineering, design, or health sciences.

Here’s what a typical schedule at Sora looks like:

A Day at Sora
9:30am daily standup on discord
10:00am project work (e.g. programming a game or writing a book)
11:00am first learning expedition (e.g. history of buddhism)
12:00pm lunch break
12:45pm second learning expedition (e.g. saving the coral reef)
3:00pm afternoon checkpoint
4:30pm 1-on-1 check-in with experts to work through questions
5:00pm virtual club (e.g. movie club, school feedback sessions)

Tuition is $3,600 to $9,600 per year with flexible tuition options for families with a non-working parent or any extenuating circumstances.

The school was founded by Wesley Samples, Indra Sofian, and Garrett Smiley. They have work experience in venture capital, content marketing, as well as financial and entrepreneurship education.

Screenshot of Sora’s landing page.

I rate this approach 2/5 — Here’s why:

I love how Sora rethought curricula and moved away from a factory schedule. Their learning design can indeed foster self-directed learning enthusiasts.

What’s also great is the mastery-based curriculum where skill levels go along with learning science (e.g., 0 for exposure, 1 for recognition and recall, 2 for elaboration, 3 for application, and 4 for transfer).

Moreover, I like is their student focus. They state: “Schools suck because they are so far removed from the students that they serve. Our students know that we hear them, and though we make mistakes, they know that we all can learn from them.”

Yet, there are a few aspects that make me question Sora schools. First, their curriculum isn’t holistic. I can’t see subjects that focus on relationships, physical education, or arts.

Their site says, “relationships are one of the most important aspects of an education.” But a virtual book club isn’t enough to reinforce social skills.

Sora also lacks a clear roadmap to physical education. There’s the subject on an exemplary grade certificate. Yet, there’s neither a sports teacher on the team list nor a subject in their curriculum.

The online school doesn’t seem to offer art classes. It’d be great to take a more open approach to career tracks. Next generations need more than engineers, designers, and health scientists.

Sora seems like is the perfect school for parents who can’t wait for their students to join the high-achieving workforce.


2) Galileo — Online self-directed global school

Galileo is a global learning community for 8 to 18-year-olds. They offer live learning experiences and online courses.

At its core, Galileo strives for self-directed (the freedom to choose what you want to learn) and self-organized (the freedom to design your daily schedule) education.

Their mission is to improve the way we learn. Here’s how they do it:

  • Clubs such as Minecraft education, history clubs, coding, or theater clubs. These are ongoing teacher-led experiences where students connect and collaborate on topics of their interest. Students may join clubs on a week-to-week basis.
  • Nanocourses such as Logo design, artificial intelligence, space exploration, food innovation, or photography. They are 1-month project-based courses where the students learn a new skill. Students present their products during the final week of the course.
  • Bootcamps on game development, anthropology, or documentary making. There are two or three-month-long project-based learning experiences to inspire and give students a jump start on topics they want to learn about.

The school states the schedule looks different for every student, but here’s an example of how it might look like:

A Day at Galileo
9:00am daily check-in
9:30am 3D modeling club
11:00am Spanish club
1:00pm psychology crash course YT
3:00pm Math Khan - decimals
5:00pm Dance ballet

Their curriculum builds on existing solutions like Khan Academy, BrainPop, CodeCombat, Coursera, CrashCourse, or Duolingo. In addition, they invite mentors for inspirational speeches.

Tuition is $300 per student per month or $2000 per student a year (with a 20% siblings discount).

Kelly Davis and Vlad Stan founded Galileo. Kelly has taught in various countries throughout Asia, and Vlad is a serial entrepreneur.

Screenshot of Galileo’s landing page.

I rate this approach 3/5 — Here’s why:

The school’s founders share a noble motivation: “ We want you to be obsessed — or at least passionate — about the topic you are teaching, no matter if your passion is related to the core curricula or it’s just something completely different you pursued on your own.”

Galileo offers a holistic curriculum that includes dancing, singing, writing, languages, coding, maths, books, science. In addition, they provide more than 70 live learning experiences that go beyond economics and business skills.

Unlike Sora, they add a personal layer to online learning. They have student-led check-ins and local dojos — small, local, in-person learning experiences. So far, these local communities exist in Romania, Japan, the USA, Kenya, and Portugal.

They give people the opportunity to individualize their kids’ curriculum, and their team shares a passion for lifelong learning.

Yet, I’m not sure whether un- and deschooling with local dojos encompass the future of education is. So, while Galileo is an interesting niche product, I can’t see how this solution would work at scale.

Galileo seems like is the perfect school for world travelers and digital nomads who want to offer their kids connected, self-directed, world-class education.


“We have to personalize education, not standardize it.”

— Sir Ken Robinson


3) Prisma — The world’s first connected learning network

Prisma is a personalized, full-time online school for 9–14-year-olds. They reinvent learning.

