Author: Steve Vosloo

Edtech and innovation specialist, currently with UNESCO

The Pearson years: A brief review

Following on from a tradition started at the Shuttleworth Foundation, I have created a “brag pack” of my almost three years at Pearson South Africa (SA) (see previous reviews).

In 2014 I joined Pearson SA‘s Innovation Lab as head of mobile, and believe I have made a valuable contribution to Pearson’s journey from educational publisher to digital learning company. I have done this through product development, delivery on key projects, strategy development and thought leadership. In the process I have honed key skills as an ICT in education leader.

Product development and project delivery
Strategy
Thought leadership
Honing key skills
Core idea and next steps

Product development and project delivery

I have been product manager on the following projects:

X-kit Achieve Mobile

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X-kit Achieve Mobile is Pearson SA’s first schools mobile product, offering test and exam revision for learners with feature and smart phones, and now also Android devices. The content is fully curriculum-aligned, levelled for difficulty and based on a solid theoretical framework, while the platform includes leaderboards, badges and social network integration.

I have led the development of the product through four major releases, marking the evolution from a B2C to a B2B institutional sales model, and from a mobisite to an Android app — a first for Pearson SA. All product development was based on user-centred design, through constant classroom observations, user interviews, user tests and data from the app itself.

In an independent study, conducted by Wits University, of Grade 8 learners and teachers at a Johannesburg public school, teachers found that struggling learners seemed to benefit the most from using X-kit Achieve Mobile. A significant 15% increase was seen in the average class mark in pre- and post-tests. Furthermore, 85% of the learners found X-kit Achieve Mobile useful, helpful, challenging and stimulating.

eReader implementation 

Reader+ has been developed as Pearson’s ereader for growth markets, including SA. The first global implementation has been at CTI and MGI, two higher education institutions in SA owned by Pearson, as a central component of creating technology enhanced teaching and learning environments. This was the largest tablet rollout in the country, for around 8,000 students across 13 nationwide campuses. As tablet lead for the Innovation Lab and product manager for Reader+, I was the “voice of the user” on the ground, ensuring that local needs were embedded in the development of the product at a global level. I managed the strategy, user definitions, implementation, testing and ongoing support of Reader+ in the annual end-to-end rollout. Lots of lessons learned.

Global Learning Management System

Pulse is Pearson’s growth market learning management system (LMS), based on a Moodle framework. As with Reader+, it is developed globally and implemented locally, and its first rollout was in SA in a pilot at three deep rural schools. Again, I was product manager and local user champion. It is estimated that by the end of 2016 Pulse will have 300,000+ users in SA, Mexico, India and Hong Kong.

Strategy

I developed the 3-year mobile learning strategy for Pearson SA, through a broad research and consultative process, and have been a key member of the team that developed the digital learning ecosystem plan for the company.

I have also consulted internally in a strategic advisory capacity. Project Literacy is Pearson’s largest social impact campaign, spanning 5-years. I was on the advisory council that conceptualised the global campaign. One of the key initiatives of Project Literacy is Read to Kids, a mobile phone-based early reading improvement effort based in New Delhi, in partnership with Worldreader and the R4D Institute. I have been an active member of the project team since its inception.

I represented Pearson SA on the Publishing Association of South Africa’s (PASA) Digital Sector Committee, through which we engaged the Department of Basic Education on how to best develop a vibrant and effective digital publishing sector.

Thought leadership

I helped to position Pearson SA as a thought leader in the ICT in education space through writing, participating in events and professional networks.

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Writings

Along with Prof John Traxler, I co-edited the Prospects: Quarterly Review of Comparative Education journal’s edition on mobile learning. John and I co-authored the introduction: The prospects for mobile learning.

I wrote a chapter Yoza Project : des histoires pour mobiles accessibles à tous in the book Téléphone mobile et création published by the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3. (Merci beaucoup, Laurence Allard, for the opportunity.)

I contributed to Education and Skills 2.0: New Targets and Innovative Approaches, a short book released at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2014, as well as UNESCO’s Reading in the Mobile Era report, based on a project that I coordinated while first at UNESCO.

I also wrote Mobile Learning: Key Principles for Success, an analysis piece for the Bertha Centre for Social Innovation & Entrepreneurship, University of Cape Town; Mobile learning: How to choose the best apps for Education Southern Africa magazine; and The Future Is Now: How to Write About ICT4Edu Accurately in 2016, a satirical piece for  ICTWorks.

