Edtech Insiders

Research-Based Edtech for 3mm Learners with Sunil Gunderia of Age of Learning

August 22, 2022 Alex Sarlin Season 3 Episode 8
Edtech Insiders
Research-Based Edtech for 3mm Learners with Sunil Gunderia of Age of Learning
Show Notes Transcript

Sunil Gunderia is the Chief Innovation Officer at Age of Learning, a leading education technology innovator with a mission to help children everywhere build a strong foundation for academic success and a lifelong love of learning. He oversees the company’s innovation strategy and has led the development, distribution, and implementation of its research-proven educational programs for students prekindergarten through second grade.

Age of Learning has been recognized as one of the most innovative companies in edtech for its research-based, highly scalable learning products that are built to advance positive educational outcomes and address inequities in learning. The company’s flagship program, ABCmouse, is the leading digital education brand for young children in the U.S., and its expanding portfolio of offerings includes Adventure Academy, ABCmouse English, and the personalized, adaptive learning programs for schools, My Math Academy and My Reading Academy.  

To-date, Age of Learning has helped educate more than 50 million children worldwide. 

Today, Sunil also serves on the Board of Trustees at the Children’s Institute, an LA-based non-profit that provides early education and services to help transform the lives of children and families affected by poverty. He also sits on the advisory boards of Edtech Evidence Exchange, Digital Wellness Lab, and Educating All Students Alliance, and served on the Editorial Advisory Board for the “Handbook of Research on Innovative Approaches to Early Childhood Development and School Readiness.”

Prior to Age of Learning, Sunil was the General Manager of Mobile at The Walt Disney Company, overseeing mobile strategy, product development, distribution, and partnerships globally. Sunil also founded Gunderia Advisors, where he advised numerous early-stage technology companies on strategy, product, and execution.


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Alexander Sarlin:

Welcome to Ed Tech insiders. In this podcast, we talk to educators and educational technology investors, thought leaders, founders and operators about the most interesting and exciting trends in the field on your host Alex Sarlin, an educational technology veteran with over a decade of work at leading edtech companies. Sunil Gunderia is the chief innovation officer and head of mastery and adaptive products at age of learning. A leading technology innovator with a mission to help children everywhere build a strong foundation for academic success, and a lifelong love of learning. He oversees the company's innovation strategy and has led the development, distribution and implementation of its research proven educational programs for students pre kindergarten through second grade. Under some US leadership, Age of learning has become recognized as one of the most innovative companies in edtech. For its research based, scalable learning products that are built to advance positive educational outcomes and address inequities in learning. The company's flagship program, ABC Mouse is the leading digital education brand for young children in the US, and it's expanding portfolio of offerings includes adventure Academy, ABC Mouse English and the personalized adaptive learning programs for schools. My Math Academy and my reading Academy, to date, Age of learning has helped educate more than 50 million children worldwide. Sunil also serves on the Board of Trustees at the Children's Institute, an LA based nonprofit that provides early education and services to help transform the lives of children and families affected by poverty. He also sits on the advisory boards of edtech evidence exchange digital wellness lab, and educating all students Alliance and served on the editorial advisory board for the handbook of research on innovative approaches to early childhood development, and school readiness. Prior to age and learning, Sunil was the general manager of mobile at the Walt Disney Company, overseeing mobile strategy, product development and distribution and partnerships globally. Sunil also founded secondaria advisors, where he advised numerous early stage technology companies on strategy, product, and execution. Sunil Gunderia Welcome to Ed Tech insiders.

Sunil Gunderia:

Alex, it's wonderful to be here. And I love your show. Oh,

Alexander Sarlin:

that's so nice. So, Sunil, you have a really interesting career. Tell us about what you've done. And especially this shift from running mobile strategy for Disney, and then moving into the EdTech space with age of learning?

