Ask HN: Why is there so little innovation in education?

[ggordan]

At the moment, the biggest VLE(Virtual Learning Environment), which is used by a large number of universities, is BlackBoard. And yet the product is poor by todays standards.

There are a lot of new startups that are concentrating on creating 'fashionable' companies, usually social networks of some kind, and yet the education sector is constantly being overlooked.

So perhaps a better question would be, are there any new startups addressing this problem?

Note: I also posted this question on Quora, but it got 1 reply which didn't really answer the question.

[patio11]

Education sales combines all the wonderful fun of multi-year Big Freaking Enterprise consultative sales cycles with the vast untapped budget of your local pizza shop. Your product, if it is going to be effective, is virtually certain to threaten the continued employment of a stakeholder who has veto authority over deploying it. Educational institutions and educators are not rewarded for doing education well -- indeed, if they have greater than minimal competency, improving just gets their budgets cut.

[revorad]

That's why I think education is especially the most important area where startups should focus obsessively on making something great, rather than making money off it. Go directly to the user; if you don't bypass the system, you won't succeed.

Like most other big changes, the most effective one for education might be to make the old system irrelevant rather than fight it head-on.

[Retric]

Add to that Blackboard has a large patent portfolio and uses it to defend it's self vigorously.

[IsaacL]

It's interesting you should bring this up, because I've thought a few times about trying to start an Education-based company after I graduate - it's something I'm both interested in and passionate about (several family members are teachers and headteachers, I've worked as an EFL teacher twice).

One thing that puts me off is what patio11 mentions - selling to schools and universities would be difficult and it's unclear whether they actually want it. OTOH, it does seem like a lot of individuals in education are interested in the potential of e-learning (to give their institution a USP if nothing else), though I've been uninspired by a lot of the examples of it I've seen in practice.

One area which does see a lot of fashionable, Techcrunch-y startups is language learning - off the top of my head I can name Busuu, italki, and Voxswap which are language-learning social networks, ChinesePod and Skritter which are targeted at Mandarin learners, and Smart.fm and YC-funded Lingt which offer online flashcards. These, of course, are more aimed at individuals, suggesting that it's something much easier to target.

"Disrupting Education" is an interesting read; the author's thesis is that e-learning is a 'disruptive innovation', that will first find success in niche areas where traditional education cannot reach (for example, providing high school students courses like Arabic, which are difficult to find teachers for). There it will gain momentum until it begins to displace more traditional education (though he holds that it will empower human teachers, not replace them).

[nwinter]

At Skritter, we spent a lot of effort trying to sell to schools. In the process, individual sales picked up on their own to the point where we realized we were wasting our time on the schools.

It's not that it can't be done. If you can directly make or save the school money, you can do it. But don't just try to help it teach better. Very few will pay for that.

[kongqiu]

+1 for ChinesePod

[shawndumas]

Steven Jobs says:

"I used to think that technology could help education. I've probably spearheaded giving away more computer equipment to schools than anybody else on the planet. But I've had to come to the inevitable conclusion that the problem is not one that technology can hope to solve. What's wrong with education cannot be fixed with technology. No amount of technology will make a dent.

It's a political problem. The problems are sociopolitical. The problems are unions. You plot the growth of the NEA [National Education Association] and the dropping of SAT scores, and they're inversely proportional. The problems are unions in the schools. The problem is bureaucracy. I'm one of these people who believes the best thing we could ever do is go to the full voucher system.

I have a 17-year-old daughter who went to a private school for a few years before high school. This private school is the best school I've seen in my life. It was judged one of the 100 best schools in America. It was phenomenal. The tuition was $5,500 a year, which is a lot of money for most parents. But the teachers were paid less than public school teachers - so it's not about money at the teacher level. I asked the state treasurer that year what California pays on average to send kids to school, and I believe it was $4,400. While there are not many parents who could come up with $5,500 a year, there are many who could come up with $1,000 a year.

If we gave vouchers to parents for $4,400 a year, schools would be starting right and left. People would get out of college and say, "Let's start a school." You could have a track at Stanford within the MBA program on how to be the businessperson of a school. And that MBA would get together with somebody else, and they'd start schools. And you'd have these young, idealistic people starting schools, working for pennies.

They'd do it because they'd be able to set the curriculum. When you have kids you think, What exactly do I want them to learn? Most of the stuff they study in school is completely useless. But some incredibly valuable things you don't learn until you're older - yet you could learn them when you're younger. And you start to think, What would I do if I set a curriculum for a school?