Their vision is to create the world’s most effective and inclusive Connected Learning Network dedicated to preparing millions of kids for life and work in the 21st century.

Prisma offers various formats to their students:

  • Peer cohorts. A group that meets daily to collaborate, socialize, and learn with.
  • Coaching. Learning coaches meet and assist with learning on a daily basis.
  • Live workshops. A selection of virtual workshops that focus on communication, collaboration, and critical thinking. According to their website, these workshops are optimized for engagement.

For students, a typical schedule looks like this:

A Day at Prisma
10:00am standup
10:30am independent learning routines (e.g. math, English, arts)
12:00pm lunch
1:00pm live workshops (e.g. debates, strategy simulation, writing)
3:00pm projects
3:30pm coach-learner 1-on-1 (once a week)

Prisma didn’t copy and paste a bricks & mortar curriculum to online videos. Instead, they’ve custom-designed their learning content.

Unlike other programs, this school places a focus on inclusion: “Each learner, regardless of disability status, develops an individualized learning plan along with their Learning Coach and family.”

They do so by adjusting individual learning plans, for example, through more structure or learning accessibility.

The school enrollment works in 6 x 5-week learning cycles per year and costs $7415 a year. In addition, Prisma offers financial support options to support 40% of learners in each cohort.

Prisma was founded by serial entrepreneurs and parents Victoria Ransom and Alain Chuard. They built Prisma as a quest to reimagine school and for their children.

Screenshot of Prisma’s landing page.

I rate this approach 4/5 — Here’s why:

Prisma mastered many aspects I missed at Sora and Galileo.

Most importantly, their curriculum is holistic. They didn’t transfer the core curriculum to the online world but created their own learning framework consisting of:

  • Foundational knowledge (language literacy, numeracy, history, technology literacy, and science principles)
  • Powers (creativity, critical thinking, communication)
  • Perspectives (global perspective, empathy & compassion, mindfulness)
  • Practices (collaboration, design thinking, reflection, discussions, self-care)
  • Mindset (self-efficacy, emotional awareness, purpose, growth mindset, ownership & self-direction, love of learning).

Prisma also mastered to include physical education in a virtual learning environment. They acknowledge the difficulty of physical online education but have found three solutions that seem to work for their students:

  1. Live dance, yoga, and fitness instructors
  2. Fitness and other off-screen breaks that encourage movement
  3. Fitness badges by joining athletic endeavors in their local community

Moreover, they relied on learning evidence and eliminated grading: “There has been considerable research showing that grades reduce kids’ intrinsic motivation and encourage them to do ‘just enough’ rather than their best.”

I’d be curious what students say about the rather big group size with 50–70 learners per cohort and 12–18 learners per coach. In an online setting, this appears to make personalization difficult.

While their site states they’re a global online school, admission is only open to anyone who can operate in US time zones. So unless parents want to mess up with their child’s sleep cycle, Prisma is instead a US online school.

Prisma is the ideal online school for US homeschoolers and kids who don’t like traditional schooling.


In Conclusion

The application of Connected Learning Networks is still very young. Sora and Galileo started in 2018, Prisma in 2020.

These three online schools point us towards the future of education — personalized, global, and student-centered.

Yet, we mustn’t forget the entry barriers. To provide fair innovative learning experiences, all students need equitable access to devices, reliable wifi, and a safe place to learn.

Unless we focus on providing these resources to all students, Connected Learning Networks will further increase the digital gap among income levels.


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Filed Under: đŸ§±Transforming Education Tagged With: education, Ideas, inspiration

Elon Musk Disliked His Kids’ Schools — So He Started His Own

May 29, 2021 by Eva Keiffenheim


Is he quietly revolutionizing education?

Image edited by the author (Source: Duncan.Hull — CC BY-SA 4.0)

“So you want to keep your kids away from regular schools?” a reporter asked Elon Musk in an interview.

You know Musk’s mindset: If he doesn’t like something, he builds his own versions — cars, rockets, highways, energy companies.

Musk replied: “I just didn’t see the regular schools weren’t doing the things I thought should be done. I thought, let’s see what we can do. Maybe creating a school would be better.”

In 2014, Elon Musk asked Josh Dahn, a former Teach for All Fellow and his kid’s teacher at the time, if he’d start a better school with him at SpaceX. Dahn agreed. The school Ad Astra, Latin for ‘to the stars,’ was born.


Ad Astra School’s Two Core Principles

Musk reimagined education on First Principles thinking: boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there instead of reasoning by analogy.

Instead of accepting the prices of rockets, Musk asked himself, “What’s a rocket made of?” He listed the components and calculated the costs. He found that raw materials were nearly 100 times cheaper. He decided to build his own rockets instead of buying some.

For education, Musk came up with these two principles.

1) Batch children by ability instead of age.

