What happens when 3500 of education’s digerati descend on San Diego? If you answered, the ASUGSV Summit, you're right.
For me, there were two sessions that hit it out of the park. Of course, that's not counting the 27 meetings over three days. Oh, and while we're talking about hitting it out of the park, how about those Mets?
Mind Games: Can Emerging Game Technologies Improve Learning & Talent Outcomes
- Rob Hutter, Founder, Learn Capital
- Johan Brand, CEO, Kahoot
- Vu Bui, COO Mojang AB (of Minecraft fame)
- Norihisa Wada, CMO, EduALab (Japan)
- Lauri Jarvilehto, CEO, Lightneer
Key takeaways:
- There is a parallel design structure to designing great games and designing great learning. When looking at brain images, there is virtually no difference between play and learning. In fact, well-designed games inspire self-regulated learning.
- Games solve the problem of students being too bored to learn. To close the engagement gap, schools need to compete with other distractions; games will do that, and best practice is playing games followed by a discussion of tactics, obstacles, and accomplishments.
- The power of games is the interaction-feedback loop, which fuels learning. While educational games have long been viewed as an oxymoron, that is rapidly changing as efficacious products are coming to market.
ED is in the Middle of mEDia
- Alan Arkatov, USC Professor and Katzman/Ernst Chair in Educational Entrepreneurship, Technology and Innovation
- Edward Fields, CEO, HotChalk
- David Rogier, CEO, MasterClass
- RIchard Sarnoff, Managing Director, Private Equity, KKR
Key takeaways:
- The large media companies are taking a close look at education (e.g. the $230M Bertlesmann plunked down on HotChalk). As the media companies look for better returns, they see that education is becoming more like what you watch on TV, except that people are willing to pay perhaps $5 for an hour of entertainment, but $100 for an hour of education, and the market for education is expanding as more people need to learn more over their entire lifetimes. Today, about 1/3 of the time people go online it’s to learn something.
- There are large hurdles. It’s hard for outside companies to understand that education requires a 7-10 year horizon; education is at best a get rich slow market. Second, while a lot of technology in other sectors has replaced humans with capital, that’s not happening in education. Third, education is highly regulated, with multiple layers of decision making, and so moves incredibly slow.
- While current levels of investment may feel like a bubble, addressing the biggest education issues are going to take such a long time to tackle, and the scale of the problems is so big, that the returns will eventually be huge. This will be even more readily apparent with Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality, which it will make it possible for students, teachers, and objects to interact without physically being in the same space and time.
And if you're looking to expand in education, shouldn't you be talking to Academic Business Advisors?