Rob Abel, Ed.D. | January 2021

"Going to keep on trying 'til I reach my highest ground" —Stevie Wonder

A big shout out to the 1EdTech Contributing Members to start 2021!

It is a beautiful thing to strive to get better at what we do, the impact we have each new day. Right now, there are so many unsung heroes overcoming challenge after challenge from an unprecedented set of changing circumstances at all levels of education. Literally every day, the 1EdTech staff and I are inspired by 1EdTech community participants that are not only rising to the challenges of a pandemic but are finding insights that can be applied to make a better future. How inspiring it is to witness a partnership where a set of committed parties are working together over the long run to lift up all of edtech!

We have had some very insightful guest posts here on the Learning Impact blog in recent weeks:

• The New Normal for K-12: Digital Teaching & Learning in the Age of COVID-19 and Beyond

• The Evolution of Student Success in Higher Education

• CIOs Play a Vital Role in Maintaining Academic Freedom

If you take a few minutes to read them, you will gain useful insights and perhaps connect some dots in ways that are difficult to do in today's cluttered, headline-grabbing press and social media.

Insights from the 1EdTech community have always been the most valuable aspect of 1EdTech and 1EdTech membership. From back in the mid-1990s, when at Oracle, I was one of 1EdTech's early corporate sponsors. And it was clear then that 1EdTech attracted the type of leadership capable of shaping the future–both in terms of insights and the ability to act on those insights.

For edtech suppliers, 2020 was a difficult year for many, but also a banner year for some. In 2020, 1EdTech added a net of 40 new member organizations. We saw some notable "upgrades" in membership to the Contributing Member (CM) level. And, as we see every year, some members drop, and some members "downgrade" to an Affiliate or Alliance membership—mostly suppliers. Generally speaking, the institutional/DOE/system membership in 1EdTech is remarkably stable.

What does it mean to be a Contributing Member in 1EdTech? Why does 1EdTech have multiple levels of membership? What is the difference?

Simply put, Contributing Members are the leaders. They lead the close and committed collaboration under the fair and neutral auspices of 1EdTech, which is our not-so-secret sauce.

Fundamentally, 1EdTech is about building trusted partnerships among a coalition of committed parties–that are working honorably and transparently together–to help themselves and everyone else in the edtech sector.

Our CM organizations are school districts, state DOEs, universities, university systems, and suppliers. Their logos are on our member page (in the first section). CMs are the only organizations in 1EdTech that have a vote in the official proceedings of 1EdTech, and in return, are legally held to a very high standard of integrity. The leadership tier is very admirably balanced among supplier and end-user constituencies.

We have also found that CMs typically, although not always, have the executive-level commitment to be a leader for the long haul. When it comes to standards-based interoperability, commitment is so important. As I have written about many times, the temptations to deviate from standards, the business motives around dominant platforms, coupled with the extra effort required to coordinate with the rest of the market, actually make collaboration, especially over the long run, very, very challenging.

Why do Contributing Members provide extraordinary leadership in this collaboration? Well, the greater good is definitely an important factor. But the larger reason is that engagement in the community is worth the investment many times over.

1EdTech Contributing Members have fully bought into the proposition that we can do open standards well enough to reduce expense while improving opportunity for innovation.

But the value gained goes way beyond standards. It goes to the heart of defining the future of edtech, realizing that no one organization can do this alone.

When I came to 1EdTech as CEO in 2006, there was only the Contributing Member level. We added the Affiliate and Alliance memberships as a way for organizations that were not committed to leading the work to still benefit from a raft of resources that the CMs make possible and generate. 1EdTech's ultimate product—interoperability specifications—are all free and free to use. But the thought with the Affiliate and Alliance members was to add developer community resources and the ability to go through significant testing, resulting in certification, thus encouraging the plug-and-play ecosystem that the education sector requires to justify investing in standards in the first place.

We appreciate all 1EdTech members at all levels. We created the levels other than CM to do a better job at serving the broader edtech sector. But I wanted to dedicate this first post of 2021 to the Contributing Members because they demonstrate every day the executive leadership building the trusted partnerships required to achieve the future together. Working with an 1EdTech Contributing Member organization assures you that they are committed to the leadership needed to sustain, evolve, and accelerate the future of digital transformation in education.

