00:01.86

Olivia Lara-Gresty

Hey, everyone. Welcome to another edition of the Tech in Edtech podcast. I'm your host, Olivia, and today I'm excited to be joined by Clarence Tan, co-founder of Boddle Learning. Welcome Clarence.

00:19.30

Clarence Tan

Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.

00:21.92

Olivia Lara-Gresty

Yeah, we're so happy to have you here. And I want to just kind of jump right in. If you could just talk with us a little bit about your journey into the edtech space and what brought you and your co-founder together to join Boddle?

00:33.93

Clarence Tan

Yeah, of course. And so my journey into the edtech space I actually started in the gaming space. So, back when I was still in college, I played a lot of online games, and I met a couple of guys that eventually became guildmates or teammates in the game. We played a lot, and we just ended up deciding to start our own game studio. And we were initially building games for other people. And how I actually stumbled into the education space was a lot of people that started hiring us to build games for them. wanted us to build educational games. And that was where I fully fell in love with the impact that we were bringing, you know, the potential of like, we can build, still build experiences that really delight players, but also that screen time that we're building, having players engage in is meaningful and beneficial. And so that's how I  stumbled into the edtech space. A couple years later, I met my wife and co-founder at church. I played guitar, and she does audio engineering, and we know she has a background in education, media, and entertainment. And operations, and we just clicked and connected around the impacts that we could make, especially with how fast screen time and media is changing, and we just felt like this is a very worthwhile cause for us to invest our time into.

01:53.10

Olivia Lara-Gresty

I love just hearing that you know you meet people wherever you go, it seems like, and definitely can see how you know that the mesh of you and Edna's skill sets really have combined quite beautifully here, and so cool to hear. I'd love that.

Also, just hearing from your end that from the gaming space, there is so much interest in educational games, and I'm glad it brought you into the ed tech space. You know and thinking about that, since you had designed and worked with many other games in the past, You know, I come from a teaching world. And so I know the products that I was using with my students, each one I had my own opinions on. And I'm curious to hear from you, you know, what persistent problem in K through five made you and Edna say, you know, we still haven't cracked engagement. We need to build something new.

02:39.55

Clarence Tan

Yeah, I think for us, there are two main challenges that ultimately led us to start Boddle. The first one was what you hinted at, right, was engagement. You know, student engagement is still low. I think there's many factors for that. I don't think games itself can solve it. But, if you know, if you look at what's happening and how fast kids' entertainment and media is transforming and improving over time, I think the classroom and classroom tools just have not caught up. And I think there was a huge opportunity there. And the second thing was, I'm actually from Singapore, and my wife and co-founder, Edna, she's from Ghana. Back in our countries, if we failed on any greater topic, we typically get held back a year. And I personally was held back a year because I struggled at math. But ever after you know, I was held back a year, I started succeeding. And you know we were very shocked that that wasn't the norm and always the case here in the US. And we were, you know, we wanted to use games, but also deliver learning that's personalized to kids, you know, regardless of which grade they are, and also to serve the public school sector. And so those two things combined ultimately led us to start Boddle.

04:00.62

Olivia Lara-Gresty

Yeah, I definitely think that you're touching on, you know, this idea of engagement, just how it's the attention economy, as I've heard it called. And so you guys are definitely touching on something. I think it's really important that the education space does actually keep up. So, you know, I definitely hear what you're talking about there. And I want to jump a little more into Boddle. But before we get there, I'd love for you to just, you know, before we started the recording today, you were sharing a little bit about gamification and game-based learning with some really great examples. So for folks who might need a quick refresher, could you just share a little bit about the difference between those that we can make sure everyone kind of understands what we're getting into here?

