Meeting the Needs of a Global Market With Digital Learning

00:00.72

Ritesh Chopra

All right! Good day, everyone, wherever you are. This is Tech in EdTech, and this is your host Ritesh Chopra, and we have another episode today on Tech in EdTech and the guest today is Lewis Birchon. He is the head of Publishing Solutions, Cambridge Partnership for Education, working for Cambridge University Press and Assessments. Welcome to the show, Lewis.

00:24.88

Lewis Birchon

Thank you, Ritesh, pleasure to speak.

00:29.69

Ritesh Chopra

Absolutely and I think I look forward for an enriching conversation with you today, Lewis. 

00:35.60

Lewis Birchon

Absolutely.

00:46.61

Ritesh Chopra

Um, so before we deep dive into the topic Lewis, we would like to understand a bit about your background, how you got into your role into education, and your journey into education. If you could help us walk us through that journey and experience, please.

00:54.66

Lewis Birchon

Yeah, absolutely, it's one of those things when you kind of look back at where you started and you’re like ah goodness I've been here nearly twenty years. So I started in education at a company called Heinemann which was then bought by Pearson but that was back about eighteen years ago or so and I stayed with them for I think it was about eight and a half years or so, working in the UK school sector, specifically on vocational. So doing a lot of B.Tech during that time, as you might imagine, um, and then I moved from there to Cambridge University Press where we were just starting to look again at the UK market. So around the time of the 2015 curriculum reform and once in Cambridge I then moved into a team that became Cambridge Partnership for Education. Obviously, for those who don't know, Cambridge University Press and Cambridge International Assessment merged to become Cambridge University Press and Assessment and Cambridge Partnership for Education, which is a team that kind of comprises members from different units within former Cambridge business units and works specifically with ministries of education on local programs of reform through curriculum, teaching-learning materials, professional development for teachers, assessment, and edtech. So I have been there and working in the kind of international but local education space and since goodness, I think it might be 2017 or so.

02:55.33

Ritesh Chopra

Alright, alright, thanks for that, very helpful and I just want to tell the visitor that and all my audience here on the show that Lewis has been also proactive on sharing his online magazine Absolutely Textbook. In fact, I've been there and some enriching articles over there. So good job over there as well, Lewis. I think I saw some enticing articles there varied across various subjects, from AI to technology to entertainment. So I think quite gripping articles there as well. Thanks for that.

03:33.38

Lewis Birchon

Well, thank you. It is entirely remiss of me to not plug my own newsletter. But um, yeah, thank you for doing that job for me.

03:41.27

Ritesh Chopra

Alright. Coming on the agenda. Um, so thanks for sharing your background and your role in CUPA. And I just want to understand um as you can imagine you playing up a role in international education, and my understanding is that there are many stakeholders involved in the development of any learning material and especially when you cater to such a wide, broad audience internationally and where the market is very different, the market is very varied. I think what will be interesting for the audience and for us to understand is how do you look at demystifying and creating a content which would have specific learning outcomes when you cater to as wide and as diverse a target audience as international. How do you look at creating those learning impacts while you create a strategy for such a wide market?

04:41.00

Lewis Birchon

It's a really good meaty question and so it's the main part of Cambridge University Press and Assessment which focuses on the international schools market deals is the kind of first step of trying to kind of deal with these challenges and so they have a very kind of clear sector that they target um and their materials need to work in a really wide range of different contexts. And so the Cambridge curriculum is, um, used in around about 160 different countries around the world so you can imagine there's a huge range of different cultural contexts um, where we adapt those materials and that's not exclusively what we do, but it is a kind of large part of where we go. Um, we then need to take that quite broad audience and try to kind of narrow it down for more specific audiences and even those specific audiences have quite a range of different needs and kinds of characteristics. So um, even if we're taking those materials and making them specific to one country, the schools within that country are going to be really widely divergent, particularly around kind of urban versus rural and but you also have kind of very different teachers populations, very different cultural expectations, sometimes even within regions of a country. So we need to work quite hard to make sure that the materials that we produce are culturally relevant. You need to also look at things like how much teaching time is there in the classroom and how do you adjust the volume of material to make sense and for that. Things like what are teachers' backgrounds and how familiar are they with the topics and how familiar are they with the more modern approaches to teaching and learning that are embedded within the original materials is also a big consideration and we do quite a lot of work. Um, actually kind of trying to prepare teachers and for using these teaching-learning materials in the classroom, both through professional development so programs of training, but also looking at the really important role that teacher guides play in helping kind of model, and exemplify approaches to embedding pedagogy within the classroom.