God, how exciting that could be! But you can't do it today. You'd be crazy to work in a school today. You don't get to do what you want. You don't get to pick your books, your curriculum. You get to teach one narrow specialization. Who would ever want to do that?

These are the solutions to our problems in education. Unfortunately, technology isn't it. You're not going to solve the problems by putting all knowledge onto CD-ROMs. We can put a Web site in every school - none of this is bad. It's bad only if it lulls us into thinking we're doing something to solve the problem with education.

Lincoln did not have a Web site at the log cabin where his parents home-schooled him, and he turned out pretty interesting. Historical precedent shows that we can turn out amazing human beings without technology. Precedent also shows that we can turn out very uninteresting human beings with technology.

It's not as simple as you think when you're in your 20s - that technology's going to change the world. In some ways it will, in some ways it won't." [1]

----

[1]: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.02/jobs_pr.html

[Empact]

Incidentally, the incoming governor of Florida is talking about putting in a full voucher program in the form of broader "education savings accounts" which also work for college savings and such.

The response from the education establishment and intertwined media is predictable (http://news.google.com/news/story?pz=1&cf=all&ned=us...): FUD about its effect on public education. Unfortunately the establishment is too concerned about keeping their own jobs to consider the importance of choice to developing the future of online education systems - which will improve outcomes and potentially dramatically reduce costs as well.

Florida could well be the voucher battleground for 2011, so if you're interested you perhaps should consider getting involved.

[curveship]

The comparison of private school tuition to public school costs has been debunked long ago. It's apples to oranges. Private schools can get rid of their problem cases, public schools can't (and problem cases can take up a huge amount of teacher time). Private schools can cherry pick the best students, public schools can't. Private school parents, simply by the fact that they sought out an alternative (selection bias) are often more involved in their kids' education. They also often donate substantial amounts of time and resources over and above tuition, which never shows up in the books but represents a real resource.

Jobs blames the unions, but what he misses is that the union didn't get that way all on its own. The union's job is to defend the interests of its teachers, and teachers have been given a pretty bad deal over the last 50 years. Falling pay, additional responsibilities, decreased autonomy/creativity and administrators who are all too willing to throw them under the bus at the slightest parent complaint. The union preceives rightly that its constituency is under siege, and becomes obstructionist accordingly.

The studies I've seen of voucher schools -- at least the ones that weren't financed by voucher advocates or businesses -- have shown that once voucher schools have to operate under the conditions that publich schools face, the results are statistically indistinguishable.

[kakaylor]

>I have a 17-year-old daughter who went to a private school...It was judged one of the 100 best schools in America. It was phenomenal. The tuition was $5,500 a year, which is a lot of money for most parents. But the teachers were paid less than public school teachers - so it's not about money at the teacher level.

In response to Steve Jobs:

I agree, quality of education isn't necessarily about pay at the teacher level, but this isn't the best argument about why. The students attending this school necessarily have parents who put a high priority on education; at the very least, they are willing to pay $5,500 to a top 100 school. I think those parents are making a huge impact. If you move that exact same school with those exact same teachers into a less affluent environment with a $150 tuition I don't think you would see the same phenomenal results.

[cicero]

I work at a small private school that focuses on good teachers, strong community, and an intellectually demanding curriculum. Although we use technology where it makes sense for us (Moodle, classroom projector computers, computer lab), but we are low-tech compared to our competition in the area. In my opinion, we provide a better education than they do, and we are definitely less expensive that the other top-tier private schools in the area.

My conclusion is that although technology can be very helpful, it is not the key to a good education. The key is having well-trained, dedicated teachers who care about the students, working in an environment where they have the freedom to actually do their job. That's what we have here, and I wouldn't trade it for a job at most other schools for twice the pay.

[IsaacL]

Actually, one of the more interesting policy pledges of the new UK government was something like you described, apparently inspired by the Swedish system of "free schools".

The idea was to let parents (or whoever) establish their own schools, and be eligible for public funding based on how many students they enrolled. It was the flagship policy of the Conservative Party's 'Big Society' initiative, something that was criticised a lot both by the right (because they didn't like it) and the left (because they didn't believe the Tories were serious about it). It wasn't mentioned much during the election campaigns since the debate was about austerity and the mood was too grim, and I don't know if anything has happened about it, but I thought it sounded like a good idea.

