Teaching and tech have much more in common than a few letters. Two decades ago
American software engineering was perceived as falling behind the overseas
competition, just as education is today. The software industry responded with
innovation in practice, governance, management, and culture. The software
industry was not the first to confront this, as the manufacturing sector had
faced, and continues to face, a similar challenge. Indeed, the software industry
was able to leverage significant ideas and concepts from manufacturing and
repurpose them to improving their own practices. Education now has the opportunity
to leverage the lessons from both technology and manufacturing.
Widespread Misunderstandings
When I refer to software engineering I do not mean simply writing code, but the
entire process built around understanding users, their mental models, their needs,
their expectations, and translating these into high quality products of value to
the customer.
Teaching as well is
frequently misunderstood.
Effective teaching is far more subtle and nuanced than simply
presenting information to students. The best teachers build relationships
with their students, find effective ways to make the content relevant and
interesting, and to the extent possible adjust the content to the specific needs
of the students, some even engage the parents. And that's on a good day.
The understanding from outside either profession is significantly different from
that of actual practitioners. The public perception of these professions is deeply
flawed. Even more damaging is that the misunderstanding sometimes extends into the
management and policy making circles. Importantly for the reader, many technologists
and educators do not truly understand one another. My intent is to foster communication
and cooperation by pointing out strong parallels between these two schools of thought.
Impetus for Change
Both professions have confronted, and are confronting, a crisis of confidence.
For both teaching and tech, one of the significant concerns is that America
is falling behind. For teaching we see this almost daily in the media.
Software engineering has a head start confronting this issue. In 1993 Edward
Yourdon portrayed the Decline
and Fall of the American Programmer relative to their international competition.
In both cases this precipitated collections of procedural and technological solutions.
For software this included the Rational
Unified Process and several Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) tools, which turned out not to be a panacea.
Indeed, the misapplication, the overly rigid application, of the Rational Process was a
factor in the raise of agile methods.
The important aspect is that the recognition of an issue lead to a period of
experimentation and trial, and only after this period did more fruitful approaches
emerge. Agile methodologies themselves underwent a Cambrian explosion of sorts,
followed by a Darwinian evolution leaving behind more fit solutions, and more
openness to change.
Instruction faces a similar situation to software engineering after Yourdon
published his 1993 book. There is a recognition that there is a problem, and many
solutions are materializing. With MOOCS, apps, web apps, videos, CCSS, and standardized
testing all making a showing, it is unclear which approaches will provide the greatest
advantage in the future. Each approach has its champions, but clearly none of them
stand alone as a complete solution. This plethora of solutions reflects varying
perceptions of exactly what the issues are with education. Perhaps, though,
something can be borrowed from the software engineering venue and teaching can
embrace change and data
driven adaptation. Moreover, in software engineering this shift to agile was
a grass roots movement.
Location Independence
Both education and software are rooted in the transfer of information. In most cases
there is no need for a physical presence or for the transfer of material goods. This
reduces the importance of location and increases the importance of interactions. Indeed,
the realization is coming to fruition that face to face time is better utilized by
focusing on personal interactions during office hours or in class time.
A software engineer can collaborate with, and market to anywhere on the planet
without leaving the neighborhood coffee shop. Similarly, many universities now
have a global reach.
This globalization directly effects the consumer as well. Online web services and
online instruction on almost any topic can be accessed from almost anywhere. Where
previously I might visit an accountant to process my taxes, now I can easily prepare
my taxes online with a well known and trusted service. Generally though, determining
which products and resources represent a true value is difficult. While some resources
are undoubtedly first class, others fall
far short.
Global access to information and services reduces the value of memorization, and
significantly increases the value of critical thinking to ascertain which are truly
useful, and sometimes whether online information is correct.
Assessment and tests
Assessment easily warrants its own discussion in either field. We limit ourselves
to outlining a few relationships between assessment in software and in education.