07:23.25

Ritesh Chopra

Good. Thanks, Lewis, I think it is quite insightful. In fact, you did touch upon quite a pertinent topic around cultural nuances and cultural requirements for each of the geography and I think we, as in coming from our background and I think we have done and we have seen a lot of work around Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. I think for which the acronym would be DE&I. I think we are we're doing great work around that and I think I kind of echo with what you shared when you look at such a broad geography and how do you create content that so kind of resonate with what we do as well. So, very insightful. Thanks for that, Lewis. And I think rolling on into a topic Lewis if you could double click on a very pertinent topic to what we spoke earlier around one is of course catering to what kind of a learning outcome that you address while you have such a broad audience but also about what kind of modalities considering that you have both print and digital. What kind of a learning modality, what kind of a learning material would be suited to kind of help you, help you on strengthening the learning outcomes for such a diverse audience? I think that will be that will be important for us to kind of understand. and here's some bit of some bit of your solutioning. How does your team solution the right learning modality when you kind of look at such a broad solution?

09:03.52

Lewis Birchon

Yeah I think that's a really really interesting question because it varies so much. Um because we work with governments and with ministries of education, our kind of duty, if you like, um is trying to make sure that our content and materials can be used by the largest audience possible and so that often means that we lead with print um because it's simply the medium of transmission of information that is most likely to work in most contexts, and that's not always the case though. And so we did some work and in Thailand which was super interesting actually on this front. So, Thailand is quite a diverse country, has a lot of, quite rural and quite remote areas so you've got mountains, you've got islands, you've got very small populations as well. So actually there are a number of schools within those kinds of remote areas where you might have 3 or 4 grades within a single class so that makes for a very kind of challenging teaching community. So the organization that we were working with had a lot of experience in developing teaching and learning materials in print and we supported them to help improve raise the quality of those materials but they were also really interested in how do you raise access to high-quality teaching and learning materials, particularly for these remote communities. So actually one of the things that they really struggled with is getting near the physical logistics of getting those materials out to schools on time. Um, because actually yeah, it's a very complicated supply chain. So and they were investing quite a lot of time and effort and we worked with them in doing some ideation and kind of solution design for how they could use a digital platform or, develop a digital platform and digital content and in order to be able to provide materials that could normally be accessed by students and teachers in remote communities and because obviously yeah, you introduce a number of different other supply chain challenges, particularly around technology and infrastructure, but they were making greater advances on that front and than they were around the kind of physical supply chain and they also had the advantage um of a TV studio in their basement um, and so they were actually able to broadcast over terrestrial TV and lessons too. So they were looking at kind of a range of different modalities in order to be able to reach these students.

12:16.33

Ritesh Chopra

Got it, quite insightful. Very helpful, indeed, your comments, Lewis. I think you touched upon accessing quality education remotely and I kind of agree with you on that and I think as you as you mentioned the way to look at and ensure that everyone has an access to quality education even in remote areas of the world would largely be around digital education and I think digital come to the foray to kind of help us help us achieve that objective of accessibility and equitable society we're creating and providing education to all. And that kind of takes me to the next point, Lewis, which pretty much talks about when you look at the target audience, the geographies as you mentioned, the example that you quoted was pretty apt. And I think when you create that content, how do you come around challenges around interoperability? How do you make sure that content that you create or the platform that you have because looking at the geography looking at the government, looking at where you are selling the content to, each of these would be catering to a different platform, different geography, different varied and diverse device set, for example. So how do you kind of cater to challenges around ensuring that your content works is kind of interoperable and the other thing is about once you take everything digital, how do you see things like learning analytics and how do you, if there is, something like learning analytics which you often get from your markets. It'll be good to kind of hear from you, Lewis. What kind of a strategy that you have around learning analytics and catering to the interoperable content with whatever you do at your end?