Sunil Gunderia:

Yeah, I will. If you don't mind, Alex, I'll start with a little bit earlier, because education didn't become my calling until much later in my career. My mom was actually a teacher. And I'm a first generation immigrant, I came from India, and I followed what my dad did. And he was an accountant, CPA. And that's what I did. And what that did was give me this foundation and really learning the language of business, which was what accounting effectively is. And what I realized from that is that I liked that role. But I really wanted to be a problem solver, I really wanted to be ahead of not recording the problem or recording what the results were, but getting ahead and helping create those results. And that led me to a consulting role as a strategist and a problem solver working with a lot of different companies. And after finishing my MBA at University of Southern California, I was like, this internet thing is the real deal I want to be a part of. And it really does seem like wow, what an incredible opportunity. So I had this amazing opportunity to take a role with the Walt Disney Company, where I was able to apply my strategy and my finance skills first, do international development on both the web and mobile side, and learned a bunch from what was happening in Japan with the rollout of IMO. And the success there, we had a Japanese team, it was really growing really fast. And that gave me this opportunity to take a role in Europe, with Walt Disney Company to start up a new business for them in mobile. So I had this opportunity to work at the intersection of content. And in a brand new technology. Mobile was just evolving as a medium. And we didn't know where it was gonna go. And it was just fascinating. And this is really where I started learning about new platforms for just beyond content. But how do you use them as an actual medium for interactivity, we ended up buying two Game Studios, I was responsible for running, expanded my end, the team's kind of focus on really the core capabilities of a mobile as they evolved. And I moved back to the US in 2012. I spent eight years in Europe, and I was working with several edtech startups. And it was at this time that during who's the founder of active learning, reached out to me actually it wasn't Doug he had our new board member at the time sky date and reach out to me to say look, we have this opportunity, you know, Age of learning our products ABC Math and we're moving into mobile. You know, I came in met with Doug, and he told me about the company's mission to help all kids just develop a love of learning and to gain the academic foundations, they needed to be successful. And ABC Mouse was this just the initial part of this vision to help all these all kids. And I was like, Yeah, Sign me up. This seems like a great use of coming out of kids media or children's media at Disney, I understand the new platform, and you see what's happening with the iPad and how kids interact with this new platform. And so I became employee 9092. At the company, we have over 600 people now. And it's been an amazing journey. And I've learned an incredible amount from my peers and from the industry, and from a lot of people about what it takes to apply technology to make a difference and solve big societal problems.

Alexander Sarlin:

So you are the Chief Innovation Officer at age of learning. And I want to talk a little bit about age of learning, because as you mentioned, it is a real juggernaut in the EdTech space millions of users. ABC Mouse, as you know, is their flagship product. It's been around since 2010. And it's sort of ubiquitous. I think age learning is one of these edtech companies that often flies under the radar, its profile isn't as high we talk about companies like outschool and Maven on this podcast all the time, which are tiny, and new. But age of learning has an incredible reach and impact. So give our listeners a little bit of an overview of Age of learnings product line and reach.

Sunil Gunderia:

Sure, sure, as you mentioned, Alex, the flagship product for the company is ABC Mouse and ABC Mouse is and many people don't know this is that we have hefty research on ABC Mouse that using ABC Mouse for as little as 45 minutes a week improves both math and reading outcomes for young learners. And we've done many studies to ensure that it works and in what ABC Mouse is a consumer product. And because of the care and diligence we've put into it to make sure it works. It's been such a trusted resource. by parents, we've had over 50 million kids on ABC Mouse worldwide. And actually all of our progress, we also have built the first you know educational MMO with adventure Academy. But going back to ABC Mouse, 50 million kids and 10 billion learning activities have been completed on ABC Mouse and and you'll look out in the universe over the last 10 years or so many kids have been influenced by ABC Mouse from their home use. And as a mission driven company, we've also offered ABC Mouse free to teachers in classrooms, and over 600,000 teachers have brought it to their classroom for free to use with their kids. So yes, we are a part of the cultural fabric. And in any parent with a two to eight year old knows us. And actually, if our internal research on our awareness with families with kids, two to eight, you know, we rank up there with the Walt Disney Company. And that's because parents trust us, they tell each other about them as they as newborns come and they're the new kids. And teachers tell parents about what resources should you use with your early learners. And that's where we are. And so we're known by our brand ABC Mouse rather than age of learning.