Regular schools batch children by age, assuming it’s is the most important denominator. Traditional school systems expect students of the same age to learn at the same speed. Musk disagrees with age segregation:

“Kids have different abilities at different times. It makes more sense to cater the education to match their aptitudes and abilities.”

2) Don’t teach to the tool. Teach to the problem.

Ever asked a teacher why you learn something? Most answers don’t go beyond you’ll need this..someday. If the relevance isn’t clear, learning feels irrelevant.

Learning to use tools is pointless and boring unless those tools help you solve a real problem. Listing the tools you need to take an engine apart isn’t the same as trying to disassemble the engine yourself. By doing the work, you see the tool’s relevance as you go.


This EdTech Startup Scales Musk’s Ad Astra School

A few years later, Chrisman Frank, Dahn’s former colleague at ClassDojo, visited Ad Astra. He fell in love with one part of the school — Synthesis.

In 2020, Frank convinced Dahn to spin off Synthesis as a for-profit company. Frank’s vision was to scale the learning software and develop a generation of super thinkers. Here’s how it works.

Synthesis is a simulation-based learning experience built around complex team games. Students work through case studies, simulations, and game-based challenges.

While playing, kids teach themselves how to win. In the process, they learn new problem-solving skills. Two game examples:

  • Art for All. Students compete in an auction game for the best art exhibits. The simulation covers negotiation and covers mental models such as auction theory and the winner’s curse.
  • Fire! In this collaborative game, students fight forest fires with varying conditions. It covers mental models such as positive-sum vs. zero-sum games.

In a recent podcast episode Chrisman Frank, Synthesis CEO, and Ana Fabrega, Chief Evangelist, shared details about ‘the most innovative learning experience.’

Replacing Lectures and Books with Software and Games

Lectures remain the dominant teaching method in most schools. But they don’t allow for dialogue, discussions, and disagreement. Instead of training students to become active thinkers, schools train them to become passive listeners.

Books don’t train for problem-solving. From my time as a Maths teacher, I remember ‘real-world’ textbook examples. But students knew I had the right solution in my teacher’s book. Reality is more complex than right or wrong. Most schools teach students to follow the rules as opposed to thinking for themselves.

Synthesis doesn’t design simulations for content but for the experience. Simulations are complex and have no right answers. 18–20 kids work in groups with one facilitator. But facilitators don’t lecture. The student groups explore and learn game rules on their own.

The idea of the simulations is to change the way kids approach real-life problems and prepare them to navigate the complexity and chaos that comes with life.

Students make decisions that have consequences and meaning. They have to understand trade-offs and analyze their choices where there is no binary answer — and the teacher doesn’t have it either.

Expectations Outside Students’ Comfort Zones

Fleas can jump 8 inches high, but when put in a closed jar for three days, they will never again jump higher than the lid’s height. Their offspring mimics their parents and settles on the same height.

A school system’s low expectations are like flea training. Low expectations are a glass ceiling for children and one of the fastest ways to fail them.

Synthesis claims to have in-built high expectations that make kids step outside of their comfort zone.

At Synthesis, there is no teacher to ask for the correct answer when things don’t work. The students know the teaching team trusts to solve these challenges.

Fabrega says children crave complexity. She describes after a while; kids feel comfortable with all the uncertainty. Synthesis teaches kids to feel comfortable being uncomfortable.

Using the Super Mario Effect for Faster Learning

As a teacher, I fostered my student’s growth mindset. I planned entire lessons around it and focused on praising efforts instead of outcomes. I showed my students mistakes help us learn.

Yet, the system beat me. When a kid received a bad grade, they felt demotivated. When mistakes mean you get a worse grade I can’t blame children for trying to avoid them.

The question is: How can you frame a learning process so you’re not obsessed with failure?

Mark Rober, a former NASA engineer turned Youtube star, explored this question and says games are the answer: “The focus and obsession are about beating the game, not about how dumb you might look. And as a direct result of that attitude — of learning from but not being focused on the failures — we got really good, and we learned a ton in a really short amount of time.”

Rober continues: “It feels natural to ignore the failures and try again in the same way a toddler will want to get up and try to walk again or in the same way you want to keep playing Super Mario Brothers.”

Other research attests to the power of game-based learning. Synthesis applied this insight. They reframed the learning process and created game-based learning experiences.

The result: fear of failure isn’t a problem anymore.

Fabrega says: “When mistakes are not penalized, people are more likely to just keep trying. And if you keep trying, then naturally, you have more chances of eventually succeeding.”

“The more we can gamify the process of learning, the better.” — Elon Musk


Did Elon Musk Quietly Revolutionize Education?

Elon Musk did his thing again. He saw something that didn’t work well and changed it. From being unhappy with his kid’s obsolete education, he planted a seed to innovate the education sector.

The idea that our school system was built for the industrial age and the need for a paradigm shift isn’t new. Schools teach to follow instructions when reality has changed. Yet, systemic change is slow.