14:18.95

Lewis Birchon

Sure. Yeah, it's a really diverse picture and I feel like I could probably preface most of my answers with that. Um, so, different countries and different ministries have very different approaches  around how they use, yeah how they use digital but also the kind of, um, support that they provide for digital. So there are some um countries that we work with where they will provide entirely kind of standardized teaching-learning materials, both yeah textbooks, but also digital materials and you can be, you can go into most classes or most schools within that country and be fairly sure that you will see equivalent levels um of equipment and resources and you will be able to see um the same kind of devices in use in those schools. Um, and where that's the case that makes life somewhat easier because it gives you a greater deal of predictability about what devices students will have access to and you can design your materials and your approach and kind of choose your solution design based on a fairly common set of characteristics. There are of course more countries where that is not the case. Um, and there is a much greater degree of variability. Um, so we've been working with Amand for a really long time now. They were a good few years, at least 5 years. And one of the things that we have found um, interesting about the way that their schools are resourced, for example, is that the ministry will provide content for teachers to use but it won't fund devices or technology in the classroom. So the technology in the classroom is actually fundraised for by the individual schools. So you have a really high degree of variability um around the kind of material that can be accessed in those classrooms. So because we're working on behalf of governments and because those governments are focused on access for all students for quality education. We tend to assume that um, we're working with a kind of set of minimum viable um parameters. So yeah, again, this is why a lot of what we do does still involve um print modalities because it reduces the kind of risk that students won't be able to access it. But where we provide digital more often than not we are working based on what we understand um, is accessible in classrooms. Um. Perhaps kind of one of the interesting areas that's emerging um is the kind of wider availability of smartphones and kind of potentially bring your own devices in classrooms, although obviously there are countries that are ah, kind of cracking down on that um, there is also yeah, a kind of potential for the home market or for kind of homework and of using students' own devices which we've been exploring um a little bit and to answer your question about kind of data and diagnostics and um, the kind of analysis that goes into the use of teaching and learning materials. Um, there's ah, an interesting trend, I think that that we've seen um amongst quite a few systems is where the data and diagnostics that are used are used in a kind of fairly blunt way. So teachers are incentivized or monitored on their use of platforms rather than whether that platform or that content has been used effectively to improve learning outcomes. Um, and so that sometimes leads to a kind of slightly less than desirable spiral where high use of digital resources is incentivized and modeled rather than effective use of digital resources. So one of the things we're very keen on um is looking at how digital supports and can yeah, be used to prove that it's supporting teaching and learning um outcomes and how you can try to kind of create more virtual cycles around data and diagnostics so that you know our partners are identifying where practice is beneficial and it's kind of really adding value to the teaching and learning cycle and then it modeling and enhancing that rather than kind of simply just going for usage statistics.

19:47.27

Ritesh Chopra

Got it. Thanks, Lewis. I think thanks for sharing those insights and just for our users like to just share that interoperability standards pretty much enable operational processes, kind of underlying exchange and sharing of information between different systems and that's pretty much how the interoperability standards operate and ah, very well answered on that, Lewis. The other thing I would kind of put in here would be there is probably a lot of knowledge transfer involved in ensuring new courses are delivered to the target audience, to your learners effectively. And I think it will be pertinent to kind of understand from you, what sort of education support do you provide when you distribute these courses of these curricula to your target audience.

20:47.23

Lewis Birchon

Yeah, so one of the kind of underlying principles um, and this kind of sometimes sounds a bit a bit weird to people, but one of the underlying principles of Cambridge Partnership for Education is that we come in, we provide support, but we work towards a point where our partners so the ministries of education are able to basically take whatever we've handed to them, whatever we've developed with them and own and run and maintain that without us. Um, so yeah, what we want to be able to do is really kind of focus on that knowledge transfer um on a range of different ways. So obviously once you hand over teaching learning materials whether those are print or digital or blended to teachers and schools so that they can integrate them into their teaching and learning practice. You want to make sure that they understand how to use those materials, how they're designed, what the pedagogy is behind them and how to get the best out of them um, so obviously there's a kind of huge amount of knowledge transfer um and development as you transition into the the materials being live in classes and we usually do that through programs of professional development. Um, a lot of the schools, a lot of the countries that we work with have a regular cycle of training for teachers often the start of term and to help them get used to and get familiarized with materials they're going to be using that term and also you know there are local networks where best practice is shared and we're really encouraging of that. But with the ministry teams and that we work with, we also want to make sure that we are sharing knowledge and understanding and kind of building their expertise so that they understand the kind of philosophy and approach and the curriculum design and the intentions behind the materials that they um receive and so that we are, you know, enabling them and empowering them to be able to make informed good quality decisions about the lifecycle of those products and yeah, our engagements with our partners last anywhere between 6 months and 5 years, I would say, but the outputs live on in the education system for 10 years, maybe more. And so it's really important that we're kind of leaving behind the kind of legacy of skills to to be able to manage and maintain that without kind of building a dependency on us.