04:40.41

Clarence Tan

Yeah, of course. So gamification generally is more doing things standard way and then adding game elements to it, right? So, for example, if I'm buying coffee, we can gamify it by giving but customers a punch card. You know or if Kid is working on like Kahoot, answering quiz items, it's structured in a way where it's designed around game elements. Whereas gamification, the whole experience is designed that the game, there's there's going to be a game design around the whole experience. And so, for example, my two favorite examples would be like, one would be like Age of Empires was a game I played growing up. I learned about like Hannibal, like Xander the Great, not from a history book, but because they were characters that could use to rule over armies. And it was as those names and characters and what they did just stuck with me. And another, more like a practical, game-based learning example, would be if I were to teach, build a game around fractions, right?

I would, for example, build a pizza, a pizzeria game, right? I would have customers come in, order pizza. They might say, I want a quarter slice or eighth slice, and have to figure out you know where to cut the pizza to have the right slice size given to the customers. That would be an example of game-based learning.

06:06.99

Olivia Lara-Gresty

Yeah, those are really helpful examples. And I'm sure some of our listeners out there also learned about Hannibal the same way. So thanks for sharing that. Diving in from there, so as we look at Boddle itself, you guys have invested in a consistent set of characters. and a shared game world instead of standalone mini games. And so I know that that's what can be a big lift from a production standpoint. So I'd love to just hear from you. What told you that that would be worth it? And have you seen any specific retention or re-engagement jump numbers that kind of show you that, and this consistency has deepened learning or even just kept kids coming back to the platform?

06:45.76

Clarence Tan

Yeah, of course. I think there are many factors that come into like designing for kids.

06:50.94

Clarence Tan

And even like within our scope of age ranges, which is kindergarten through sixth grade, there are many different player types. I think one big challenge that most product designers, especially in the game space, will see is that in addition to the the different age ranges causing different preferences, so for example, kids who are younger, they generally like game variety, rapid fun, quick win, quick loses, and then older kids like to socialize and then invest into, you know, games that have more depth, right? But even in addition to the age range differences, there is now a lot of different, like, just like, personal preferences, right? Some like socializing games, some like, like you know, cosmetics and building things, some like to battle, some like to collaborate. And so, you know, as a start, we started building a lot of different mini games. Initially, that was kind of the vision. We're going to build all these different mini games. But the challenge there then is going to be around, like, you know, if I like to play this, I say mini game one and I play it a lot, I get good at it. And then you know, now I'm jumping to another game, now I'm gonna lose progress that I had in the first game. And so it came down to like, how do we build all these other different game types, but tie progress together? And so we, that's where the idea of a character came in. We're gonna build a very unique character. We call it, they have these bottle heads where when kids learn, their heads fill up, which is why we call it a company boddlle. And these are the same characters that would go from game A to game B, B to game C so that if a player is playing game A, they collect a bunch of coins, they get to like you know dress up their their characters, that same character gets to go into another game and their progress kind of follows them, which makes it very makes it scalable for us to have, okay, kids don't feel like they're losing progress and they can always play and different games, different game genres, you know, as their interests change, we can accommodate them and then we can keep that player year over year.

09:04.61

Olivia Lara-Gresty

Yeah, you know, you're reminding me of, I think, when I was teaching that the big one, and it's still out there, you know, some of those games, the kids are looking for getting the skins and being able to customize their characters. So you mentioned both kind of individual preferences and also that consistency, especially for older students. But I appreciate your differentiation between those interests from an age perspective, and also just personal preferences there. And I guess, you know, thinking about that, as we think big picture again, you know, we also have to think about the people who are actually getting these games in front of students and approving them. And so when you think about sharing a district leader, you know, showing them a quick demo, maybe five minutes, do you have a sense of what concrete signals help them see that a math game's gamification is like purpose-driven?

09:54.11

Clarence Tan

Yeah, so I would say it's changed a little bit over time, and I'll kind of explain what that means, right? When we first launched Boddle, this is like really early on, when we talked to district leaders and principals,  curriculum directors, it used to be very research-driven, or it  has to like, oh, which other school districts are using it, and that had, initially had been a really big barrier because, you know, as a small startup, it's really expensive and time-consuming to get these research points. And then over time, I think it just comes down to, like, are teachers using it, and will my kids like it? Because I think through the pandemic, I think I forgot who used this term. They call it the wild west of edtech.