At our core, 1EdTech only achieves what it achieves through an extraordinarily effective collaboration that lifts all to a higher ground. 1EdTech Contributing Members are the major participants and leaders in the extensive collaboration required to get all edtech stakeholders to the high ground of an interoperable digital edtech ecosystem based on open standards. I'm very proud that the 1EdTech community has, in fact, delivered on this value proposition—and continues to invest in ways to fulfill this promise even better in the future.

January 2021

Ryan Lufkin, Senior Director of Higher Education Product Marketing at Instructure

The Evolution of Student Success in Higher Education

Though the shift to online learning has made it possible for learning to continue amid the COVID-19 pandemic, it has also presented a myriad of challenges for faculty and students alike. While educators adapted their pedagogies to the technologies at hand, students struggled with the more basic need of accessibility now that the campus computer labs and high-speed WiFi were no longer available. The challenge of keeping students engaged with their instructors as well as their peers has loomed large throughout the return to studies. Amid these disruptions in education, it became clear that getting back to "normal" wouldn’t be happening any time soon and the short-term embrace of technology for remote learning needed to be replaced with a focus on intentionally designed online learning for the long haul.

Combined, these challenges have prompted institutions to reexamine the term "student success" and what it means to deliver on the expectations of students. And as our wait for a return to normal has turned into acceptance of our new normal, it’s clear that learning will remain virtual for the foreseeable future.

In an effort to address these high stakes in higher education, Instructure conducted a global benchmark study with Hanover Research, The State of Student Success and Engagement, in which 7,070 educators and students in 13 countries were surveyed to identify how they define student success and what they consider to be driving factors of engagement. 

Of all the results, the following statistics made it clear: The COVID-19 pandemic has presented institutional leaders with a catalyst for change.

• 85% of students said that COVID-19 was most impacting their ability to succeed.
• 71% of respondents said it has impacted student academic progress.
• 70% of faculty said more students are falling behind on their studies than ever before.

With the expectation that courses will remain online indefinitely, it’s critical for higher education institutions to better understand what students believe they need to be successful and engaged. As I continue to connect with educators and institutional leaders in our Canvas Community, I am amazed at the resilience and creativity they’ve displayed as they evolve to meet these challenges. Below are a few of the ways institutions are adapting to focus on a more holistic approach to student development.

Aligning Course Objectives to Future Careers

Beyond the disruptions in education, the workforce has also experienced a great deal of change, and students want to know that what they're learning in their courses is directly preparing them for their next step. A key finding from our study supports this notion, citing career readiness as the number one priority for students.

“If you had asked me pre-COVID what student success would look like, I would have had a laundry list—here's our course objectives, here's our department objectives, here's the university objectives that we want to accomplish,” explained Dr. Karen Freberg, Associate Professor in Strategic Communication at the University of Louisville, during a recent webinar I hosted.

“But with COVID, what I've realized [...] is that it's not only about knowing the material and understanding their field of study a little bit more. A lot of my students have been asking me how they can apply their learning and bring assignments to life.”

This paradigm shift has presented institutions with the challenge of transferring hands-on learning experiences to an online format that is collaborative and rigorous enough to prepare students for real-world application.

In response to this, we are seeing many institutions using this challenge as an opportunity to connect with local organizations and community partners to provide educational opportunities that align with jobs.

Leading With Empathy in Online Course Design

As students strive to keep up with their courses, it’s important to remember that like many of us, they are balancing multiple roles in their life while also addressing the impact of COVID-19. Now more than ever, educators need to think beyond the lecture and provide flexibility, enabling students to demonstrate mastery of skills in many different ways.

Sean Nufer, an educator at The Chicago School of Professional Psychology and Canvas 2020 Educator of the Year winner, said it best in a recent live stream discussion. “We need to be listening to our students more than ever. We need to be patient with them and recognize that while there is more than one way to teach, there are also multiple ways to learn.”

We see many educators leveraging technology to create a more immersive experience that allows students to discuss and collaborate virtually, rather than watching a one-way video lecture. We’ve also noticed institutions using audio and video tools to give personalized and targeted feedback to individual students, transforming the traditional grading process into another opportunity for connection.