Continuous testing
is a generally accepted part of modern software development. There is a small school
that feels that the testing should
drive the development process,
and some people are simply confused
about the difference between the two.
Predominantly, testing is viewed as an important step in the production of quality software;
as a means to an end, but not a primary goal. Considerable effort has gone into creating software
testing tools and techniques. A common goal is to maximize the value of the tests while
minimizing their impact on the development process. For example unit tests are designed
to run quickly and in an automated fashion. Lightweight testing, or better yet adaptive learning, can play a similar
role in education.
At the end of the day, software is valued by success in the marketplace, by delivering
value to the customer. This is a fundamental difference between software and education,
choice. The market can choose any alternative, of if the software does not address any
need, the market may choose to forgo it entirely. This provides a powerful incentive
to correctly assess the value and correctness of software.
Education, on the other hand, is compulsory. This, with a few exceptions, places the burden
of assessment on the educational process itself, and shifts it from a question of market
acceptance to one of accountability.
The public perception of testing in education is dominated by high stakes, high stress tests
like final exams, midterms, SATs and thanks to recent media coverage, PISA tests. These tests capture the student's learning
at a specific point in time. Tests like this are referred to as summative tests.
The true picture is much richer. Another type of assessment, formative assessment, has
an entirely different emphasis. These are ongoing assessments focused on providing
feedback on how effectively the student is learning. This assessment is usually a lower
stakes and lower stress - perhaps not even graded - mechanism. Formative assessment
is also intended to provide feedback on the effectiveness of the teaching process.
At a conceptual level, this might be expected to provide a strong incentive to innovate
in education. Also, well designed feedback would mitigate any risk associated with
innovation by allowing a quick course correction onto a productive path.
The technology industry struggles with assessment as well. Particularly telling is
this
interview with Laszlo Bock, a senior vice president at Google.
We looked at tens of thousands of interviews, and everyone who had done the
interviews and what they scored the candidate, and how that person ultimately
performed in their job. We found zero relationship.
This raises fundamental questions about the effectiveness of the interview, aka
assessment, process in the software industry as a whole.
One of the things we've seen from all our data crunching is that G.P.A.'s are worthless
as a criteria for hiring, and test scores are worthless — no correlation at all
except for brand-new college grads, where there's a slight correlation.
He goes on to explain that the academic environment is highly specialized, and that success
within that context does not imply that someone will be successful within another environment
or context. Both teaching and tech have a critical need to access ability to put knowledge
to work in real world contexts.
Iterative Improvement
The application of iterations is perhaps the most subtle of the points raised here.
The software engineering world uses iterations in the development process, and
also iteratively improves the process itself. Both the product and process
iterations are driven by assessments, participant feedback, and comparisons against
organizational goals.
The current state of education is reminiscent of software engineering before the
acceptance of agile iterative methods. At that point software development was
dominated by inflexible methods characterized by large up front planning.
The famous quote from German strategist von Moltke "No Battle Plan Survives Contact
With the Enemy" dramatically captures the need to adjust any plan in the field to
adapt to real world conditions. Software engineering has embraced this need for
continual adaption and seen significant
increases in quality and productivity.
These adaptations to the situation on the ground are driven by the people on the ground.
This puts a greater freedom and greater responsibility into the hands of the
practitioner with boots on the ground.
Education would profit as well from this shift in emphasis. From up front planning and
set curricula to general goals and continual adaption to the needs of a particular
situation driven by the teacher's own judgment.
Personalizing the Experience
Education, by its very nature, focuses on presenting new ideas and integrating them
into the audience's mental model. The most successful approach caters the educational
experience to the individual student. The teacher builds a relationship with the student
and adjusts the content to address their individual interests and well as to expand on
their strengths and address their weaknesses. This path is proven to be effective and well received
by students and teachers alike.
The application of personalized learning is limited by its labor intensive nature.