10:51.29

Olivia Lara-Gresty

Hmmm

10:52.86

Clarence Tan

You know there are all these other tools that are being used and there are all these tools that teachers and kids were dropping just because the engagement wasn't there and and you know kids were at home playing roblox and minecraft and and watching youtube kids and and when it comes classroom that there was a stark difference between what's used again like in the classroom versus not and so now it has became more around like, are my teachers using it and are my kids, are my students using it and will they like it?

And I think on their side, the main thing that they wanna know is, are they actually engaging with academic content versus just running around, right? And there are a lot of tools that do that. From a design standpoint, we try to make sure that we get at least 30 to 40 questions per hour that a kid spends. We obviously extrapolate it down to 15-minute blocks because, you know, That's the free time that a kid typically gets in the classroom at any given time. As long as we can get, you know, a good pace of practice content and learning experiences delivered to the kids given in the given time and be able to tie it back to state standards and be able to show that to district leaders or principals or teachers, I think it makes it very easy or much easier for us to get buy-in.

12:12.16

Olivia Lara-Gresty

Yeah, I mean, you're hitting on a great point there that it's, you know, if there's a lot of interesting or even effective learning experiences within a game, but the kids aren't playing the game, then there's not going to be a lot of turnaround there. So I definitely think that, you know, I definitely saw after the pandemic or just through that process, how much we've really been focusing on engagement since. And I think something else you mentioned it reminded me of you know, one of the teachers of yours that has used your product, had shared some advice with other teachers to just, when first introducing the game, to skip the game locks and allow students to just get excited and build buy-in. And so I think that from that standpoint, just teachers are, what you're saying really speaks to what the teachers are saying as well as if students are bought in, then it makes, you know, it's half the effort has already gotten through. So I definitely appreciate that perspective there.

13:07.55

Clarence Tan

Yeah, of course. And it's exactly that point is like, I forgot, I was talking to a CIO three weeks ago, and I was explaining to him like, and he was the one who was actually telling me, like a lot of other CIOs, kind of like, what was the word? I can't remember where, essentially like there are a lot of tools that are amazing, but if kids don't use it, then none, like exactly like you said, right? None of the but learning that's being delivered would matter because there isn't no follow-through to actually having the tool be used in the district.

13:40.07

Olivia Lara-Gresty

Yeah. And think I want to actually jump a little bit as we sort of kids are playing the game. I mean, we've seen that and it's teachers are enjoying it and are seeing their kids actually logging in. And so now we want to think about once you're getting kids in there, I'm sure there's a lot of the design science you thought about when you're actually, so you know, you've turned the math into play, but how to also make sure that there is that learning is happening. And so we think about, you know, in this space, a lot about cognitive load theory, all about how much mental effort it actually takes for someone to learn something. And so, you know, if the game is too confusing, the kids will burn energy on the wrong things. The learning doesn't stick. They're not going to remember Hannibal in the next 20 years, as we were mentioning. And so I was wondering if you could just give us a real example of where, you know, understanding cognitive load theory has shaped any design choices in Boddle, and what maybe had changed after you made any tweaks related to that.

14:36.27

Clarence Tan

Yes, of course. I'll give you two examples. One is more general product design, and the other would be more around designing experiences around learning. And so the example for product design is more so like, for example, a first-time user experience, right? A lot of times we want to just let the user just like experience everything, and but you know, very similar to having a big menu. When everything is there, I don't know where to start. A very strong first-time user experience really matters a lot. And the simpler you can make it, the better, right? Like if you can make it more intuitive, simpler without having a lot of reading, a lot of words, that could actually you know make or break the product versus you know a lot of games the way they would try to build a first time experience is they would just put a bunch of reading tutorials and and this button clicks and, you know, generally users would skip those. And so the first example would be creating a first-time experience has very streamlined, very linear, like here, step A, B, C, don't have too many branches to choose, you know, other options just so that they can get through the core loop of how the product works.

