Disruptive Innovation in Education:
How would the marketplace (parents & students) respond if a school could demonstrate that a unique combination of culture and instructional methodology significantly improved student achievement, performance, and experience?
- Disruptive Innovation - An innovation that improves a product or service in ways that the market does not esxpect, typically first by designing for a different set of consumers in the new market and later by lowering prices in the existing market.
- Sustaining Innovation - evolves existing products or services with better value, allowing the firms within to compete against each other's sustaining improvements. These innovations can be transformational or revolutionary or evolutionary.
- Disruptive innovations change entire markets.
- Disruptive technology represents both opportunities and threats.
- Good schools are usually aware of innovation, but their internal environment does not allow them to pursue these innovations with they first arise for various reasons.
- Existing businesses are often reluctant to take advantage of disruptive innovations since it would involved competing with their existing approach. Often established businesses will flee "upmarket" trying to make up the revenues and margins lost to the disruption rising from below. They often eventually fail.
Disruptive Technologies: Catching the Wave 1995 by Clayton Christensen & Joseph Bower.
Example of disruptive innovation - Floppy Disk Drive Market
1981 8" floppy disk drives used in mini computers replaced by 5.25" disks for desktop computers, then replaced by 3.5" floppy drives, then replaced by zip drives, CD's, USB flash drives, now cloud computing.
Educational examples of disruptive technology:
textbooks, paperbacks vs. E-Books
Xerox copies vs. electronic files (pdf)
notebook paper vs. online notes/Powerpoint
The Academic Visioning Committee has been formed as a
logical outgrowth from the Strategic Planning process. The committee’s objectives are:
- Identify
innovative & strategic opportunities regarding the academic future of the
institution
- Collaborate
with stakeholders
- Promote
creative thinking
- Set the standard rather than wait and see, be a
leader not a follower
- Accept the reality that the future is going to
change given the tools available to teachers and learners
Mission Fundamentals - Must be retained
- Commitment to academic excellence & rigorous curriculum
- Focus on student achievement & development of work ethic
- Prepares students for collegiate & professional success
- Institutional commitment to the Essential Elements
- Pursues excellence in all its endeavors
- Celebrates the value and dignity of each person
- Nurtures the development of the whole person
- Proclaims and witnesses to its Catholic identity
- Evangelizes youth within the mission of the Church
- Fosters and invigorates a community of faith
- Teacher as value-added : more than presentation
of information & knowledge
- Faith and character formation
- Challenging and affirming
- Interactive
- Inspires students to achieve beyond their
expectations
- Characteristics of a professional educator at Brother Rice High School
1. Commitment to the mission of Catholic education
2.
Willingness to serve as a Christian role model
3. Loves
students unconditionally
4. Works in
the best interests of the students
5. Respects
the dignity of every student
6. Is
optimistic about students and their future
7. Maintains
high expectations within a rigorous curriculum
8. Challenges
students to achieve excellence in everything they do
9. Teaches
students to be accountable
10. Is affirming and encouraging
11. Is passionate and
enthusiastic
12. Communicates effectively
13. Is a lifelong learner
14. Is willing to innovate for the
benefit of student achievement
15. Demonstrates professional
competency in their subject matter
Old School - Discontinued
- Primary methodology is teachers talk, students listen
- Teacher is active, student is passive
- Location impacts resource availability
- Learning defined by knowledge & comprehension, memorization
- Minimal interactivity
- Paper and pen/pencil based
- Resources scarce
- Confrontational discipline
- Minimal technology
New School - Must be added
- 21st century Learning & Instruction: Critical Thinking, Creativity, Collaboration
- Integration of technology (communication & computing) into the learning experience
- Regularly utilizes the Internet to communicate student information: Grades,
homework, schedule, etc.
- Promotes the use of technology for asynchronous learning – Research, Writing,
Online practice tests, video & podcast lectures, etc.
-
Supports the transition to digital books & resources
- Dramatically reduces the use of paper and significantly increases the use of
electronic resources (i.e. pdf files)
- Adoption
of 21st century learning & instructional methodology
- Daily class activities are designed to be engaging and interactive. A
teacher-centered learning environment in which lecture is the primary
methodology is no longer acceptable.
- Seeks professional development opportunities to enhance their understanding of
21 st century learning techniques
1Micro – What is the 21st century model of
instruction?