Musk’s assets and influence enabled people to rethink and rebuild learning environments. Their aspiration to put students’ learning experience front and center is great. If only half of what the kids say is true, Musk’s initiative is doing a great job on this.

Ad Astra recently changed into Astra Nova. Their philosophy is honorable: student centricity, a value for individual abilities, praising curiosity, and encouraging problem-solving and critical thinking:

“What if students were taken seriously and their time well spent? Astra Nova believes in meaningful student experiences across age levels and domains.”

I couldn’t agree more — there’s no reason any child should not enjoy learning.


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Filed Under: đŸ§±Transforming Education Tagged With: education, Ideas, inspiration

How MasterClass Makes 9-Figure Revenues Without Really Selling Mastery

February 23, 2021 by Eva Keiffenheim


Lessons from EdTech founder David Rogier.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels

If you look at MasterClass from a business perspective, it’s a clear success story.

In 2015 David Rogier founded the company. Five years later, he closed a Series E financing round with a post-money valuation of $500M to $1B. In a recent interview, Rogier said MasterClass is on the path to an IPO.

In short: MasterClass is one of the few emerging unicorns in EdTech.

Yet, if you look at the education platform from a learner’s perspective, its success story is less clear. After all, mastery of complex skills and processes is the result of deliberate practice.

Michaelangelo, the painter of 5,000 square feet in the Sistine Chapel, once wrote:

“If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn’t seem so wonderful after all.”


MasterClass Isn’t About Mastery

In December, a friend asked whether I’d share a 2-for-1 subscription. I read on their website, ‘MasterClass delivers a world-class online learning experience.’

I said yes. $90 a year for learning from world-class performers like James Patterson, Sara Blakely, and Yotam Ottolenghi seemed like an incredible deal.

The two-sided business model

Customers pay for accessing pre-recorded courses, and instructors get paid for recording them. The value proposition: “Getting the best in the world to teach and share and make it a price point that is affordable.”

From the consumer side, it works like Netflix — a streaming platform with a subscription model. For $180 per year, consumers have access to all classes.

Instructors receive a one-time payment and a revenue cut. In 2017, a source reported MasterClass teachers get at least $100,000 per course plus a 30% revenue cut. In 2018, Bloomberg wrote instructors get a guaranteed sum, plus up to a 25% cut. However, in a later interview, Rogier shared contracts vary by individuals.

Hence MasterClass’s key activities are:

  • Recruiting world-class talent and turning them into instructors.
  • Recording Hollywood-like videos.
  • Providing and maintaining the streaming platform and an online community thread.
  • Marketing activities to win paying customers.

What MasterClass got wrong about learning

According to Rogier, instructors design their classes. But education researchers agree: Masters might not be the best teachers. Likely, they’re beginners when it comes to instructional design and the science of learning.

Most MasterClasses build on the thesis that online, low-touch courses are for skill-building. But our brains don’t work like recording devices. We don’t absorb information and knowledge by consuming content. Instead, learning is at least a three-step process — we acquire, encode, and retrieve.

I won’t bore you with the specifics. Barbara Oakley, Roediger, et al., and Lieberman have done a prolific job explaining how we learn and remember. But as a simplified rule of thumb:

“Learning that’s easy is like writing in sand, here today and gone tomorrow. Learning is deeper and more durable when it’s effortful.”

Learning through passive content consumption isn’t truly effortful.

How humans acquire mastery

Anders Ericsson, author of ‘Peak’ studied high performing-individuals and found that the best among them spent thousands of hours practicing in solitary, deliberate practice. Mastery is a product of practice quantity and quality.

Think about frequent fliers. Before every start, they watch a video of a flight attendant putting on the life vest. But as this study shows, actually putting on the inflatable life vest a single time would be more valuable than repeatedly watching another person doing it.

You acquire true mastery by performing the procedure yourself. MasterClass instructors have surely not gotten where they are by sitting on the couch, watching videos about their craft.

The author of ‘Ultralearnering’ calls this principle directness. It is essential for mastering any skill.

Yet, with a few exceptions, classes are as far away from direct practice as they can get. It’s like someone studying the guitar but not holding a guitar — just looking at videos of how to play the guitar.

Don’t get me wrong; I like MasterClass. With its tips and anecdotes, it inspires millions of people to become lifelong learners. But as a learning expert, I cry when I read on the website of an emerging EdTech Unicorn that they offer a ‘world-class online learning experience.’

Because they don’t.


Key Entrepreneurship Lessons

When you spend hours researching MasterClass, you can’t help but admire founder and CEO David Rogier. His humble and authentic stories make him one of the most sympathetic founders I’ve listened to.

Here’s what we can learn from his entrepreneurial journey.