And then on the education side, and this actually happened to us. So earlier I had mentioned that you know something that was very near and dear to Edna, and I are making sure that kids get the right kind content for each student. We went one step further and we designed an algorithm that was designed around, I think the terminology is a zone of proximal development, always delivering content at the zone of proximal development, meaning it's just slightly under being too hard for you to understand. There's some sort of like effort there, and then the case can really learn. Now, you know, from a learning tool standpoint, that sounds amazing. But now when, you know, there you're you're being delivered and faced with math problems and practice problems that are at that difficulty, while having to also mentally balanced gameplay decisions, it it just it was just a little bit too much, to where our engagement was not that high. And so what we ended up doing, I actually credited it to a PhD intern that we had who essentially segmented a portion of our content being delivered to be practice problems, so that, versus always, you know, always being at the zone of proximal development to actually you know have but portion of that practice problem delivery to be like practice and things that they might know but it can touch up on. And that actually shot our engagement up by, I think it was like close to 50% or something like that. And so those that was like a really big learning and discovery that was very interesting and huge for us.

17:43.87

Olivia Lara-Gresty

Wow. Yeah. I definitely, you know, it's kind of thinking about that, that Goldilocks, right? Like, what is that, that perfect balance there? And so with that, you know, I think that it sounds like you're really coming from both, again, the engagement perspective, but also making sure that there is that effectiveness. And so, after you have hooked a learner, and maybe this ties into what you were just speaking up, but how do you actually map the in-game analytics for state standards and alignments to make sure that districts can actually track how this is supporting their students?

18:18.43

Clarence Tan

Yeah, so the way we do it is on the back end, we make sure every single practice problem is mapped to a specific state standard.  Before, we used to be very structured in the way that we decide what to deliver to the learner. But then we realized that a lot of teachers, you know, they have different needs. Some would like it to be adaptive all the time. A lot of times, teachers would use Boddle as a targeted practice tool. So they would prefer to choose the standards that they want. So on the back end, we always tag any problem or any practice item to state standards, not only to state standards, well, it is mapped to the standards of pretty much every single state as well. So there's a backend web that's happening to say, all right, if it's this standard for Common Core, is this standard for TEKS, is this standard for Florida BEST, it can be interchanged on the backend. And so when we are delivering content to students, either we choose based on the algorithm or we let teachers choose, but regardless of which problems they're practicing, we're just glad that they're practicing it, right? And then on the backend side, we can always show like, hey, you did 15 problems, 12 of them went to this standard A, three of them went to standard B, and I guess that's 15 questions there. So I guess, yeah, so it's already mapped to the standards. And as long as we can report it to administration or a teacher in a way that it's in a language which that they they understand and expect, then that buy-in is is as much is done much easier.

19:55.86

Olivia Lara-Gresty

Yeah. And I think that, you know, we're at an interesting inflection point, and you mentioned, you know, you were speaking to a CIO recently, and there are definitely, we there's one lens where folks are looking at making sure that students are learning and that they have these standards that they can monitor progress for. And I am sure you know teachers as well and students, even looking at those standards. But then there's also an added layer here that districts and especially anyone on the kind of the CIO level or anything similar is always wary about privacy and bias. And I think that's definitely an important area. I think, and especially in education, where we need to be especially focused on that. And so, you know, given that there are there are AI components towards boddle learning and and you sort of hinted towards those with how much the game meeting the learners where they are. I'm curious if you have any thoughts on what early guardrails districts should be thinking about and insisting on before greenlining any AI-infused math games, and how you're sort of meeting them there.

20:59.02

Clarence Tan

Yeah, that one. All right, so this is a much bigger question because it comes down to, like, how is AI being infused, right? If it's a language model, that is, example, just an API directly to the model, then that's where it becomes dicey because, pretty much, and if there's an open chat experience involved in it, then that's where it gets a little bit dicier, right? Unless there are third-party tools that can filter out what kids can say or not say or ask the AI. How we have done it and why, at least the way that we've done it, is pretty much risk-free is because we're mainly using AI to do two things. One is to essentially map the learner's progress and deliver the right content to the kid. Like zero PII is involved in that whole experience, right? It just says, Hey, account A, you're getting this content and this, and this, at this level. And then we actually contain it within our own servers. And then the other way we're using AI  is we use it to generate curriculum, right? So the once it's generated, then we just throw it into our database, and it's self-contained into our own servers as well.