Presentations and panels

I presented widely — locally and globally, in France, Germany and South Korea — on a range of topics, including: the state of ICT in education in SA; the role of technology as a tool to transform learning; emerging trends in digital education; education design in a digital era; large-scale 1:1 tablet implementations; innovation in Africa; harnessing ICTs for greater access to education for girls and women; digital citizenship; digital publishing in the education sector; and mobile literacy.

See my complete list of presentations here.

Professional networks

I am a panelist on an incubator programme that screens and then helps selected NGOs create and publish services on the Free Basics by Facebook platform. The panel is a small group of international ICT4D experts, which I am privileged to be a member of. We are aiming to on-board at least 100 new social impact organisations in 2016.

bi-logo4For two years I was a judge in the Berkeley Big Ideas contest. The annual contest provides funding and support to interdisciplinary teams of students from the USA who have ‘Big Ideas.’

I also helped to judge PEACEapp, a global competition organized by the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations and UNDP in collaboration with Build Up to promote digital games and gamified apps as tools for cultural dialogue and conflict management.

Lastly, I am a board member of the FunDza Literacy Trust, which is building a nation of readers in SA through mobile technology.

Honing key skills

While at Pearson I have led digital product development using agile software development principles (Scrum and Kanban).

The company has started to adopt — across the globe — something it calls a Product Lifecycle (PLC) approach. Drawing on agile and lean principles of innovation, it consists of six stages, each with specific activities and gates to take a product from idea to retirement stage. I am a certified PLC Coach and have worked to embed the process in all our work.

I am a firm believer in developing products based on user-centred design principles, which we have focused heavily on at Pearson, more than any other place I have worked. This involved classroom observations, user interviews and focus groups, user tests and data from the products themselves, continually conducted and analysed, to ensure that our decisions were user- and data-driven.

I have deepened my experience in managing diverse and international teams. This included managing UX, development, design, content development, sales and marketing teams. Delivering company-wide training, documentation, and leading the strategic direction of products were also my responsibilities.

Core idea

My work at Pearson was informed by one core idea: that education, and the way people learn, is changing, and this change is interwoven with mobility.

In the Prospects journal introduction, John and I wrote: “Mobile learning is no longer an innovation within institutional learning but a reflection of the world in which institutional learning takes place.”

For the most part, when looking at the education system in South Africa, this change is not apparent enough. But the change, albeit subtle or out of view, has begun.

Next steps

Moving to Pearson was a significant shift from twelve years in the governmental, non-profit, international organisation and “open” worlds, to a corporate and “closed’ world. I made the move purposefully to learn and to develop a business perspective on ICT in education. It has certainly been interesting to see where corporates and non-profits are very different and, (perhaps not) surprisingly, very similar. The issues of profitability and sustainability in mobile education still loom large, but it has been refreshing and instructive to explore ways of attaining them from within a commercial company.

From November I will be returning to UNESCO, based at HQ in Paris. There I will manage a partnership with Pearson as part of its Project Literacy, so I will still be staying close to the Pearson fold. I look forward to applying my corporate learnings in a development setting. I am a believer that the worlds of For-profit and Non-profit, Closed and Open, have much to learn from each other, and in the process both becoming more effective and efficient.

Harnessing ICTs for greater access to education for girls and women

Harnessing ICTs for greater access to education for girls and women is a presentation given at the GWI (Graduate Women International) Conference in Cape Town. It covers some of the educational opportunities provided by technology uptake, what Pearson is doing in this space through Project Literacy and Every Child Learning, and the key challenges that remain to realising this potential.

5 Take-aways from the UNESCO Mobile Learning Week Webinar

The 2016 UNESCO Mobile Learning Week kicked off on Monday with a webinar entitled Innovation and quality: Two sides of the same coin? The virtual event, held in partnership with Education Fast Forward, debated the extent to which mobile technology can strengthen the quality of education and facilitate learning.

I blogged about the five key take-aways on ICTWorks – you can read the post there.

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(Image: @AndrewGraley)

 

 

Analysis piece: Mobile learning – Key principles for success

bertha_analysisMobile learning: key principles for success (pdf) is an analysis piece written for the Bertha Centre for Social Innovation & Entrepreneurship, Graduate School of Business, University of Cape Town.

The Center for Education Innovations seeks to provide systemic and easy-to-access information and evidence about innovative education programs around the world, both big and small. I was asked to analyse a number of their South African case studies and draw out key principles for success for mobile learning.

Mobile learning: How to choose the best apps

(This article appeared in Education Southern Africa, September 2015)

The use of mobile devices to support learning is finally coming of age. While the uptake of mobile phones has been staggering – a full third of South Africans now owns a smartphone – their application in education has, by and large, been limited at scale. Mobile devices, phones in particular, have often been viewed as the antithesis of education. Some educators see them as the centrepiece of the age of “3D”, standing fordigital distraction devices. But this is changing fast.

