e-Literate

Present is Prologue

Tag: Procurement

  • Announcing a #ResilienceNetwork Procurement Solution for COVID

    One of the massive challenges facing colleges as they prepare for the return to school during COVID is procuring everything they need, from equipment to keep people safe, to educational software and services to keep students learning online. That’s why I’m delighted to announce that E&I Cooperative Services is joining the Empirical Educator Project as a sponsor and contributing their COVID-19 Recovery Solutions Navigator as a resilience network project.

    You may not have heard of E&I, but if you work at a U.S. college or university, chances are very good that your institution has a relationship with the cooperative. E&I is the only member-owned, non-profit purchasing cooperative solely focused on serving the needs of education. They use the aggregate purchasing power of more than 5,000 member institutions to develop competitively solicited contracts that comply with generally accepted procurement standards, including those of state systems.  E&I has been a member-owned organization since its founding in 1934, and membership is free.

    We all know what a bottleneck the procurement process can be. It’s extra time (and costs) that a lot of colleges don’t have right now. E&I has been working with its members to map out their needs, create a list of solutions, and offer competitively-solicited or adoptable contracts as quickly as the process will allow. The E&I team has been working hard to get ahead of this part of the problem for you, both by anticipating solutions you may need and negotiating contract terms so you don’t have to. The COVID-19 Recovery Solutions Navigator is itself a contribution to the resilience network, since it provides a map of potential needs that will help accelerate institutions’ internal planning conversations. The contract negotiation that E&I handles is priceless.

    As part of their participation in EEP, E&I has engaged e-Literate to advise them on potential areas of need in teaching and learning and, more broadly, student success. Because procurement can only proceed so quickly and still pass muster with compliance requirements, there will likely be several waves of these RFP solicitations. The first, which focuses on online learning program consulting and faculty training, can be found here.

    This is the heart of it, though:

    E&I’s intent of this Request for Proposal is to solicit qualified, experienced, financially sound, and responsible firms to provide Online Learning Program Consulting and Faculty Training as required by members. The Respondent(s) must have the expertise and experience with providing faculty training for online course development & pedagogical design. This may include the building of new or expansion of online programs for higher education institutions and K-12 school districts. Additionally, E&I is soliciting qualified, experienced, financially sound, and responsible firms to provide consulting for institutional and/or organizational change management for online learning programs.

    Proposals are due by 1:00 PM ET on Thursday July 23, 2020, so if you are a vendor that wants to be considered in this process (or work with a vendor that you think should submit a proposal), now is the time to apply.

    More support for COVID and empirical education is coming

    As I mentioned earlier, this is the first teaching and learning-related solicitation. E&I will be conducting at least one more teaching and learning-related COVID RFPs in areas that are yet to be determined. Suggestions are welcomed.

    E&I has also signed an MOU with EEP to collaborate on the creation and execution of procurement processes that incorporate research and evidence of impact directly into the procurement process. While we are focused on the urgent needs of the COVID crisis for now, we also intend to make it easier for institutions to evaluate and procure educational products and services through a process that takes evidence of educational impact into account.

    Register for the e-Literate LIVE! event on Wednesday, August 26th from 1:30 PM to 3:00 PM ET with E&I leadership to talk with them about their #resiliencenetwork EEP contribution and provide input for the next steps in the project.

  • UNC Learning Technology Commons: Easing the procurement problem with NGDLE

    I was planning to write a descriptive post about the new UNC Learning Technology Commons, but there is already some excellent coverage. UNC’s Matthew Rascoff wrote a blog post on Medium that captures the basics quite well:

    A compelling recent report from EDUCAUSE proposes that the “Next Generation Digital Learning Environment” will be based on a “‘Lego’ approach,” in which “components … allow individuals and institutions the opportunity to construct learning environments tailored to their requirements and goals.” The authors, Malcolm Brown, Joanne Dehoney, and Nancy Millichap, envision an app-like ecosystem of interoperable ed tech tools, each of which does one thing well, rather than the monolithic collection of functionality that is the learning management system.