Alexander Sarlin:

Right? That's part of it. And yet, I've been saying, you know, television ads for ABC Mouse for years. Talk to us about this younger learners set. So you know, it's of learnings flagship product is ABC Mouse, it's ages two through eight. Adventure Academy is for older students. And then now you have my math and my reading Academy. We'll talk about all of these but you come from Disney, how do you think about learning for young students for that two through eight crowd? What kind of support do they need? How do you make sure that you have a product that really, really addresses their needs that they can do on their own and truly get the outcomes that you pride yourselves on?

Sunil Gunderia:

Sure. And we've we start with, you know, some of the first principles in terms of young learners. And the science tells us that the early years or when a child's brain is developing the fastest. So these years are critical. And as you think about a young learner, we really talked a lot about this to our design process was we were four at one time, we were five at one time, but we are not anymore. So we have to be very intentional in terms of understanding, especially with new technologies, the interfaces and what works. So from a research perspective, you got to start with, from first prototype through final design, bring the young ones in letting them experience our platform and then learning from that experience to ensure we're meeting their needs, from a UX perspective, a UI perspective, a developmental perspective, that, for example, multi step instructions are not easy for most four year olds can't do that. So you don't include them. Right. So creating non-reader interfaces, so we ensure that we are measuring a child's ability to do the math versus their ability to read. All of these things are very thoughtful and intentional. And we have fantastic researchers and PhDs on our team that inch sure that we not only look at the existing science and research, but also create our new body of work that ensures that we're meeting the needs of these youngest learners. I love that. One of

Alexander Sarlin:

my higher ed tech roles years ago is working on a K two reading platform with scholastic. And that idea of non word interfaces, you know, user experience interfaces for pre literate learners. It's one of these things we all sort of take for granted with our adult world that, you know, if you have instructions, or if you have words on the screen, people are going to make sense of them. You can't assume that for early readers. And I love hearing you talk about how you have to really get into the mind of a foreign five year old research with them.

Sunil Gunderia:

Absolutely. And one of the most interesting feedback we received our I learned as we're going through this process, when we're, we're really early on, we're talking to one of our senior curriculum, people, Anastasia bats, and she was like, You can't look and even within their age or age range diseases, like a four year old is not just a mini seven year old. They are completely different from a developmental perspective. And you have to approach it that way. Yeah,

Alexander Sarlin:

it's so interesting. So you're the chief innovation officer, which is such an interesting place to be. And I'd love to hear you know, talk about innovation and how a company like age of learning can stay really nimble, you age of learning was one of the very first companies to go very big on gamified learning ABC Mouse has 10,000 learning activities. It's totally gamified. It's it has all sorts of really interesting animation and things. But in 2022, what does innovation mean to you? Are you thinking about VR? Are you thinking about Metaverse AI? Where do you put your eye when you think about what's next in education?

Sunil Gunderia:

Our first principle is outcomes. And that is educational outcomes for the young learners. So all the metaverse are using virtual reality, to get to outcomes at scale for us is what platforms give us the most reach to create the most outcome. And we start there, and then we can expand outward. So when we think about innovation, I feel like we're first or second inning of a nine inning game in terms of actual innovation in educational technology or education generally. And the way we get there is through backward design. So for our math and reading products, my Math Academy, my reading got to me, which we're going to talk about, we started with the principle of looking at the problem set, right, and it's that 60% of our fourth graders, according to the National Report Card, do not achieve proficiency in either math or reading. And you look at what's happening from an equity perspective for kids from low income families. 75% do not achieve proficiency in math and 80%. In reading, this is an absolute systemic failure, it is keeping this circle of poverty, we're just losing human potential in our most important capital, our human capital, we are not developing and giving them the opportunity to live productive lives and successful lives, as well as you know, having this massive impact on our future success as a country. And so we start there, and then the technology solutions have to be such that they reach as many of those that need this solution. So that's our principle on this. And in terms of you know, what does innovation mean? And that is, because we have to move fast. We start with expert human solutions, and we use, you know, learning engineering process, we bring in master educators, we bring in cognitive scientists, who know how we as humans learn and how we how we learn best, and how we retain learning, and we transfer learning to new situations, right? You bring in behavioral scientist, and you you mentioned games and game designers who are really looking at how do we use gains as a medium to drive forward a learning objectives that we have there? Both from an engagement perspective, also what games do really well, and certainly, we can talk more about that. And then of course, data, and data science is really core to understanding because we don't have this understanding at the granular level of like, what's happening in a child's mind. In our traditional systems, the feedback we get, or as a parent, as an educator, we end up it's an ABC, and what does that even mean about what a child knows and doesn't know. And then our systems and the ones we've developed, really allow us to unpack that and see learning happening in real time and watching a child's growth over the course of whatever time they're using our product, and then really valuating and analyzing it, and ultimately, really using machine learning and AI to optimize pathways and ensure all kids get to proficiency.