In 2014, Pearson researched the digital landscape1 and interviewed 510 respondents from the educational sphere. Results showed that 80% of learners have access to a smart phone and that 42% of learners plan to buy educational apps in the next two years. This is closely married to the 46% of teachers who also plan to own educational apps.

The potential that mobile devices offer for learning that happens throughout the day in formal and informal contexts, is available just-in-time, is personal, trackable and complementary of other learning formats, is increasingly evident. No wonder large-scale tablet implementations are on the rise across the country: from the Gauteng Department of Education’s Classroom of the future initiative that aims to replace printed textbooks with tablets and transform all its schools into digital learning institutions by 2018, to the ICT4RED tablet initiative at 26 high schools in Cofimvaba, a deep rural district in the Eastern Cape.

Nevertheless, simply replacing paper with pixels does not mean that the benefits of mobile learning will be realised. One only has to use a few of the tens of thousands of educational apps available to know that they are not all of the same quality. It is crucial, when embarking on the path of mobile learning, to select apps that are based on four key design factors.

Firstly, the design of mobile learning apps should be based on a solid theory of learning. It is not enough to just develop an app with educational content and hope people will find it useful. X-kit Achieve Mobile, an on-the-go revision and practice tool developed by Pearson, incorporates this theory into its design.

X-kit Achieve Mobile was informed by the theoretical framework of Stein and Smith2, which recognises increasing levels of cognitive demands. In practice this meant developing content and quizzes that are layered into difficulty levels, and that challenge the learner to develop the necessary skills to move up through the scaffolds and master each subject topic.

Secondly, it is crucial that when designing a mobile app, the context in which it will be used should be considered. Revision on-the-go is one example. Learners have busy schedules with both curricular and extracurricular activities and they need to be able to do short bursts of practice when they can. Only when mobile learning apps are designed around real users – through focus group, user tests, observations and iterative development – is it possible to optimally leverage the learning opportunity.

The true value of mobile is its ability to track usage and performance, as the apps are used throughout the day. This third consideration ensures that engagement and progress are monitored and can result in reporting on learner strengths and weaknesses. With X-kit Achieve Mobile teachers can set class assignments and draw rich reports on learner performance. Such analysis informs lesson planning and interventions where needed. The self-marked quizzes also save teachers time and can be used as evidence of the informal assessments that are required of all learners.

Lastly, there must be a ‘design for delight’ aspect to learning. Features such as the ability to earn achievement badges, join a leader board and compete against friends, select avatars for your profile, and post scores on Facebook or Twitter, will improve learner engagement. It goes without saying that the content must be fully CAPS-aligned and of the highest quality!

By following these four design principles when choosing an educational app, the full benefits of mobile learning can be realised in your classroom as well as beyond.

To learn more about X-kit Achieve Mobile, visit www.classroomsolutions.co.za/X-kitAchieveMobile

1. Source: Digital Learning Landscape, Schools, 2014.
2. Levels of Cognitive Demands Framework, Stein and Smith, 1998.

It’s not (only) about the ebook

footnote-summit-30-l-280x280On 30 July I presented at the Footnote Summit 2015 — “the largest digital publishing event in Africa and is dedicated to tackling the real issues facing publishing today.”

My presentation is titled It’s not (only) about the ebook and describes how delivering ebooks is only one part of a digital learning ecosystem that must be implemented holistically.

Download the presentation here.

ICT lessons learned from Rwanda

At the recent Africa – Continent of Opportunities: Bridging the Digital Divide event in Berlin (see my notes here), Mr Jean Philbert Nsengimana, Minister of Youth and ICT, Rwanda, shared some lessons from 15 year of ICT adoption in his country:

  • Vision 2020 is a Government development program in Rwanda, launched in 2000 by Rwandan president Paul Kagame. Its main objective is transforming the country into a knowledge-based middle-income country, thereby reducing poverty, health problems and making the nation united and democratic. Having this and courageous leadership have been critical in getting Rwanda to where it is today. A strong Government vision and commitment to implementation is essential, with a view to strategic partnership.
  • Keeping focus and momentum. Laying 7,500 km of fibre, putting laptops in the hands of 200,000 learners in 400 schools around the country. They want 4G/LTE last mile access to 95% of population by 2017 and have been working with the private sector to achieve this. Interestingly the partners will jointly develop this infrastructure and share it, as opposed to each mobile network operator building its own network (that would be too expensive).
  • Their strategy: as much as possible, let the private sector drive the ICT sector growth.
  • Focus on the demand side – ensure that technology that needs to be in the hands of people is affordable. They are using the Universal Access Fund to achieve this and are manufacturing devices in-country to lower costs.
  • Keeping a focus on girls and women’s empowerment. They work to mainstream ICT into girls development programs.

