Partnering for Impact: Increasing Cyberlearning’s Influence in Education Markets

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Authors: Avron Barr, Jeremy Roschelle, and Lewis Johnson
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Overview

Many Cyberlearning researchers know that their work could make a significant positive impact on today’s educational products and practices, if only there were a way to get it out there. CIRCL’s Partnering for Impact activity offers guidance, resources, and workshops to help researchers think through their options and be effective in their outreach efforts.

Partnering for Impact is not new; indeed it has already succeeded. For example, a number of companies sell products based on concepts and technologies developed under the Cyberlearning umbrella. Some, like Carnegie Learning and Alelo, were startup companies launched by the researchers themselves. Other researchers ushered their technology into the marketplace by licensing technology or by consulting for established publishers and technology firms about new product or product feature ideas. And, of course, there are likely many ed tech products that have incorporated the ideas that learning scientists shared openly in their publications and conference presentations.

Terms like commercialization, productization, and tech transfer are often used to describe the process of moving ideas and technology out of the lab and into the marketplace. The education marketplace, however, is special for a number of reasons: state and federal regulations; balkanization (procurement at the state, district, and school level); lagging technology infrastructure in the schools; teachers without the needed time or training; and perennially tight budgets. And the marketplace is now changing rapidly. For example, one major textbook publisher has increased its software development staff from 5 to 500 people in the last year and converted all of its 1500 titles into digital offerings of some type. Thus, approaches to bring consumer, healthcare, or military innovations to market do not always smoothly apply in education.

Because of the special expertise and capabilities involved in bringing educational products to market, arranging to work with people who already have the needed expertise — entrepreneurs, investors, educational publishers, marketing consultants, educators — will expedite the transition from research to broad adoption: partnering for impact.

Cyberlearning researchers can envision the possibilities afforded by learning science. Ed tech companies work with educators every day, and have insights into the critical needs and major opportunities in education. Partnering can lead to scalable learning solutions that address these critical needs, and which are infused with insights into how people learn.
– W. Lewis Johnson, Ph.D., Co-Founder and CEO, Alelo

Learning scientists’ and Cyberlearning researchers’ technical inventions and findings about how technology is best used in the classroom are extremely relevant to the current ed tech boom — the multi-year surge of investment in new products from startups and established companies that target education at all levels. There are now hundreds of startups, incubators, accelerators, and hackathons focused on the education market.

In 2014 alone, US ed tech companies raised $1.36B in 201 rounds from more than 386 unique investors. (EdSurge, Dec. 23, 2014).

Despite the fact that tech entrepreneurs are the celebrities of our day, there are often more effective and efficient ways to move scientific research into products and practice. Researchers who want to invest their time in outreach activities should consider the alternatives to entrepreneurship, think about their own personal motivations, and take a fresh look at the potential impact of their work from the perspective of market demand.

  • Often there is little incentive for, or accommodation of, entrepreneurial efforts in academic career planning or in the funding of scientific research.
  • While Cyberlearning researchers (and NSF) often envision their work applied in K-12 classrooms in the US, that’s probably the hardest market to penetrate. Could the innovation be a game changer for community colleges, private schools, foreign universities, or enterprise training departments?
  • What problem gets solved? Who will buy the product or service featuring your innovation, and why? Do these future customers need relief badly enough to change “the way things have always been done”?
  • Typically, not every element of one’s work has commercial potential. What’s the gem? What insight or innovation will capture the interest of product developers and their customers? Is there some way (patent, copyright) to protect inventions so as to assure that a commercial venture can profit from the work before it is copied by competitors?
  • What work is left to do, besides “hardening the software,” before the innovation is packaged in a product that can be sold and used effectively?
  • Does it make more sense, based on personal goals, to forego entrepreneurship and license the technology or consult for a while with an established firm, and let them bring a product into the world?

There are many areas of opportunity within the corpus of Cyberlearning research. Some researchers may indeed be appropriate candidates for the venture funded startup route. But for those not ready to devote their energy to a startup company, there are alternatives.

The subsequent tabs in this article highlight some of the issues and options to be considered by researchers who are interested in seeing their work move into products and into the schools. We also list some recommended first steps and useful resources, including non-academic conferences that offer excellent opportunities for exposure and for finding partners as one’s plans mature.

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