However, computers can ease the labor requirement in certain cases. The most direct
application is to provide asynchronous communications through email and social media.
The interaction and feedback is still timely, but not always immediate and face to
face.
Well designed software provides multiple modes and multiple paths for the learner
to explore different scenarios. This encourages the learner to freely choose their
path through content exercising their interests, and filling in gaps in their
understanding.
Several companies carry the concept in another direction with adaptive learning.
Adaptive learning assesses the state of the students knowledge and further
instruction is focused on their weakest areas. Extensive effort has been put into
allowing automatic identification of the learners problem areas. Indicators include
scores on exams, the time taken to answer questions, or to read through a section,
even eyetracking and body language are sometimes used.
The edtech entrepreneur is concerned with personalization from their earliest days.
Almost from the outset, she will be concerned with product market fit, or how the
product addresses the specific needs of the educational community, or that part
of the community they are addressing. This requires building relationships with
educators, administrators, and frequently with students. The entrepreneur must
understand the market's interests and needs, and modify the product to fulfill
those interests and needs. Sound familiar?
The parallel continues through the lifetime of the company. In addition to expanding
the relationships with the educational community, the company must cater its advertising
to that market. What is now called targeted and retargeted marketing is essential to
fitting the advertising message to the recipient. Retargeted
marketing expresses some of the same principles as adaptive learning. Programs track
the actions of the user and collect metrics which are considered effective measures of
their interests. Specific marketing messages are then delivered as guided by the
collected information. Retargeting also makes use of spaced repetition to expose
the potential customer to brand information multiple times. The success
rate of retargeted marketing can be taken as a confirmation of the approach.
Perhaps this success can even cast a favorable light on similar approaches for
education.
Rigidity and Resistance
Neither software engineering nor instruction are physical products. Both are
inherently flexible in their application and delivery. However, both are
surrounded by processes, procedures, and bureaucracies that generate rigidity.
Software engineering practice is likely more flexible because it is newer, and until
recently was not a major focus of public concern. Education is more foundational to
society and has been, appropriately, a focus of public policy for centuries.
This entanglement with public policy sets several, sometimes inconsistent, priorities
and makes it difficult to obtain funding for best practices while political and marketing
forces push in other directions. Education, though, has the advantage that by its very
nature it focuses on presenting new ideas and integrating them into the audience's mental
model.
Even the best ideas in the best environment may be slow to gain
traction. This is compounded in the fields we consider by tremendous ranges in the
effort required and potential profits for different approaches. For example, perhaps
the most widespread edTech application is online testing. A testing framework is applicable
across multiple grades and subjects, and quite frankly does not require any great
innovation to develop. With limited effort, the returns are significant.
This contrasts sharply with content creation. Content creation is significantly more
difficult, especially for more advanced material. To be effective, it must be targeted
to a specific level of a specific topic. The effort to create it is greater and the
addressable market, hence the possible profitability, is limited.
The MOOC is perhaps a middle ground, but even it makes only
limited use of technology, with most of the online content in the form of video clips with
limited interactive content.
Changing thought patterns and work styles to make the best use of advancing technology
is difficult. Bret Victor gave an excellent talk
on innovations that didn't catch on in computer science, despite their promise. I close
this section with a quote from that talk that applies equally to teaching and technology.
It's easy to think that technology is always getting better because of Moor's Law,
because computers are always getting more capable but ideas that require people
to unlearn what they have learned and think in new ways there is often an enormous
amount of resistance.
Silos are common
The concept of addressing material from multiple viewpoints, across multiple courses, is
gaining traction. It has even found its way into the CCSS,
but there is a long way to go. For example, history and science curricula are rarely developed
in concert. However, in the real world these topics do not play out in isolation. Each
strongly interacts with and depends on the other as they evolve. Curricula that acknowledge
this and that are developed to reflect this interdependence present a truer picture, and
provide a more complete understanding to the learner.