And so, at least from our side, that's the way we do it. And we technically don't even collect PII. We just collect barely enough for the teacher to identify, okay, I know this is Sam because, you know, the first name is Sam, but we don't even collect the second name, right? We just take the last initial so that as a teacher, you would know that this is Sam H or Sam L and not, you know, Sam I or whatnot.

22:47.63

Olivia Lara-Gresty

Yeah, and I think you're right that this is part of such a large conversation. I think, you know, often there is just this kind of use of using AI as a buzzword and not necessarily having a well-thought-out plan, and, you know, people kind of slapping those in without always thinking about the security aspects. And so I appreciate that you've thought that through and can also explain that to the listeners out there. And I think that just kind of as we start, sort of thinking a little bit further in kind of how districts, you know, if they've greenlighted a game like yours, and then there's kind of those next steps. And you mentioned, you hinted at this earlier, but what is something that districts or even teachers in the classroom can do to make a rollout of if there were to have their kids be using Boddle Learning, how might they roll this out smoother, but maybe are not doing today?

23:37.67

Clarence Tan

Yeah, I think the easiest way to get a rollout is to integrate with a single sign-on and rostering. Mainly because, you know, if you think about it, for a teacher to use our product requires students to have their own accounts because we are, you know, storing their game progress. We're also storing their learning progress so that teachers and districts can get reports, right? And But what that means is it's not like like a math is fun or a mini clip or like a Kahoot where students can just jump on a room code or enter a scan a QR code and just jump in, you know, because there has to be some sort of a retention of that learning progress or whatnot. And so, but what that means is from a teacher's perspective, they would have to first sign up for a teacher account And they would have to add each student's account manually if they don't have a single sign on a rostering, meaning first name, last initial, first name, last initial times 22 to 30 kids, and then set up username and passwords for each of those. And because each username is unique, there might be usernames that are taken, right? A lot of times in the early days, we have teachers saying, Hey, I want to make the username the same as, you know, what I print for, you know, what I use for my kids for other programs, but a lot of times those usernames are taken 

And there's like a lot of Tina's in our system, as especially as our app grows. And so if there's no single sign-on rostering, then they have to go through that times for all 30 kids, and then make sure they have a way to get kids those login information and then sign them all on, and making sure that they type in some username and password that's super simple. Half the time teachers would just use the same username and password for, same password for all their kids, which is not recommended. But you know, without a single sign on, that's what teachers have to resort to. And so, you know, for us, the biggest point of growth was when we integrated with  Clever first and then Google Classroom. And then now, you know, it's just like two button clicks, and then kids can just press a button to log into their account to play, whether it's in school,  at home, and so, you know, for district buy-in, that's a long way of saying single sign-on and rostering.

26:11.46

Olivia Lara-Gresty

Yeah, I think that just, you know, if there's a process that can simplify things similar to what you mentioned about the in-game experience as well, just reducing the barriers to entry there is super important. I wanted to jump into some other questions, just kind of more broadly speaking, and just thinking about your quick insights on these. And so if we can jump right in, is there one overused gamification trick that you might ban tomorrow if you could?

26:41.46

Clarence Tan

I would not say I would ban, but I think the one that's overused is leaderboards. But I'm in love with leaderboards. So I would never say it's, but it's really, it's really strong. So I would not ban it just because of how easy the implementation is, to the amount of benefit you can get. My only concern is, you know, leaderboards are mainly effective for audiences and players, or you know, users that are competitive, right? And so there are when you implement a leaderboard, it could be a double-edged sword. And I think you know, working with a lot of teachers, a good example is Kahoot. The whole game mode is a leaderboard, and it's very fun for players who are in the top five to top seven. But you know, for players who are on the middle to the lower bucket, generally that's where engagement starts dropping, and players can get discouraged. And so there are obviously a lot of ways to design around curbing that type of gameplay. But just like you know that that's one very powerful mechanic that's overused, that's really strong, but also just needs additional design requirements to make sure it can get balanced, especially in the classroom setting.