·
21st century attributes:
o
Collaboration
o
Critical thinking
o
Creation
o
Communication
o
Computer integration
- Will a new model of instruction improve student
achievement, increase student motivation, promote higher enrollment, be leading
or bleeding edge?
- What
are the essential methodologies that a professional 21st century educator
dedicated to excellence and student achievement should utilize on a day to day
basis?
- Will
the combination of a professional instructor who is a role model in matters of
character and faith be the primary value-added role of the teacher, or will the
teacher’s role change?
·
One idea – the “Flipped” classroom
o
Pre-Class:
- Teacher
presentation of information available online
- Student
readings available online or electronically
- Interactive
practice tests available online
o
Class
- Interactive
- Engaged
- Activity-based
- Problem-solving
- Critical
thinking
- Collaborative
- Creative
o
Post-Class
- Communication
- Blogging
- Emails
- Research
- Pace
supplement
- Video
- Reading
- Online practice
- Peer support/tutoring
o
Assessment
- Testing
for mastery
- Individual
or collective achievement of learning objectives (pace).
Macro – what will the
school of the future look like?
- Online or hybrid?
- One to one with technology?
- 45 minutes daily on each subject or?
- Only “time” for six or seven courses?
- Master teacher for everyone in one subject with
teachers for daily meetings?
- Will everyone be on the same pace? Will a
semester define the awarding of a credit, or will the demonstration of mastery
earn credits?
- Will 24 credits be the minimum after four years?
- Will the future financial model represent the
same basics of the current era - 80% of cost is labor, 22-1 student teacher
ratio.
- How
will the school of the future deliver instructional excellence to its students?
o
Will
class sizes increase or decrease?
- The
primary driver of our business/financial model is teacher-student ratio.
If we adopt the college model of a 250 person lecture class, I am certain that
we could drive our costs down and pay fewer teachers much better, but I
am not convinced that such an impersonal setting would benefit any of our
students. Nevertheless, are there ways for us to improve our
“productivity” and reduce costs given the tools that are available?
o
Will
a teacher’s full-time job responsibilities remain the same in the future?
Will five classes of roughly 22 students constitute the primary learning entity
in the school, or are there alternatives? Could we have a master teacher
produce learning sessions for larger class sizes and have smaller
work/discussion groups with teacher aides similar to the college model?
Every study indicates that the most important element in secondary education is
the adult leading the learning in the classroom – how do we enhance or promote
this going forward?
- Imagine
the following “flipped classroom” scenario – what if every lecture/presentation
by the teacher was available on video and that daily “homework” was reading and
watching the videos at home while the class sessions were dedicated to
interactive activities in which problem-solving, critical thinking,
collaborative opportunities for creation and communication on computing devices
– is there a way that this could be done to alter the current five periods a
day of 22 kids full-time assignment that would improve learning or
assessment? One of the challenges of proper assessment is that if you
don’t know your students, how do you properly assess them, especially if higher
order thinking is included in the process?
o
Will
the school year be longer or shorter? What about the school day? Will a
student attend 6-7 classes with 22 other students every day where a teacher is
leading the class, or will there be an alternative/hybrid that produces higher
student achievement and changes the current business model of instruction?
o
Would
we offer online classes of shorter duration during the year or perhaps during
the summer to supplement learning or push everyone into calculus by their
senior year or to enable students to move on to college faster?
o
Will
one teacher or a team of teachers instruct students in an individual subject?
o
Will
the class be held daily in a particular location or online or both?
o
Will
the mastery of the material at an individual pace take precedence or replace
the current “collective pace” that places students on a four year, 24 credit
track regardless of the speed with which they learn?
o
Will
the social aspect of learning remain an essential aspect of the secondary
learning process?
o
Can
a faith-based institution adjust the 22-1 ratio of teacher to student upwards
without losing the benefit of our unique value add?
o
Can
we afford to wait and watch, or is it imperative that we think and plan and act
accordingly?
§
What
are the risks of being on the “bleeding edge”?
Whatever path we choose, will we do so collectively as a
conscious choice or will we continue to point ourselves in a collective
direction but allow our individual faculty members the individual and daily
choices that have historically defined the educational process? Do we
need the pioneers to guide the rest of us, or do we consciously and
deliberately make a school-wide choice and “bet the farm” on an approach that
is on the leading edge?