Creating Opportunities for Faculty-Student Engagement

Amid the increasing use of technology today, both students and faculty continue to value the hands-on learning and collaboration that technology simply cannot replace. When asked what factors are considered to be the main drivers of student success, respondents named quality of faculty (88%), technology availability (86%), and hands-on instruction (86%), reinforcing that technology is best used when paired with interactive content and opportunities for connection beyond devices.

Sean Nufer also shared how he prioritizes connecting with students in a fully virtual learning environment: “The community that you have in a traditional classroom is not replicated online. We have to be purposeful in building those connections [...] and those connections are vital, because without that network, what are we? We’re not just repositories of information. What brings education value are the connections we make that last beyond the three credits or 16 weeks.”

It’s becoming clear that the accelerated evolution forced on education will result in changes to instructional delivery that are here to stay. Connecting educators and learners with technology and helping those learners connect with careers is becoming key, not just to the success of students but to the success of colleges and universities themselves. Educators, technologists, instructional designers, and academic leaders alike will continue to come together to forge a pathway to the future, celebrating and supporting each other along the way. That’s what is, and always will be, great about education.

We invite you to review the findings from our study to learn more about the newfound meaning of student success and how institutions can use these challenges as a catalyst for meaningful change. Learn more.

Rob Abel, Ed.D. | November 2020

"Philadelphia freedom, shine the light." —Elton John

It’s with a great sense of gratitude to the 1EdTech community that I write my last post of 2020, a year likely to go down in history for many reasons.

I am thankful for the way the 1EdTech members inspire the staff and me every day. I am thankful for the 1EdTech team and all they do to serve 1EdTech members and the broader edtech community worldwide. I am thankful that an organization like 1EdTech, which is all about a collaboration that will enable the edtech ecosystem to support every learner's needs, has managed to not just survive but grow and prosper. We have a long way to go, but it’s clear that we are a force for good on the path needed to spur innovation at scale.

Being one of the few people in the world that work on “standards” 24x7x365, I am constantly thinking about the unnoticed structures in things that can have profound impacts on the speed of innovation. Yes, and that even includes elections.

I believe most people can think about “standards” and realize that agreeing on some foundational things that are accepted and ubiquitous allow everyone to build all sorts of innovative things on top. For instance, standardizing the sizes and types of roads allows much more efficient cooperation on putting roads in place, leading to a focus on innovation in the vehicles that use those roads. These standards can have a profound impact on the innovations that can occur. That includes perhaps limiting innovation.

As the American elections have played out, I heard from people outside of the U.S. that are genuinely concerned that we are safe here, with all the divisiveness and appearance of fighting in the streets. They are surprised when I tell them that things are quite calm where I live in central Florida.

America is, of course, the “land of the free and the home of the brave.” But America is not only about people who are free. Since its inception, America has been about people who are trying to become free. And, so it goes to the present day.

Whomever you may have voted for, and for whatever reasons, I think perhaps a light that needs to shine is the ramifications caused by only having two choices. And this is what makes me think about the importance of standards. Is it the fact that we only have two choices a factor in causing the divisiveness?

What would our lives be like if we could only choose from among two alternatives in all things? Would education be better if there were only two possible alternatives? Would edtech? That seems like a silly question—as it seems like we have many alternatives. But if you look at consumer markets, especially markets that can be dominated via a network effect, well, you can see many examples today where the choices are getting pretty small.

Is this because certain organizations are evil? Or, is this because the stakeholders are perfectly fine with choosing from one of two alternatives? Or, if they’re not OK with it, perhaps they really can’t do anything about it? Sometimes you don’t choose freedom if you are satisfied with the status quo.

In 2006, when I became CEO of 1EdTech with already decades of experience in high tech and pretty deep experience in higher education, the higher education LMS market was dominated by a single provider. While there was excitement from a relatively small number of suppliers about the potential for interoperability standards, I also had conversations with very experienced edtech executives that told me there was just no way that dominant organizations would move to open standards. I didn’t really know for sure myself. I was betting on the stakeholders in the education market, a unique market in some respects (diversity, cost constraints, the immaturity and untapped potential of learning science), being able to see the benefits of, well, freedom.

Then, like today, it comes down to how open standards allow collective focus on serving the market better because the market needs to be served better to get where we are trying to go—enabling all learners to achieve without limits.

I hope that during this holiday season, you experience the great love in this world we live in and, perhaps, have a moment or two to think about how our community is a force for good by shining the light on freedom in the edtech sector!