#1 Build something you can be proud of even if it fails

Rogier was raised in part by his grandmother, a Holocaust survivor. When he was at her house as an 8-year-old, she told a story that changed him forever.

When his grandma fled to the States, her dream was to become a doctor. She sent applications to 25 medical schools — and got 25 rejections. When calling the deans to ask why they rejected her, all hang-up except for one, who said:

“You have three strikes against you:
You’re a woman. You’re an immigrant. You’re Jewish.”

She reapplied the next year. One school accepted her. Ultimately, she became a doctor. Here’s her lesson she shared with 8-year-old Rogier:

“Education is the only thing someone can’t take from you”

When Rogier graduated from Stanford Business School, he had so many ideas about starting up. He couldn’t decide. The advice that ultimately helped him decide was to pick something that, even if it fails, you’re gonna be proud of.

For Rogier, this meant building a product in education. He shared in an interview about his grandma’s story: “It’s what propelled me to create MasterClass, and to try to democratize mastery.”

So if there’s a lesson here for future entrepreneurs, it’s this: Don’t create a product based on market growth. Instead, build something you can be proud of, even if it fails.

#2 Don’t stop when people say your idea is unachievable

In 2014, Rogier told a former classmate about his MasterClass idea. The friend said it would be too difficult to get the instructors to sign up, especially in the beginning. How can you possibly attract world-class masters without having an existing customer base?

His friend was surprised Rogier presented the signed letters of world-class masters like Serena Williams. Yet, this journey wasn’t predestined.

Signing the best in the world wasn’t easy. He cold-called and e-mailed hundreds of masters in their craft. He says years went by without getting any yes.

Recruiting the first instructors was challenging, but Rogier says he rejects nine out of 10 people who want to become instructors.

Undoubtedly as a Stanford Graduate with an initial seed funding helped gave him credibility. Yet, he has one of the most important traits of founders: resilience.

#3 Reach out to people who can help you

Rogier decided he wanted to do something with education. Yet, he wasn’t sure what exactly this would be.

As a result, he posted ads on Craigslist to pay people $10 an hour to talk about their educational experiences. He asked his interview partners questions like:

  • Who did you learn the most from?
  • Which topics would you have loved to study more?
  • What things do you want to learn now? And how do you want to learn them?

These initial conversations helped him sharpen his vision. Plus, when he recorded the first videos, they looked like crap.

So Rogier reached out to a professor from his grad school who won two Oscars for filming. His professor offered to film the videos, and that’s how the courses started looking like high-class Hollywood movies.

Of course, most people don’t have Oscar winners in their direct network. Yet, asking for help when things don’t go your way certainly increases the chances of reaching the ultimate goal.


In Conclusion

Rogier said learning doesn’t have to be boring, and it doesn’t have to involve a classroom. And it’s true: When done right, education can be entertaining and online.

MasterClass managed to bring the quality of Netflix to the $100 billion e-learning industry. Yet, it failed to bring along state-of-art learning science.

Polished videos don’t lead to mastery. What matters more than lighting and sound are whether consumers really learn new skills. And without using evidence-based techniques for learning, this goal is out of reach.

If you want to feel inspired and listen to master’s success stories, go ahead and subscribe to MasterClass.

If you, however, want to achieve mastery, take courses that really help you learn new skills. Look out for features like:

  • Offering real-time feedback on learning progress. 
    (And no, not like MasterClass with collecting product feedback channel).
  • Giving direct access to instructors. 
    (And again, no, not like MasterClass offering contests to get a 1:1 in exchange for giving the instructors feedback).
  • Having assignments that are directly linked to your desired skill.
  • Including structured access to a fellow community.
  • Deploying spaced repetition features.
  • Using testing as a tool.

Whatever you choose, keep education researcher Terry Doyle’s words in mind who said:

“The one who does the work does the learning.”


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Filed Under: đŸ§±Transforming Education Tagged With: edtech, oped

8 Books Written by Thought Leaders Every Educator Should Read

May 30, 2020 by Eva Keiffenheim


“The skill I was learning was a crucial one, the patience to read things I could not yet understand.” — Tara Westover

Photo by Joyce McCown on Unsplash

In early 2018, I started asking every educator I met for book recommendations. It’s one of the habits that has changed my mind. Since March 2018, I’ve read 116 books.

This list portraits my eight favorite education books. For each book, I included my favorite quote, a one-sentence summary, three key lessons, and reasons why you might be interested in reading each book.

Table of Contents
Inspiring Stories
1. Educated by Tara Westover
2. I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai
Rethinking Education
3. Prepared: What Kids need for a fulfilled Life by Diane Tavenner
4. Creative Schools by Ken Robinson and Lou Aronica
5. Mindset by Carol Dweck
6. How Children Succeed by Paul Tough
For Educators 
7. Teach Like a Champion by Doug Lemov
8. Mathematical Mindsets by Joe Boaler

1. Educated by Tara Westover

“The skill I was learning was a crucial one, the patience to read things I could not yet understand.”