28:08.54

Olivia Lara-Gresty

Yeah, I think the double-edged sword is accurate here that, you know, it's, as you said, and I've seen it before with my kids, where they love these games, but sometimes, you know, it might be a quieter student at the top of the leaderboard. And so there is this amazing way in which it really can, you know, can connect, help other students connect or with each other or even just with the material. But as you said, it's you have to think about also the kids who are not necessarily performing well, which I think any we can kind of think any activity or game that supports the higher performing learners, while it's helpful, might be missing those who really need the help. So I appreciate you bringing that one up. Maybe not ban-worthy, but just what you know, how can we folks get more creative to make sure that we're reaching the kids who might be on the cusp of being able to pass or excel in their classes? Another question I wanted to ask is, are there any trends in the edtech space more broadly that you're cautiously optimistic about these days?

29:08.01

Clarence Tan

Cautiously optimistic. Yeah, the one trend, I don't know if I'll call it a trend, the one aspect of,  yeah, one I guess a trend would be the word, is using AI for content generation. Just because traditionally, curriculum and content has been so gate-kept to the point where it's either you know textbook publishers pay to access, and then you know that's where Teachers Pay Teachers came and kind of like democratized the whole thing a little bit more. But now with AI-generated content, it just feels like you know anybody can create lesson materials at a very high quality. Maybe, you know, I guess even video is starting to get there, right? To where you know the time consumption and pain of creating content can be waved away, and there's more room for that human interaction of you know teaching the content, and or you know facilitating the learning with the students one-on-one. I just feel like AI has just really changed the landscape for you know, the creation of curriculum content and lessons.

30:32.41

Olivia Lara-Gresty

Yeah, I think we're all still navigating, you know, what to do with how to best leverage our human time when we have some of these tools, especially for students, to make sure that, because I think relationships are incredibly important, you know, teaching tools and motivational tools. And so thinking about how that can always be enhanced. I think that, you know, I've learned so, so much. And I think that just hearing your background from the game space and then also just the way it really sounds like you're listening to both your students or the student users that you have the students that you know in your life, and the gamers in your life, as well as what districts are looking for. Just,  you know, I would definitely encourage anyone to check out Boddle Learning. And if you have any, you know, last remarks on maybe anyone who's looking into getting into the gaming or educational game space, any career advice for anyone? Do you have any thoughts on that one?

31:26.17

Clarence Tan

Yeah, if it's someone who's getting into educational game space, something that we took a while to figure out and is really the business model. Because, you know, that, especially in the game education space that changes the approach that you design games, that approach your whole go-to-market. Our model is we go framing bottoms up, meaning we design specifically for teachers and kids, and then we let them work it up. And then we generate revenue by selling optional subscriptions to kids' parents. We felt this model is the best for our use case, mainly because we are such a game heavy product and we did not feel good about putting curriculum behind a paywall that was really just just part of our vision and mission whereas you know if you know I was building a game and we're trying to sell the districts then you know that that whole frame approach might not be the best unless you added some tweaks to it so it's one of those like make sure you're okay with the way that your your your business model works and then make sure you design the product around it

32:47.36

Olivia Lara-Gresty

Yeah, I know that that's great advice. And I think, you know, forces some of us to take a step back sometimes and make sure that once you're in there, you really have thought through your game plan for moving forward. Clarence, thank you so much. I've learned a lot today, and I'm really excited to have gotten the chance to chat with you.

33:03.39

Clarence Tan

Of course. Thank you so much for having me.

33:05.85

Olivia Lara-Gresty

Thank you.