Thank you for everything in 2020, and you can count on 1EdTech to do our best in 2021!

Rob Abel, Ed.D. | September 2020

"I see your true colors shining through." —Cyndi Lauper

I’m taking a brief break from the series on equity, agency, and mastery to give a shout out of appreciation to the entire K-12 edtech world for the overwhelming support of 1EdTech’s OneRoster standard during return to school this fall. I will get to mastery and the overall summation of the series next month.

Why the pause? Because I just need to acknowledge that all that technical work, advocacy, and commitment to the OneRoster standard has clearly changed the future of edtech forever. So many people and organizations deserve so much credit. OneRoster of all 1EdTech standards really exemplifies the “power of one” that is the heart and soul of 1EdTech.

In many ways, we have come to take for granted that the 1EdTech member school districts will go above and beyond to make a better future for all kids and teachers. They certainly made OneRoster happen. And we have also come to expect that some number of visionary and pragmatic suppliers will go the extra mile so that integration among products can be ubiquitous, seamless, and low cost. But the success of OneRoster has clearly gone beyond. Way beyond.

Similar to what 1EdTech saw with the radical flip to open integrations in learning management systems with LTI, the OneRoster explosion has now initiated an even more dramatic 180-degree turnaround in a K-12 market where it seemed every publisher and SIS had their own rostering approach. Within a matter of 12-24 months, the market has turned. Why? A mix of common sense and focus from 1EdTech community leaders on the good of students and teachers. Common sense was that the exchange of roster data with a publisher or SIS is not rocket science. However, even I was surprised how major publishers readily admitted that their technical approach (which amounted to every publisher reinventing pretty much the same thing—only in their “special” way) was costing them more than it was worth. Most also realized that charging school districts for custom integrations was not a scalable approach to the future of digital. The good for teachers and students is characterized by what we like to call “digital on day one.” While achieving a seamless digital on day one requires additional integration standards (like LTI), the rostering burden has been the largest blocker in K-12.

But perhaps the clearest sign that the market has changed is the literally ubiquitous claims by both suppliers and school districts that they are leveraging OneRoster, most of whom are not 1EdTech member organizations. One of the most gratifying experiences as 1EdTech CEO is to be on a webinar panel with non-member school districts and suppliers who are expressing overwhelming thanks to 1EdTech for OneRoster and the other 1EdTech work. We know from our long history with standards in 1EdTech that the claims and acceptance by non-members mean that things will never go back to the past.

However, we at 1EdTech are far from congratulating ourselves. As one 1EdTech school district member once famously said, “Interoperability is not all unicorns and rainbows.” 1EdTech is right in the middle of OneRoster usage in all size school districts, by significant publishers, LMS and SIS providers, and integrators. So, we see it all. There is much room for improvement. The net-net is that we (the edtech “ecosystem” collectively) are not all on the same page quite yet. And, as a result, the community is not achieving the level of return on investment that we know is possible and that we seek. 

Therefore, this is not the time to be slowing down the market support for OneRoster, but rather turn it up a notch to help all size school districts achieve the full benefits in terms of choice, innovation, cost savings, and digital on day one.

An important subcomponent of achieving everything we can for schools is that the edtech product companies that are the consumers of OneRoster rostering data and emitters of gradebook data must be able to have the same experience from any provider of OneRoster data or receiver of OneRoster gradebook. Along with that, every school district must have complete transparency into their software systems OneRoster data exchange. Simply put, divergence is not an option now that we have come this far.

If that sounds like a big promise, well, it’s an unprecedented convergence of the edtech ecosystem. The good news is we already have many of the key pieces required to help every market participant get OneRoster right. Recently, I recorded a 5-minute intro on why we need 1EdTech Compatibility Check that you or colleagues may find helpful. Some additional pieces are needed, but I am confident that we can do this together.

Success in continued convergence and return on investment of OneRoster in the market will require ongoing leadership from the 1EdTech members. I think we can count on that. But, an unprecedented level of leadership in both transparency of the details of OneRoster implementations and technical collaboration on identifying and fixing implementation issues. We are involved in some very serious conversations to refine market support for OneRoster and do it fast so that one year from today the OneRoster convergence in the marketplace is substantially better than it is today!