— Tara Westover

The Book in One Sentence

An unforgettable memoir about a woman who was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom and, despite her extremely difficult family circumstances, managed to earn a Ph.D. from an elite university.

Key Takeaways

  1. Education can be a way out of the most difficult situations
  2. Whatever learning challenge you face, you can do it
  3. Life is a quest for learning; one is never done with it.

Why should you read it?

This book is not only beautifully written, but it’s also one of the most powerful success stories about higher education. You’ll peek inside a Mormon family and off-grit Idaho life. Tara’s story will motivate and stick with you long after reading.


2. I am Mala by Malala Yousafzai

“One child, one teacher, one book, one pen can change the world.”
― Malala Yousafzai

The Book in One Sentence

I Am Malala celebrates the importance of girl’s education and portraits of brave parents who fight for their daughter’s rights in a society that favors men.

Key Takeaways

  1. The more you learn, the more you recognize the value of learning
  2. Education empowers people to have confidence in themselves
  3. All of us should stand up for the importance of education

Why should you read it?

This is one of the books that might end up changing the way you think and feel. Malala will put your life into perspective and will make you feel grateful for the rights you already have. Moreover, you’ll feel the importance of global (women) education from the first to the last scene.


3. Prepared: What Kids Need for a Fulfilled Life by Diane Tavenner

“Mastery is when you become good at something, autonomy is when you have some measure of control, and purpose is when you’re doing something for a reason that is authentic to you.”

— Diane Tavenner

The Book in One Sentence

This book is Diane’s story about designing innovative charter schools, so-called Summit schools, that focus on the ambitious goal to teach kids what they need to live a good life.

Key Takeaways

  1. Summit schools build on the three key elements: Self-directed learning, project-based learning and mentoring
  2. Summit schools make use of technology to enable personalized-learning experiences
  3. Besides reading, writing, and maths, the school teaches skills like self-confidence, the ability to learn, ability to manage their time, and a sense of direction

Why should you read it?

Diane dares to rethink our current education model by asking questions like “What is best for our kids?” and “What should I be doing now for my kids?”. Exploring these questions, she draws on stories of her troubled childhood. With hands-on advice, this story has the power to inspire teachers, parents, and decision-makers.


4. Creative Schools by Ken Robinson and Lou Aronica

“Education thrives on partnership and collaboration — within schools, between schools, and with other groups and organizations.”

— Ken Robinson

The Book in One Sentence

A guide for transforming education so that kids receive state-of-the-art training and develop the skills they need to excel in our transforming world.

Key Takeaways

  1. Several elements of our education system are based in the industrial period, like batching children by age group, fixed teaching periods, sharp subject divisions, and linear assessment methods
  2. Creative schools cultivate curiosity, creativity, criticism, communication, collaboration, compassion, composure, and citizenship.
  3. In a new environment, expert teachers fulfill four roles: engage, enable, expect, and empower.

Why should you read it?

This book highlights not only current flaws in our education systems but also provides concrete solutions, like child-centered learning and real-world curricula. After reading, you’ll know what parents, teachers, administrators, and policy-makers can do to change our outdated system.

Pictured by Author

5. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol S. Dweck

“No matter what your ability is, effort is what ignites that ability and turns it into accomplishment.”
― Carol S. Dweck

The Book in One Sentence

By distinguishing between a fixed and a growth mindset, the author demonstrates how success in school, work, sports, the arts, and almost every area of human endeavor is influenced by how we think about our talents and abilities.

Key Takeaways

  1. Mindsets shape whether we believe we can or can’t learn, change and grow
  2. People with a fixed mindset seek approval while those with a growth mindset seek development
  3. Role models from our childhood strongly influence our attitudes and ideas, yet we can change our mindset even in adulthood

Why should you read it?

This book is a must-read for every person looking for growth. After reading this book, you’ll be able to integrate a growth mindset into your life. For example, you’ll see mistakes as valuable learning opportunities. Studying this book can empower any educator to make positive changes in the classroom environment.


6. How Children Succeed by Paul Tough

““What matters, instead (of cognitive intelligence), is whether we are able to help her develop a very different set of qualities, a list that includes persistence, self-control, curiosity, conscientiousness, grit, and self-confidence. Economists refer to these as noncognitive skills, psychologists call them personality traits, and the rest of us sometimes think of them as character.”
― Paul Tough

The Book in One Sentence

Based on scientific studies and data from existing schools, this book explores factors that affect the success of children and proposes a new way of thinking about how children learn.

Key Takeaways

  1. “Executive Function” is a set of cognitive processes that drive and develop persistence, self-control, curiosity, motivation, determination, and confidence
  2. Executive Function Matters More To Academic Achievement as it begets character and character begets success
  3. Stress, in the form of a traumatic childhood experience, has a bigger impact on education than poverty

Why should you read it?