Alexander Sarlin:

That's a terrific answer. And, you know, I love how you frame that question. Yeah, one of my weaknesses is I love you know, shiny new things. I'd love to talk about the metaverse or web three or whatever is sort of exciting right now but grounding it in the principle of we have a systemic failure in education. at the elementary level, especially in the US, how do we keep our eye on the ball and raise literacy and numeracy rates, and then use these new technologies to that end, terrific framing, and I really appreciate you putting it that way. So let's dive into both of those. You know, let's start with the sort of gaming side. ABC Mouse obviously uses gamification to great effect, as do the other products. At age of learning, including adventure Academy. They're really ahead of the curve in terms of building game environments. And having worked at Disney and run game studios, you are particularly well versed in gamified education and how well games can teach ABC mass has millions of hours of gamified learning a month, you talked about billions of activities. So let's double click on that a little bit and talk about how age of learning makes game based education in a way that is both engaging and entertaining, especially for young learners, but also effective in actually achieving those outcomes for literacy and math. Sure,

Sunil Gunderia:

it just to clarify, Alex, it's game based learning and not gamification, for the art. Fair enough. And the reason I'm making that is because of the intentionality in the power of games as a medium, and what they can do. And I'll tell you, as we design our products, and specifically with my Math Academy, my reading, candidly, we spent so much time looking at the research, and that's what's really amazing, there's so much parallel between what is best for education, not surprisingly, because education, a large part of education is motivation. And games create a motivation to complete levels. And that is what we want from education. So, you know, you start with from a research basis, and you look at things like flow, which comes out of behavioral science, but it's very important to context the games, and magazzini talked about flow back effectively the same state, which is the zone of proximal development, back in the 30s. And the idea is that having a child at a point where they're ready to do their knowledge state where it is allows them to, to tackle the next thing they're supposed to learn at the right time is exactly how good game design works. So games for us provide a context for learning. And what this means is we use narrative story to situate learning in context, that's relatable to the child versus what typically happens in class, which is we use notation, and we and it's very extracted from the real world games provided like, Hey, this is something that can happen the world around me, it's a real situation, and I'm solving this problem. And what I'm learning is helping me solve this problem. The other thing about games is that mistakes are fine. And it just becomes a part of learning it's productive struggle in games exists, productive struggle in learning should exist, you're not being penalized for learning, the reward is the learning and our mastery levels in the games are equivalent to a boss levels. And so what we're doing there is that we very carefully designed mechanics with games not only for providing manipulatives and context for the learning, but also mechanics for instruction, practice, formative feedback and ultimately assessment to know a child has mastered something so that they're ready to move forward. So you know, a lot of what you're hearing is that we really feel strongly that for personalized mastery based learning that games are just a incredible medium vehicle to both motivate the behavior and to help children identify as learners, as well as to learn the actual subject matter content

Alexander Sarlin:

100% really comprehensive overview of some of the major benefits of game based learning. And one thing that is particularly interesting about major learnings environments is that they structure learning in a way that students of all ages can understand. So there are many different individual game based learning activities, but you have a consistent character, you are in a consistent world, and it makes everything sort of Interplay together rather than feeling just like a series of disconnected experiences. Tell us a little bit about that and how it feeds into my Math Academy in my reading Academy in the development of those exciting new products.