    Today, with the launch of the UNC Learning Technology Commons, the University of North Carolina system is taking a step in the direction of this more modular, flexible, and learner- and educator-centered approach.

    We’re reimagining the way university faculty and staff buy the ed tech they need to help their students learn. Our goal is to empower educators with the best instructional tools available — in the classroom or online.

    The UNC Learning Technology Commons is a system-wide effort to curate an annotated catalogue of digital learning products available for accelerated purchase by the 20,000 faculty members of the UNC system, and to build a community of educators who share (anonymized, aggregated) learning outcomes and user experiences with those products.

    (more…)

  • There is a Stupid Question: Are You Asking it?

    I hate to say this as a former classroom teacher – there is a stupid question in EdTech.  I have to go on the attack because this question is likely one of the biggest roadblocks to innovation.

     Is Technology Effective?

    The education sector is hung up on this question.  But there are two false assumptions underneath this question that make it one of the few stupid questions you can ask.

    Here are the two deadly assumptions: 1) Technology is homogenous, and 2) Technology is static.

    1) Technology is not homogenous.  To the contrary, Products are different.   There is no such thing as “technology.”  Technology is simply the black box we accept as the term to wrap around things built by invisible layers of computers and machines, advanced science and gobbledegook.  Technology can be pinned more specifically as the methodology, ingredients, or knowledge building blocks used to create new Products.  Technology cannot be effective or ineffective, but Products can be both effective or ineffective, depending on if you are doing the thing the Product is Designed for. That’s a capital D.  Design is an intention manifested in choices.  So, the question is not whether or not technology is effective at increasing outcomes, but rather does this Product do what it is Designed to do?  If not, that doesn’t mean the Product is not worthwhile.  Indeed, most products take years of incubation and Design iteration.  If a Product doesn’t yet do what it is Designed to do, but you believe in the direction, that’s all the more reason to get on board.

    2) Technology is not static.  It moves and moves quickly, and lately Products move so quickly its almost not worth talking about the past as much as the future.  More importantly, technology cannot be separated from the people that make it.  Designing and building a product is now more of a craft than a science, and you need to believe in the artisanship of the people behind it.  What’s happened is that, at least on the Internet, the many layers of the “technology stack” such as languages, servers, memory management, and a bunch of other things that would make my grandma fall asleep, are now open source, figured out, and easy to install, implement, and manage.  This means that coding the Product is now manipulating a smaller layer, involves less code management and investment, and can move so rapidly that small teams of people can push updates weekly if not daily.

    I’ll mention a company I advise called Goalbook.  Goalbook is an Individualized Education Plan management tool that enables the efficient communication of students support teams (teachers, staff, case workers, parents).  This is one of the most profound challenges in all of education, and bringing effectiveness and efficiency to communicating about an IEP will be a giant leap, especially at the K12 level.  Daniel Yoo was a special educator and talented software engineer, and Justin Su rose up through the charter school networks as a technology and innovation guru.  The product is 10x as easy to use and prettier than any current IEP management software, and Daniel and Justin have built a whole product, brought on paying customers, and made thousands of teachers happy on a budget of precisely $0 dollars.  Goalbook has yet to have a true efficacy study.  Does that mean we should stand on the sidelines?  No, this is too important.  We should be demanding great software now for our IEPs, and we should put money where our mouth is and pay Daniel and Justin to build the team to do it.

    So forget the question that educators are tempted to ask: “Is technology effective?”  Also, forget “Does technology produce outcomes?”  I was a teacher in the classroom, and I used to say there are no dumb questions.  But, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve certainly realized that some questions reveal a severe deficit in background knowledge.  It’s nothing to be ashamed of, per se, but this one is enough of a barrier to fight back against.  Because Education is so hung up on this dumb question, they never learn the insights that will bring educators to the important ones.

    There are smarter questions:

    Does this product do what it is intended to do?  If not, at what rate is it getting there?  How excited am I for them to succeed?  Do I trust the people that are building it?  Is it worth hanging on?  Is my life going to be better after this problem space is solved for or transformed?