How children succeed has been described as “essential reading for anyone who cares about childhood in America.” It’s not only great for educators, but also parents as it explores traits like perseverance, conscientiousness, and self-discipline as ways to succeed in life. After reading this book, you’ll critically question the “intelligence theory” and understand why some people struggle in school and later in life while others thrive and prosper.


7. Teach Like a Champion by Doug Lemov

“Teach students how to do things right, don’t just establish consequences for doing them wrong.”
― Doug Lemov

The Book in One Sentence

A hands-on description of actual techniques and tools teachers can use for classroom management and attention encouragement.

Key Takeaways

  1. Effective educators have a large variety of techniques at their disposal
  2. Structure and deliver lessons with hooks, check for understandings, exit tickets, and reflection
  3. Create strong classroom cultures with entry routines, do now’s and non-verbal signaling

Why should you read it?

While this book is rather classic in terms of endorsing teaching to the test, the techniques work. In my first year of teaching, many tools helped me creating a constructive learning environment and designing engaging lessons. Doug Lemov gives countless useful, concrete tips for beginning teachers in elementary and middle-school classes. If you want to get a glimpse of the content, take a look at this well-structured summary.


8. Mathematical Mindsets: Unleashing Student’s Potential Through Creative Math, Inspiring Messages and Innovative Teaching by Jo Boaler

““Mathematics is at the center of thinking about how to spend the day, how many events and jobs can fit into the day, what size of space can be used to fit equipment or turn a car around, how likely events are to happen, knowing how tweets are amplified and how many people they reach.”
― Jo Boaler

The Book in One Sentence

Mathematical Mindsets puts Dweck’s mindset research into practice by offering strategies and activities that show every child can enjoy and succeed in math.

Key Takeaways

  1. Quality questions, described as low floor — heigh ceiling activities, are a simple and effective tool for self-differentiation
  2. Encourage students to make and learn from mistakes, as errors are a necessary precondition for learning.
  3. Focus on progress instead of performance, place effort before talent.

Why should you read it?

This book is great for pre-service teachers, as well as experienced educators who want to encourage their student’s growth mindsets. I read many book books on teaching maths, but this actionable advice has affected my teaching in the most profound way. Jo Boaler offers more practical information than Dweck’s “mindest” and is explicitly focused on teaching and learning.


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Filed Under: đŸ§±Transforming Education Tagged With: Books, education, teaching

Education Systems Are Sick. Here Are Three Suggestions for a Cure.

May 16, 2020 by Eva Keiffenheim


How schools can use talents, tech & growth mindsets to better prepare the next generations.

Photo by LinkedIn Sales Navigator on Unsplash

“We may not see the future, but our students will and our job is to help them make something of it.”

— Sir Ken Robinson

The next generation faces climate change, digital disruption, and need skills like critical thinking, problem-solving, information literacy, and self-directed learning.

Yet, most schools haven’t changed since your parents went to school.

Our education system operates in an outdated framework. It’s like we’re desperately using Henry Ford’s assembly lines to create the future of mobility.

Unless we want our kids to blame us for pushing them through a sick system, we better change the frames in which schools operate.

Below are three instructive examples of how to improve school systems. By reading, you’ll understand how teachers, grading systems, and technology can drive us into a new education era.

1. Attract The Best Talent To Teaching

Future education systems attract the most qualified people, so children learn from the best.

Meanwhile, we’re personally familiar with the high percentage of teachers who don’t like teaching or even worse, who hate children. It’s those persons that trampled on the emotional entryway to our brains and devalued our respect for the teaching profession.

And as if bad memories weren’t enough, the current system doesn’t even attract fresh, ambitious talent. There are careers in the private sector, in politics, in the artistic field, but not in school.

I made a brave decision when I waived half my salary and ignored social expectations to teach at a school rather than to consult at McKinsey.

This decision shouldn’t have felt brave. A teaching career needs to shine as bright as working for the “Big Three” does to some business students.


How to attract the best talent into the teaching profession?

By professionalizing a teacher’s job. Here’s a checklist for decision-makers:

  • Adequate workspaces with quiet cubicles for undisturbed deep work and rooms for team meetings and parent-teacher conferences.
  • Proper work equipment, including laptops, WIFI, and stationery for lesson preparation and communication.
  • Core working hours that enable team-oriented work and free the teaching profession from the stigma of a part-time job.
  • 360° feedback systems that support teachers in their personal and professional development.
  • Career paths and opportunities besides teaching, similar to Singapore’s leadership and senior specialist tracks.

„Like any other profession, career advancement is only limited by your own performance and potential.”

— Ministry of Education, Singapore

Once enough teaching prospects apply, universities can pick the most suitable candidates based on leadership qualities needed for teaching, like decisiveness, self-awareness, courage, clarity, empathy, and the willingness to learn.