[revorad]

He made some good points, but even a visionary like Jobs missed how his prediction of networked computers would help improve education. Once again, I point to the Khan Academy.

If all Salman Khan had was a log cabin, he would have probably still taught because it's his passion. But he would only touch the lives of a few hundred at most, not millions.

The same applies for the top universities making their content available for free online. Do people really not see what it means to students outside America and Europe?

With age, even Jobs got jaded and forgot his own golden words: STAY HUNGRY, STAY FOOLISH.

[adammichaelc]

I'm not a fan of publicly-funded medicine, but I just had a thought as I read this. What if instead of one-size-fits-all socialized medicine, the US tried a hybrid approach that involved "medical vouchers." You pick the doc, the treatment, etc. You have $x to spend. You shop.

Seems like if this was done right it would increase competition and lead to better outcomes.

[inovica]

What a great find and thank you for posting. I appreciate its a little old now but the message is still relevant

[maxawaytoolong]

Anyone know what school he is talking about? When did this article come out? $5500/year sounds like a good deal. I've seen private schools for the rich and famous, like Dalton, that charge $35,000 a year for K-12.

[cafard]

Steve Jobs had done pretty well with the "young, idealist people working for [relatively] pennies" model. But is there no value to experience in the teaching profession?

[derrida]

perhaps the problem IS the SAT system. I have a high IQ, and I can't for the life of me understand why the US uses SAT's which are so similar to IQ tests. In Australia, the HSC required me to work, and people less smart than me who worked harder beat me.

The SAT's on the otherhand, encourage a feeling of "giftedness" and unwillingness to take risks. If I had to just deal with the SAT's I would be lazier than I already am!

[codejoust]

I've been homeschooled, and have taken online classes. With the internet, from Wikipedia to small websites on a certain topic, the internet has made research and homeschooling much easier. Yes, I still did use textbooks and read, but the internet itself has been a great learning environment to pursue at your own pace. Some of the learning management software I've used improved over time. Often, most of the learning management software was Moodle with a wimba classroom. The wimba classroom was not quite so good, but Moodle (despite being spotty at times) worked well for its purpose. With the Pearson network, they're running a custom system that technologically is different (webobjects and asp), however it isn't too distracting to show flash presentations, submit assignments for grading, run discussions, etc. If someone comes along and makes a great OSS or SAS solution for a learning management system there is certainly room to improve. The difference between my experience is the cost is a concern to those using these programs so they try to find the best and lowest cost solution.

[inovica]

Very interesting to hear from someone who was homeschooled. I currently have my two children (4 and 8) in a private school here in the UK but my wife and I said it would be great to give them a different type of education rather than what is traditional (we're non-conformists anyway!). How did you find the social aspect, or did your parents deliberately engage you with others?

[mashmac2]

Moodle is another interesting option. I know a few schools that are using it, and it certainly has some fan support:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUrhl974wSE

(I recognize it's not a massively innovative product compared to Blackboard, but I do prefer it. It's a step in the right direction.)

[narrator]

The most unpleasant fact about the education business is what to do with the not so bright kids and how to keep them from holding back the bright kids. (Yes I know, all children are above average and are fully capable of absolutely anything if they just try)

[eru]

It's probably more about motivation. Not-so-bright but enthusiastic kids probably won't hold you back as much as apathetic children.

[ZeroGravitas]

Genuine question: If you were running a country (rather than being a bright kid, or the parent of bright kids as I'd imagine most of us here are or were) would you prioritise the bright kids at the expense of those lower down the bell curve? If so why?

[cicero]

I worked for a year as a software developer at a company that made educational products. In many ways it was a good company, but I was frustrated by what I considered substandard quality in their software products. It wasn't that they didn't care at all about quality, but the nature of the education market tended to encourage us to cut corners on quality.

Most educational software is used by students and teachers, but purchased by administrators. The administrators making the buying decisions compare competing products according to price and feature lists. Therefore, we were encouraged to match and exceed the feature count of the competition in order to get sales. If the new features introduced a few bugs or made the user interface awkward, that was less of a problem than not getting the features out in time for the academic year buying cycle. The buyers might never use the product enough to experience the problems. Other commercial software developers have similar struggles with the balance of more features, meeting market windows, and maintaining good design and quality. However, I believe this problem is exacerbated in the educational market by the gulf that separates those who buy from those who use the software.