Sunil Gunderia:

Sure, if I step back to talk about from a problem set perspective, and when we're doing our initial research, and we continue to look into it, the systemic failure that we're seeing in our education system in terms of getting our children to proficiency really comes from our systems being set up as time and see versus recognizing and appreciating the uniqueness of every individual learner though parents know those teachers know that we did a study with teachers and 2009 teen before the pandemic, where we found that learner variability is 80% of teachers identified learner variability So as a key constraint from ensuring that all of their kids got to proficiency, and this is with grade level standards, and so we have aimed to solve for learner variability, we have this architecture or with this philosophy and how we do this with this idea of an architecture of understanding that learning is not something linear, it starts with the first thing you learn, and then you build off of that. And if you have any flaws in that architecture, those inevitably show up later on, so that we end up with the proficiency scores that we're seeing now. So how do you solve for that, and the way we went about this is developing what we feel is like the really the future of education and the future of adaptivity, a personalized mastery learning system, we have three patents on this system. And effectively where that system starts, is looks at with a knowledge map, what is it that every child needs to know, let's say going from no knowledge of a subject area of math or reading. So you know, in math, you don't have any knowledge of numbers and reading, you have no knowledge of letters to in reading, being able to read at a proficient level. And for us, our first benchmark was the end of second grade for reading. And for math, that's adding and subtracting three digit numbers, which is the end of second grade, early third grade, depending on what your standards saying in the States. What is everything that a child needs to know what is happening in their mind as they make that journey. And then our system, we assess for prior knowledge and place every child based on what they know, into the system so that those red bricks, we can turn them green if they exist, or if it's a gray brick in an ever learned, they master that before moving forward. And then once your place and our goal with placement is not to say you don't know this, or you're in this and you should be held back or in a in a lower class, it's simply to let them start with what they need to know next. And then we start them on this learning journey, ensure that all bricks are green. And we do this toward to what I told you about our game based system with the placement, then you provide them instruction when we provide direct instruction, as well as formative feedback. And the biggest part of the magic in our system I feel like is the level of care that goes into a formative feedback system, one of the researchers that we really look to was blooms work on mastery based learning. And the idea of two sigma, as you can really improve outcomes by with a master tutor on a one to one basis, clearly not a scalable solution that we can pay for for every, for every good. But how can we mimic that with technology. And as you just in time feedback to our resume math in my recent reading Academy, as a child encounters, something that they don't know, to us is the solution that is going to drive you know better outcomes for all these students. And what we're able to show now and see is that there's an incredible amount of variability we can prove, with data and visualization that there is no clustering around the mean, in terms of how learning happens. across a group of 20 students are 25 students, they're all over the place. And it's impossible to ask to ask teachers to like, address these students, when some of them, you know, we have, we've seen pre K students, or four year olds that started the beginning, or some of them may start at the middle of kindergarten. And if you think about it, a teacher typically only has material for the grade the child is at, and are not able to address this large amount of variability that exists. And this variability has increased after the pandemic, but it was already there. And if we're talking about evidence in which we made, I'd love to tell you about some of the evidence we're seeing there.

Alexander Sarlin:

Yeah, absolutely. And we should definitely get into some of the evidence based work that that agent learning has been doing. But I just want to take a moment to appreciate so many of the really research based and evidence based concepts that you've named in this conversation and that are baked into the age of learning platform, mate, you know, you're the head of mastery and adaptive products. You've mentioned the blooms two sigma, issue, the value of formative feedback, motivation, through gaming, differentiation, and adaptivity. It really exciting you know, this is one of the reasons I got into educational technology in the first place is that some of the things that you're naming have been known in the educational literature for quite a while, but it's very, very, very hard to put them in practice, especially at scale. And the idea of developing hundreds or 1000s of learning activities in my Math Academy, you have these shapes, these characters, and you have all of these really delightful activities, and then instilling within that activity, personalization, intelligent placement, and allowing students to go at different paces. This is really the sort of dream of what edtech can do, because it's something that is impossible to do in a classroom. So I just want to appreciate that. And then we can talk about it, you know how it's working, but it's exciting. You know, you obviously have a background in research and instructional design, as well as in technology and you're speaking my language. It's really waiting to hear.

Sunil Gunderia:

Thank you, Alex, it's incredibly satisfying for me for the team, we get to do purposeful work, that's going to make a difference. And you have this opportunity to move the needle for millions of kids who who are our future, and we're Unlocking Potential, you couldn't do better work than what we get to do. And it's been a fascinating journey, and I wasn't a educational expert, before it's happened is it's just the power of learning. If you if you lean in, and you want to learn something new, and you surround yourself with brilliant people, you can do great things, and you can make a difference. It's exciting. I couldn't be happier to be working where I do and doing the work I do.

