Doug Lynch, a senior fellow at USC Rossier School of Education and founder of the school’s ed-tech accelerator, said input from educators and widespread field testing are needed to speed the design and delivery of more successful ed-tech tools.
To encourage collaboration between districts and developers, the Los Angeles County Office of Education (LACOE) and the USC Education Technology Accelerator have partnered on a new initiative, the Innovation Lab. The program will allow teachers to tell developers about their most pressing problems; they, in turn, will be able to test and refine solutions to those problems in each teacher’s classroom.
It’s far from the typical process of ed-tech procurement, which often precludes direct communication between educators and developers, according to LACOE Chief Technology Officer José González.
“Obviously, there’s a very rigid procurement process normally, and once that happens, the feedback concept is gone,” González said. “You either award or you don’t, and you get whoever you get.”
The Innovation Lab program, he said, aims to create a long-term, mutually beneficial relationship between vendors and schools.
“It’s really a partnership, in that the vendor is there for the school, and they commit to that school,” González said. “And the school commits to the vendor in a way that, you know, they’re going to make this program better, and it’s going to make the school better.”
Currently, Lynch said, most ed-tech developers and schools are fairly walled off from one another, and implementation of a new ed-tech tool is usually a high-stakes affair for vendors and administrators, none of whom know exactly how well it’s going to work in a real school environment.
“I’ve been doing this ed-tech stuff for a very long time, and the problem is around implementation,” Lynch said. “It’s getting it on the ground that really matters, and there’s almost no emphasis on that.”
Without the time and space to test and refine ed-tech tools in a live school setting, he said the implementation of these products is often a shot in the dark. Lynch considers the practical rollout of ed-tech tools, with room for feedback and improvement, to be the critical “last mile” that schools and developers are missing — and the reason for inconsistent success.
“Sadly, a lot of folks want to fund the new thing, and we’re sort of saying that you don’t need to build another AI,” Lynch said. “What you need to do is figure out how to implement things that probably already exist.”
To bring teachers on board for the program, LACOE is framing it as professional development and working with the Greater Los Angeles Education Foundation to fund a financial incentive.
“If our teachers take certain courses or participate in certain trainings or events, they actually get credits, and those boost their salary,” González said. “We’re working on finding ways so that they’ll get some sort of salary increase by participating in this program.”
Once that funding is in place, teacher teams will be formed in districts throughout Los Angeles County. These teams will be asked to define their most pressing educational problems, then vote to select the top five. The details of those challenges will then be disseminated to developers.
“I run a monthly brown bag for all the investors in ed-tech, so all the venture capitalists and private equity people, and we have a global network that really reaches around the world,” Lynch said. “Chances are somebody in the world has already figured out a solution, it’s just that nobody knows about it.”
Developers who believe they have a solution to any one of the five problems can present their ed-tech tools, and the teachers will vote for the ones they like best. Once the winning tools have been determined, field testing, feedback and refinement will begin.
González said he expects teacher teams to be established and top challenges defined for developers within the next six months. Whether or not the Innovation Lab will become a permanent effort remains to be seen, but he and Lynch agreed the concept has the potential to boost the success of future ed-tech tools.
“We’re starting small and testing the waters and testing the interest,” González said. “But I do think this is something that could help with the overall improvement of ed-tech and how technology supports our students, teachers and schools.”