[andrewce]

The reason there is not as much innovation in education is fairly simple:

The people doing the innovating rarely feel the pain points, and the people doing the decision-making rarely feel the pain points.

To make this more concrete, those who are in decision-making positions are administrators (who are concerned with teaching on a macro level and on an "are all the boxes in this curriculum guide getting checked off?"), school board members (who are rarely in classrooms), and legislators (who only go into classrooms when it's politically expedient).

Any type of "innovation" comes down from on high based on perceived problems rather than actual problems.

In the meantime, you've got lots of teachers in the trenches, some of whom are luddites, but most of whom are willing to try something new, particularly if it makes their job easier or more effective.

I got in trouble (when I was teaching) for using an online gradebook rather than a paper gradebook because my principal had less control over it. When using technology, the mantra was "Why don't you just have them make a powerpoint?"

If you want real innovation in educational technology, it'll have to either come from the teachers, or it'll have to come from people who work closely with teachers. From there, you'll have to sell it to administrators (in order to even begin to make money), while teachers (at least in my experience) generally do a pretty good job of evangelizing improvements to those who are still willing to improve (which, I think, is more than it sometimes seems, but fewer than perhaps there should be).

TL;DR: there's no innovation because current products either create more pain-points than they solve, or they don't solve any relevant pain points that the people using them actually have.

[elvirs]

I have been working on two projects targeting university niche and after months these are my observations. Universities are managed like kingdoms, not republics. The deans and professors have absolute power, students do not get a say. Even if students could rise their voices they prefer not to rise their voice as their degree (and parents' money) are on the line. Professors and deans like to keep things run the old way, everything with pen on paper. The less technology involved the more they enjoy their life. (I think this is because these guys are mainly 50+ and those types do not like to scratch things they've known for 30 years and learn new technological stuff) Technology makes things more transparent and more data available to people that university thinks should not be. I think technological innovation will start to boost in universities in like 20 years when students of my age who enjoys technology in every bit of their life become professors and deans, etc.

[briangreen]

I prefer my students do their assignments on paper because its a lot easier to grade. I have yet to see an online method that works as easily as paper -- I have often though about developing my own but have not had the time. One example, you give an online test or exam, you have to click about 50 times to get through all the essay questions, and then you still have to get the grades into some other system since many of them can't import/export a standard format. And if those essays are homework and a student turns it in late, you get to the end of the semester and the student asks why you didnt give them credit; they have to notify you they did the assignment after the due date, otherwise you wont know its completed. The alternative is checking all your assignments online periodically to see if any new submissions are posted from previouse assignments. I know this sounds like its not a big deal, but multiply these frustrations by 120 students, and you start to get an idea that its not as simple as you make it out to be.

I think one innovation that might make this easier is standardizing of test formats in XML, so they can easily be migrated between platforms. Standardizing grade sheets might help too, so when you start using one system you are not locked in. I have tests in one online system that I do not care for, but to migrate to Moodle I have to rewrite everything from scratch.

The bottom line is that whether your students use pen and paper, fancy online systems like Moodle etc, learning does not change much. Students still need to learn, and professors still need to asses them in basically the same way. If technology does not offer some advantage that can't be replicated with "stone knives and bear skins" you gain nothing and its difficult to justify moving to technology.

[glen]

We are addressing the problem with www.nixty.com. We launched in July. There is definitely a lot of opportunity here. There are also a lot of challenges in addressing this market. If interested shoot me an email glen at nixty dot com. I'd be happy to talk more with you about this space and share what we've learned in the process. Also, if you are interested, here is an overview video of what we are doing: http://www.youtube.com/user/NIXTYLearning. Here is another video - an interview with Scoble -- it is more of a high-level sketch of where we see things going (more emphasis on research-backed open courseware etc.): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfuDRlUp3AU

[guynamedloren]

There is a huge underlying theme in the comments here that innovative technology will not be a silver bullet for the education system - and I agree. What is being vastly overlooked, however, is that technology can be an external factor that drives internal innovation. If a technology was developed that rips apart the current system and causes it to fail (more so than it already is), I think somebody will eventually catch on and say something like, "Hey, our system isn't working. Solutions are readily available and can be downloaded in less than a minute. Every single student has every solution to every homework problem and every exam that we administer. I think we might have to try something new."

And that's where the innovation happens.