Alexander Sarlin:

Yeah, it is really exciting and motivating to hear about it. So you know, let's talk a little bit about the efficacy and impact measurement. You mentioned a number of studies. You know, there was a longitudinal study, that age of learning ran in 2017. That published the fans that found that basically, the number of learning activities completed in ABC Mouse was a strong predictor of literacy and math outcomes, it improved kindergarten readiness. I imagine that age of learning runs a number of these studies internally and externally, maybe sometimes with third parties. How do you think about efficacy measurement in edtech? And how do you ensure that age of learning is always moving in the right direction?

Sunil Gunderia:

We only know we're moving in the right direction, because of the efficacy studies we do. So let me put it that way. We have over 25 studies that we've done as a company, we have done just on our my math and my reading Academy product, we have 12 plus studies, I think we have five underway right now. And we think about it as scientists should be thinking about education. We don't need to be just another company selling product. There's a lot of product we could have chosen to sell, we're going to be in this business, and we need to do it because we want results and achieving our mission and goal of getting all kids to proficiency. If we do that. There's no question we're gonna have an incredible business, the thinking about it as scientists and knowing that the money will follow because we're solving a big societal problem is really core to the belief. It's why we wake up every morning and do what we do. And and so efficacy has to be a part of it. Yes, we work with third parties. We work with West End, we've worked with ESRI, we work with learn platform. We've worked with many universities along the way. And what you'll find and most of our research efforts right now are focused on our Math Academy and my reading Academy products, because we're bringing those into school. And one of the things that we're working with from an ecosystem basis is helping elevate the importance of evidence and decision making for digital technology. And on the industry advisory board of Ed Tech evidence exchange by talk to Carl rectenna is from learn platform quite a bit as we're trying to develop this idea of evidence as a service. And you know, a big part of this is showing not only that our product works with an efficacy study we've done five years ago, we proved my Math Academy work in 2017. In our first study we did in in Watts, title one community with a lot of need for support. And we showed with using our product for less than 45 minutes a week and approximately 10 week study, we had gains that we were later able to align to tier one ESA evidence which is you know, the strongest level of evidence you can have from SN and learn platform did that with us. The original study with was was with West Ed. And we published on that in peer reviewed journals. With that was we weren't done. That was just the first and actually that wasn't even the first that was the first in school testing of the product. We've since gone on and did more during the pandemic in Harlingen, Texas. And we didn't intend this was a pilot. We didn't even intend this to be a study when we started. And the way that happened is that the administrator and Harlingen Carmen Alvarez asked our senior curriculum advisor who she'd known for a long time. She knew ABC Mouse, they'd used it in their district previously, and they're like, we're looking for a real solution for our four year olds, for math. And Dr. Palacios who's our advisor was like, well, Age of learning just happens to have this solution at the time. Let me tell you, the mind Math Academy product wasn't ready for schools. It wasn't like we had as we were thinking, we're going to be in the schools business. But we saw the need. We heard the need from this district. It was you know, 2020 fall. So early pandemic, they're like, We want asynchronous math instruction. Can you help us and we're like, of course, we can help you. So we got the product. We're ready for implementation. Everything was done remotely. In terms of the implementation. We never set foot on campus. A lot of the kids were home, all the kids were home, and a home environment. It later became hybrid. And we put 153 year olds and 854 year olds on our platform, and they started using it. And you know, the remarkable thing about this is at the end of the Hear those kids that used my Math Academy regularly 98% of them were kindergarten ready. And if you look at the national status, what what everybody else is talking about is learning loss and kids not getting to proficiency. And we were able to what later became a study, we got all the right approvals and such to make it a study later on, we studied the impact in a pandemic year of a program that really changed the outcomes and, and what is really what I really care about in terms of those results. And don't get me wrong. 98% is like, wow, boom, that's what you want to. And this was on a state administered test, it wasn't our test, it was a third party state administered test, we didn't even know they were going to take that test when we gave him the product. So like, we created our product to align to a test. What really is so encouraging Alex is that 70% of those kids through our own internal measurements that we have in the program, where we measure mastery, were at a kindergarten level or above 20% of these four year olds, in a title one district where 60% of these kids are identified at risk by the state of Texas, were at a first grade level or above, and 25 of these kids completed the entire program. It's defying expectations for me, and I think for our teams, it just shows you what potential exists in our kids. And we have this opportunity to unlock it. If we kind of change our educational systems to recognize learner variability, personalized education, and allow kids not only to get to an expectation of what they're supposed to learn over a year, and learn what they need to learn to be successful and get to mastery and go beyond a grade level. That is what we are here to solve. And that is what the future of edtech should be. It's really