2. Measure Student’s Progress by Learning Instead of Grading

In a new education era, students focus on learning progress instead of grades.

When education scaled in the 20th century, grades were our best guess for performance measurement. Now, we know better.

“Schools reward students who consistently do what they are told. Academic grades correlate only loosely with intelligence. Grades are, however, an excellent predictor of self-discipline, conscientiousness, and the ability to comply with rules.”

— Eric Barker

The most successful students are those who understand what teachers want and follow the rules. A student who arranges his worksheets in the right order and nods silently often receives better marks than his peer, who asks critical questions and challenges the status quo.

Here’s the unwritten formula to grade success: “Accept the ideas of your superiors and implement them quickly, silently, and never critically question any teacher.”

With this mantra in mind, you might wonder how students are supposed to become tomorrow’s critical thinkers and creative minds. Good point.

It’s hard to foster creativity and critical thinking when grades reward those who follow the rules.

Besides, children read grades as a measurement for their intelligence. Many students derive or destroy their self-worth based on a grade (and their parents’ reaction to this grade).

By an overrated attribution of meaning, the next Thomas Alva Edison might lose her interest in science, concluding she’s not good in Chemistry.

“I’ve never been good in _______ (subject),” is the most noxious statement grading has produced.

A new education era replaces grades with learning progress.


How to measure a student’s learning progress?

By teaching kids to judge their progress based on learning instead of grades. Guiding questions could be:

  • What new did you learn today?
  • What have you done better than yesterday?
  • What mistake did you make that taught you something?
  • What’s the most helpful feedback you received today?
  • What did you try hard today?
  • What are you curious about, and what will you explore next?

Future schools build on the work of the American psychologist Carol Dweck who demonstrated the role of mindsets in students’ achievement.

Fixed Mindset vs. Growth Mindset (Source: Author based on C. Dweck)

“Test scores and measures of achievement tell you where a student is, but they don’t tell you, where a student could end up.”

— Carol Dweck


Photo by Daniel von Appen on Unsplash

3. Using State-of-the-Art Technology To Facilitate Learning

In a new education era, all children experience personalized learning.

Remember when you were sitting in a classroom, bored to death because some of your classmates didn’t get the concept? Or were you the one rushing and struggling, because you didn’t want the others to wait for you?

Unfortunately, classroom reality hasn’t changed much.

Schools expect students to learn at the same speed and with the same means. It doesn’t help that we batch children through our school system, assuming age is the most important thing they’ve in common.

Future education systems make use of technology to adapt learning to students’ individual needs.


How To Make Use of Technology?

By scaling best practices like BetterLesson or Teach to One.

Teach to One has digitized 10.000 math units as educational games and explanatory videos. In large rooms, children of different ages learn simultaneously while each student works on a device. Algorithms determine personalized daily schedules based on student’s learning needs, with each schedule and instruction plan adjusted to suit their ability and most successful learning method.

In classrooms with technology, teachers are learning guides, motivators, and coaches. Instead of keeping an entire class quite and busy, they focus on social interaction in 1:1 check-ins and smaller group settings.

“In Teach to One, you’re always doing something. Because there is no set curriculum, you can keep moving up. Once you know something, you can just go on to the next concept and figure that one out.”

— Student at Teach to One

The result: Within five years, these students learn 40–50% more mathematics than comparison students with conventional teaching methods.

Algorithm facilitated curricula can give students what they need in the way they need and when they need it.

“The future is called digital learning. It’s the most important innovation in education since the invention of the printing press.”

— Rafael Reif


The Bottom Line

Students, parents, teachers, community leaders, and decision-makers — together, we have to demand courageous and new solutions in education! Little will change if we stay quiet.

Let’s start by acknowledging all the great teachers who make the best of a diseased system. The ones who explore new ways of teaching, encourage students to ask critical questions and focus on learning progress.

Let’s help them by attracting more talent to teaching, shifting the grade focus to learning focus, and using the power of algorithms for student’s personalized learning experiences.

There’s no reason any student should not enjoy learning.


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Sources

Barker, E. (2017). Barking up the wrong tree. The surprising science behind why everything you know about success is (mostly) wrong. Harper One.

Dweck, C. (2006). Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Random House.

Haynes, V. (1995). Being a Head of Class Isn’t Same as Having Inside Track on Life. Chicago Tribune.

Papageorge, N. W., Ronda, V., & Zheng, Y. (2019). The economic value of breaking bad: Misbehavior, schooling, and the labor market. National Bureau of Economic Research.

Robinson, K. (2010). Changing education paradigms. RSA Animate, The Royal Society of Arts.

Singapore Government (2020). Teaching Careers.

The Economist (2014). The digital degree. The Economist Group Limited.

Filed Under: đŸ§±Transforming Education Tagged With: education system

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