23:54.72

Ritesh Chopra

Um, right, right. No, absolutely I think you kind of made a statement saying that it the impact that we create on education, it does leave an indelible mark on the future of the world and I kind of agree with that and I think I pretty much have a kind of follow-up question on that. We talked about the learning modality. We talked about how do you, and what kind of support system is available when you take it out. I think the pertinent question or probably an important question that I think our audience would be interested in knowing from you Lewis would be once these questions or once these materials are largely out for the international geography, as you mentioned, varied customer base. How do you kind of end up measuring the effectiveness of these learning materials? Is it typically from what you get from the users or is there a kind of a framework that helps you gauge the effectiveness of these learning materials once they are in the market? How do you guess that?

25:06.47

Lewis Birchon

It's almost like a million-dollar question for publishers. I remember when I worked at Pearson back in the day and there was a real drive and around efficacy and being able to kind of prove the impact and so on of your teaching and learning materials which was actually a real challenge for us and as a commercial publisher at the time. Um, so the kind of philosophy of trying to understand what has been the impact of your intervention, your teaching and learning materials, yeah how have they kind of benefited and very much kind of follows through. And yeah, it's really important for governments to be able to say “Okay, we have done this.” Because it's always an investment of time, money, energy, effort, and yeah, there's a huge amount of work that goes into making a change happen at a national level. So it's always important for governments to be able to point towards evidence that all that effort has been worthwhile has delivered positive outcomes. Um, so for us as an organization. Um, we have developed an impact framework and that helps us to design at the very start of a program what we would take as an indication that our work has had a positive outcome and we will build into our programs. Um, cycles of review, and you know looking at and retrospectives on those impact indicators in order to be able to say ‘Yeah, okay, this is having the desired effect’ and we can use that you know in programs that are on stream to give us a guide about whether we need to do something takes some corrective action, whether there are things that we need to do more of where the things that we need to do less of um and so on. And typically governments themselves will kind of look at those they will look at kind of independent um impact assessments but they will also be keeping a pretty keen eye on um, international comparative tests so things like PISA, TIMSS, PEARLS, and those are the things that keep Ministers of Education awake at night. One of the challenges of course is that the education ecosystem is very complex so actually being able to kind of identify specific cause and effect is challenging. But because we're working at a system level with our partners actually we stand a much better chance of being able to kind of more directly diagnose. Yeah this this is working. This is having the desired effect or this is what we need to do in order to improve the chances of it having this desired effect.

28:27.28

Ritesh Chopra

Got it. Thanks for that Lewis. And we're now going to move to the next section of this podcast which is more about the future of Tech in EdTech and I think we all know that the future of Edtech cannot be completed without mentioning about Generative AI, and I think pretty relevant to our topic would be understanding about I'm sure the teacher shortage or the quality of teaching, I would say, has been a global challenge. Ah, we all have already started experimenting with AI, but it would be good to have your thoughts as an educator as someone who's creating content. How do you foresee any kind of an application of a Generative AI which can either kind of substitute a teacher or kind of help enable the teacher or the ministries of education to kind of improve the overall outcomes? Do you see any play around that? What are your thoughts?

29:30.51

Lewis Birchon

Yeah. I mean I think all of us at the moment are trying to kind of work out what Generative AI means. The developments have been so rapid, and it's all everyone talks about at the moment. Um I don't. 

29:50.93

Ritesh Chopra

No meeting is completed without talking about Generative AI.

30:08.44

Lewis Birchon

Yeah yeah, I mean it's remarkable I've got to 10.30 in the morning in the UK and this is my first Generative AI conversation. But I don't think Generative AI will substitute teachers, yeah I don't think that is the direction of travel and I don't think it is something that we should be kind of encouraging either. Um, however, I do think it offers a great kind of potential for empowering teachers. Um, one of the things that yeah, if you're looking at what Generative AI can do um it can spit out a lot of content and the quality of that content can vary quite a bit. But it may well be able to help teachers um in some of those areas that are causing real issues around workload. In the UK, that's been a long-running kind of policy conversation about teacher workload. I think that's also replicated in Australia. It’s seen in patterns kind of around the world that teachers have not just you obviously the workload of planning for teaching but also yeah, all the work that goes alongside that. Um I do wonder if there are potential applications around supporting marking for example perhaps some support around supporting planning. That might be most beneficial for teachers in order to be able to to let them kind of focus. Free them up to to focus more on the actual hands-on teaching for students. Um I mean we're going to see bigger pressures for teachers over the coming years because yeah, as you say teacher shortages are acute and they're not just kind of down to individual countries. We are seeing kind of much larger patterns around teacher shortages. So tools that can help teachers manage their workloads, manage the kind of work that they need to do, would be really beneficial. How we get from the kind of current status to that being something that's a bit more um, embedded will be interesting and I would recommend if your listeners aren't already following um, having a look at some of the work that Ethan Mollock is doing. He's been quite pioneering in his MBA, a course that he runs about how to embed AI within teacher learning. Obviously, that's university level as postgraduates but actually, there are potentially some takeaways from that and, useful and applicable within schools.