[trizk]

http://www.khanacademy.org/ (no affiliation)

[michaelhart]

I'm working on a project now that will aggregate self-motivated learning online. Watch a lecture on YouTube? (Many universities post them). Get credit for it. Start a discussion with others who also watched it. Ask and answer questions. Find like-minded people and learn with each other, set your own challenges and goals.

That's only half of it, but the core idea is this: We learn online already. Pave the cowpaths. Give people credit for what they already do.

I'm also looking for a co-founder. Anyone interested in this project (suggestions, more info, etc.), I'd love to chat: http://scr.im/michaelhart

[revorad]

Better content and teachers have greater leverage than technology in education. The perfect example is Khan Academy, who are only now building applications for exercises based on their stellar content. If a startup did want to help, it could help great teachers leverage and amplify the power of existing tools to create and spread good content.

A few startups are trying to use games as a new way of teaching. There are lots of language learning sites, which are using peer-to-peer tools, but they seem more interested in plastering their sites with ads than actually educating people.

[Egregore]

Can you point to some examples of startups trying to use games as a new way of teaching?

[kaptainlange]

A friend of mine started http://hootcourse.com/ which attempts to integrate the communication tools students are using with their courses.

The instructors and students using it thus far seem to enjoy it. Though it's not a replacement for products like Blackboard since it's not really a repository for content, it does replace their poor communication tools well.

[tgriesser]

Open source, Java based "Sakai" http://sakaiproject.org/ has replaced Blackboard at Wake Forest University, which is encouraging to see...although I have heard some complaints that it is difficult to learn to use for professors, even among those who consider themselves above the average technologically.

I think that the biggest problem preventing the innovation of this sector is definitely the bureaucracy as other comments have pointed out. The amount of time and effort that startups put into their products just isn't worth the number of headaches that come along with the target market.

Also, the education environment does not fit well with the "launch early, often" model that many startups employ. When evaluating options, they really want something that is 100% polished and deploy-able, which requires a level of airtight that most startups are not shooting for.

Building something for the university environment is sort of like enterprise but worse, because there aren't immediate effects to the "bottom line" when bad choices are made.

[vannevar]

There are lots of symptoms and consequences, but the core reason is the simple fact that people don't want their child to be put at a disadvantage; consequently they are reluctant to a) experiment on their own child with an innovative program, for fear it will disadvantage them or b) allow others to experiment with innovations that their own child does not have access to, for fear it will give the others an advantage.

For a public school to innovate requires them to first overcome a) by showing clear evidence that the innovation really works (not easy when you're talking about educational programs that take years to bear fruit), then overcome b) by implementing the innovation broadly enough for everyone to participate (generally much too expensive for the community to support). All the other usual scapegoats (unions, standard tests, Texas textbook companies) are marginal influences compared to this pervasive feature of human nature. As usual, we have met the enemy and he is us.

[alexwestholm]

I noticed this recently, developed a concept that I thought might be a good substitute for some prolific higher ed software and pitched it. The result: "Great idea! But we've got no funding? We'd love to use it though... maybe you could sell it to our current vendor and they could bundle it in? We definitely couldn't afford to pay for it ourselves though."

[inovica]

Having two young children I would love to see something happen in this space. Currently I have my children in a private school on the basis that its "the best I can do for them now" - ie small class sizes, larger resources than a normal school. Whilst this is working out 'ok' I do feel that the idea of teaching children in a traditional manner - ie knowledge transfer from a person at the front - is wasteful. Outside of school I try to get them to solve problems by discovering their own solutions. I've looked at home schooling, but they would lose the social aspect. Its an area I'm just starting to explore, to find "a better way" so would welcome any comments, ideas, sites etc that people know of for an alternative way to traditional schooling. I do understand this is slightly different to the topic that has been started, but it still fits within the same area - that of innovation

[kongqiu]

Have you considered a Montessori?

[theo10]

I've used at least 2 VLEs but I have to say that I still rather use Yahoo Groups or the best one would be Google Wave... But, yeah, I totally agree that the environments available nowadays doesn't show any evolution. I think that's a reflection of the institutions (universities, in general) they are linked with. Both the education and the working processes have to undergo huge transformation/evolution (theoretically it should have started by education, but I can't see it happening). We still pretty much have been going to school more or less the same for the past 700 years. If we want to be in the 21st century, we must move on from the 13th.