Of course the Rwanda experience is not without its faults and challenges, but it is a country that has genuinely committed to reaping the benefits promised from ICT and the lessons learned along the way are valuable to all countries.

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Rwandan Minister of Youth and ICT, Mr Jean Philbert Nsengimana

 

Images: Thomas Ecke, Copyright

One textbook policy = bad idea. Here’s why, from Jansen, Attwell and Spaull

logo01Recently the Franschhoek Literary Festival hosted a session titled “We Won’t Get No Education”. Description from the programme:

Government’s controversial proposal to limit textbooks to one per subject has raised alarms across disciplines. Francis Wilson asks Arthur Attwell (Book Dash), Jonathan Jansen (How to Fix South African Schools) and Nic Spaull (post-doc Education fellow at the University of Stellenbosch), what the implications are.

It was a stimulating discussion, and all agreed that one textbook is a BAD idea. But what is for sure is that it will happen. Apparently, even though the government has asked for public input on the policy-in-making, it is a fait accompli and the decision was taken some time back at an ANC conference in Bloemfontein.

In the discussion, technology did not come across too well, since is it was seen as adding complexity to a broken education system that is already struggling with an analogue print-book system. However, tech was described as something that could be used to network people, bring together communities of teachers and facilitate virtual peer-to-peer learning amongst students. Also, to improve the efficiency of education institution administration.

I engaged Prof Jansen on the merits of technology and how, when people propose introducing tablets or ebooks it is the wrong starting point. Rather, we should ask: do you want interactive simulations to communicate complex ideas, especially when many teachers are under-qualified to teach those ideas? Do you want automatic assessment of learning that produces immediate analysis of learner understanding and alleviates the marking burden of teachers so that they can spend more time on task actually teaching? Do you want to enable teachers to connect virtually, to share teaching and learning resources, or simply provide moral support to each other? Do you want efficient, immediate and cost-effective communication between schools, teachers and parents? If you answer yes to any of these questions, then technology has an enabling role to play. He agreed wholeheartedly with that approach.

Below are some rough notes from the discussion. Much of it we already know, but some of the points are useful.

Nic Spaull

  • The big issue in education:Low AND unequal achievement across schools.
  • Every year 1.1m learners start their school education, only 500,000 finish.
  • Of those who matriculate, only 14% go to university. Fewer actually graduate.
  • Half of SA households have only 10 books in the house.
  • 60% of primary schools have no library.
  • In the North-West province: only 30% of learners have access to government bought textbooks. In the WC, that figure is 95%.

The Government needs to:

  • Focus on accountability AND capacity.
  • Focus on early grades.
  • Set early goals and measure, e.g. learners being able to read in their home language by the end of grade 3.
  • Get teachers to take a course on how to teach reading.
  • Follow a programme of identifying Master Teachers who can train other teachers.

He listed three categories of tech rollouts:

  • Hardware focused (1:1 / tablets).
  • Software focused (“the software will make the difference”).
  • “Warmware” focused (it’s about the people, they need to drive it, tech roll outs work when people adopt them).

He also proposed that since Government is going to impose a one-textbook policy, that they should insist the one chosen book is openly licensed so that others can create “paid for” add ons around it.

Arthur Attwell

  • The tablet project in Gauteng will cost 3x the NATIONAL textbook budget. He believes this is too much.
  • He proposes that publishers give permission to local printers closer to schools to print there.
  • One textbook policy = massive damage and loss to small publishers in SA. Will reduce publishing industry to 3-4 players in a few years.

Jonathan Jansen

  • Many schools cannot absorb the level of innovation that is tried to be introduced to them.
  • Following his book “How to Fix SA’s Schools”, he believes that we need to do the simple things well.
  • Good leadership, principals at school early and engaged.
  • A timetable that is stuck to.
  • Teachers trained and teaching on time.
  • Parents involved.
  • Etc.

He believes that the one textbook policy is utter nonsense, a harmful form of reductionism that offers short terms financial gains to the Government. Where it claims to level the playing field across the school sector it will in fact entrench existing divides as middle-class schools can afford to buy books NOT on the catalogue that are more appropriate for their teachers and learners.

He also believes that Government needs to exercise its power over unions when their behaviour is anti-education. And the one thing he admires about President Zuma is his ability to dismantle organisations (e.g. the ANC Youth League). With luck, he hopes that Zuma can dismantle harmful teacher unions.