33:02.30

Ritesh Chopra

Thanks for that. Thanks for sharing that information about Ethan Mollick on the work. I think that'll be really helpful. Thanks, Lewis. And overall if you look holistically on the future of EdTech or what technology can do within EdTech. I think it'd be good to kind of wrap up the section by having your thoughts around how you see, especially when you look at your market area where you have developing economies and developed economies as well. How do you see technology playing a role in making the overall technology itself more equitable, making it more affordable and more accessible? What are your thoughts around that? It'll be good to kind of capture that for our audience to kind of hear your thoughts around that, Lewis.

33:55.80

Lewis Birchon

Yeah, so for ministries of education and kind of national education systems, equity, and access should always be kind of front and center of mind. Um, but one of the challenges I think for policymakers in particular, is the new advances in technology, particularly consumer technology, are always much more exciting than things that are proven and that are affordable and accessible. So if you take kind of VR headsets and so on you know, obviously there's a new kind of expanding market that's coming there, as Apple kind of get into that space. You can see in the kind of distant future where there may be education applications for that, but actually is it realistic that you'd be able to get that kind of kit into schools or into homes for students to make use of in the short term, probably not, not without an enormous amount of expenditure. Um, so I think there's ah, there's definitely a role in advocating for the best use of readily available technology. Um, so one of the things actually we've been doing recently is working with our partners Ludenso on AR and enhanced textbooks and that is a really kind of nice demonstration actually of what you can do with some readily available technology. You don't necessarily need a top-of-the-range mobile phone in order to be able to enhance physical print textbooks and with interactive assets. Um, and it's I think there's a role definitely for us and for our publishers in trying to create more tangible experiences that kind of show how you can use existing readily available technology in kind of new and interesting ways and also how you can try to make that technology and how do you try to show that good use of that technology does have an improvement on learning outcomes and how it can support equitable access.

36:23.92

Ritesh Chopra 

Absolutely. I kind of agree with you on that, Lewis I think it's all about innovating, leveraging the right technology, but still at the same time reducing the cost of adoption. I think that will be important when we look at creating solutions which are more affordable because the cost need to be reduced to make them affordable and accessible by everyone. So I kind of thanks for those thoughts kind of agree with you on that. And great, that's kind of draws to the conclusion here on this podcast. And before you leave, Lewis just before you leave, I think our audience would like to hear your thoughts or your advice that you may have with your rich experience working within the industry. What do you have for the ministries of education or for your peers kind of publishing industry taking care of similar work experiences or people like us who kind of provide services to publishing companies and ensure that we all create a more equitable environment? What are your words on that? It’s good to have your thoughts from that.

37:38.46

Lewis Birchon

I mean I think kind of the key thing, I would say, is remain interested and looking at what's going on out in the kind of broader world. It's. really interesting working across a range of different education systems because the things that you take for granted and consider to be absolutely normal from your own education system are deeply weird. And so it's always worth, yeah keeping an open mind, thinking about things as an outsider as much as you can. And if you know if I can do the plug that I forgot to do right at the start, you can kind of look at at some of those things hopefully for there a kind of slightly different lens if you follow industry newsletters such as Absolutely Textbook. Um, but yeah I think keeping an open mind and also getting out into schools and there is nothing that will tell you more about how your materials need to be designed, what needs of teachers really are than going into schools, observing lessons and really trying to understand what are the problems that teachers are trying to get to grips with now.

38:56.24

Ritesh Chopra

Great I think some valuable thoughts around that and I kind of agree that it is important to hear from the horse's mouth directly and kind of read those trends which are emerging out that, read those industry reports, those market reports. And absolutely I think create innovative solutions around it and kind of be adaptive to those changes which are taking place. So absolutely it was a pleasure talking to you, Lewis I think thanks so much for your time. I really appreciate this. And I really look forward to kind of host you again on some other episode on the show. But thanks again Lewis for your time.

39:36.19

Lewis Birchon

Thanks for having me this has been great.

39:41.08

Ritesh Chopra 

Thank you so much.