Historically, this has not been the case, and it remains rare. Human instinct is to scope out,
mark, and protect territory1. This is particularly true for an interloper from another
department, say science, getting involved in the definition of history curricula.
An often overlooked aspect of the software engineering evolution is that it owes a great deal
to W. Edwards Deming. It is
worth it to gain at least a passing familiarity with his work, especially his 14 points. Point 9, break down barriers,
directly refers to the need for disparate groups to work together for the benefit of the
system as a whole. To break down silos and gain advantage through cooperation.
This strengthens the parallel that I draw between teaching and technology. The technology
sector was able to extract relevant core
elements from Demming's work, adapt them to a new discipline, and apply them to their own work.
I suggest that education follow a similar path by adapting some of these core concepts
from both manufacturing and software and applying them to the education culture and process.
One critical, but often neglected, silo is that of the profession itself. Technology development is
significantly strengthened by involving both the user and the decision maker in product design and
development. However, this is frequently not the case - indeed, I have seen the technology side's
disdain for the end user harm several products.
Similarly I have seen less than welcoming reactions to parents and other outsiders to the teaching
profession getting involved in the teaching practice itself. The teaching profession is an important
public trust, so the public must be seen as automatically having standing in a discussion of teaching
standards and practices. This places a greater responsibility on the teaching profession for public
engagement and education. The educator can educate, not only their students, but their constituents
as well.
A monoculture is a close cousin to the silo, and reflects many of the same behavior patterns. Both
are harmful. We can counter these tendencies by including and encouraging visionaries, innovators,
and communicators within our group. The visionary seeking a path to a better future, the innovator
always asking is there a better way, and the communicator drawing in participation from other groups
and casting the language of each group into a form the other can understand. Or better yet,
cultivate some of these skills in ourselves.
Patterns and Antipatterns
An important set of concepts and techniques in software engineering are the design patterns.
Patterns can be thought of as best practices to achieve a specific goal in a specific context.
Design patterns are a powerful idea that was slow to gain traction. While the concept was
introduced to architecture in 1977, and to software in 1987, it did not gain significant
traction in software for almost another decade. The design patterns work did not introduce
the design patterns themselves, but cataloged and established common names for wide spread
best practices and grouped them into categories. This common vocabulary and taxonomy allows
easier communication and, interestingly, for more effective education.
There has been some movement toward a
design pattern catalog for instruction. A truly organically derived education pattern
catalog and its attendant vocabulary and taxonomy of concepts would be a great value to the
profession.
A closely related concept is the antipattern. These are common practices that do not represent
effective solutions. Antipatterns frequently appear reasonable, but experience has proven
otherwise. Interestingly, the antipattern concept has been extended to management, and includes
the silo as an organizational antipattern.
The antipattern concept may be catching on in education in the form of recognizing
popular
myths. But it can be carried much further.
What's Really Important
In the 1990's software engineering was flooded with potential solutions to developer
innovation and productivity. So many that it was necessary to take a step back and
summarize what was really important and what was not. The Agile Manifesto and its accompanying 12 principles, is a collection of
fundamental values for the process of creating high quality software.
The Agile Manifesto does not specify any specific development methodology. It provides
a set of values and principles that any development methodology should follow. Indeed,
it explicitly promotes adoption of methods and processes that work best with a specific
team in a specific domain.
This is reflected in education with the need to adjust instructional techniques to meet
the needs of a particular student or class in learning a specific topic. I recently
encountered The Paideia
Principles, which take a similar approach to teaching, providing a set of principles
rather specifying a fixed methodology. A generally applicable set of principles would
probably be generated and vetted by a larger group.
Such a set of principles also provides a powerful tool for communications, focuses public
policy debate, and encourages freedom for individual schools and teachers to manifest
the principles as best suits their environment.
1) Stack, Robert David, Human Territoriality: Its Theory and History, PP 169-215, Cambridge University Press, 1986