Alexander Sarlin:

thrilling to hear. And you know, you mentioned a couple of ideas in there that I'd love you to expand on and sort of advise some of the other listeners to the podcast because my Math Academy as you mentioned, it's So level one approved through learn platform, it's got digital promise certification, its stem works certified, it has multiple randomized controlled trials. And it's very clear from hearing you talk about it and from seeing the results that that age of learning is really committed to, to outcomes, the evidence, the education edtech exchange with Bart Epstein that you mentioned, I think a lot of people entering the EdTech space with startups or with adult learning are coming in from different angles don't always realize that there's a whole interesting infrastructure in place, places like West Ed and Sri that do independent research, all designed to really see that ad tech works. People in the tech world often complain and rightfully so in many cases, that there isn't enough evidence, are they that schools are making choices without having enough really good information. But you are serving a really important role and being a really good ecosystem player working with all of these partners to actually prove that the products work. What advice would you give somebody in the EdTech space? who maybe is at a, as an earlier stage, as most people are than age of learning? How should you think about gathering that evidence and working with some of these institutions that you just mentioned,

Sunil Gunderia:

from a principle perspective in it, as a product manager, you start with? What problem am I solving? And for whom? And then what is the existing research that exists on other people that have tried to solve that problem? And fortunately, net Tech, we have a mountain of evidence and research that has been done, you know, what do you think of it, and you mentioned the digital promise of certifications. Those are easy ways to get in to ensure that you're doing the right research to ensure that you're solving the problem that needs to be solved. And you're basing it on what is already known. So all the a priori stuff. And when we started this process, and I recommend everybody read this, Doug Clemens, who's a very well known math expert, especially for early learning, incredible theories around learning trajectories and building blocks that are really fundamental. When we started our process. He and his wife wrote a paper in things 2008 2009, about research based curriculum. And the idea is that you start with a priori research what already exists. And then you create a process that you're always studying, is it effective, and it can be very small scale, like we did, we can bring in your family, bring in kids bring in just people you know, to ensure that your product is doing something, it's delivering some sort of outcome. And you have your theory of change that you develop, that this is what we expect this product to do. And you know, look at ESA, tier four, as a minimum two, we have a basis and a theory of change, that this is what this product will do. And then you start working your way up with correlation studies, etc. It's not just about ESA, tier one. For us. It's a body of work. And then we talk a lot about this on the tech evidence exchange, that it's going to work in different contexts, and in every school or many schools offer different contexts. In terms of what their situation is, the number of low SES families, other things that they're solving for in their community, and our research methodology or approaches that we want, and need to be able to show that our product works and solving this systemic problem in multiple different contexts, because that also informs how we learn how to make our product better and more effective, not only for the students, but we've also been doing a lot of research and written a number of papers on the whole idea of improving the learner ecosystem. So how do we increase capacity among our teachers to take the data and the insights that we can gain as a child learns, so that they can better differentiate instruction in the classroom? And that can be a one to one basis, or a small cohort basis? As well as for the parents? What role can the parents have, in terms of supporting their child's unique journey in learning with things they can do home and a lot of that may be just simply telling their child that, Hey, I heard you learn to count to 20 today, will you do that for me, so the child sees the importance of learning not only to teachers is not something I do in school, but my parents care about it, and my family hears about it, you know, this is something I should be proud about. And I want to learn because it matters.

Alexander Sarlin:

Yeah, it's so interesting, you know, I think this is sort of the water you swim in. But uh, you know, as somebody who talks to EdTech entrepreneurs all the time, I think it's very interesting to hear how, for many of them, the idea of proving efficacy feels like it's way out in the future, it's really hard to set up an RCT, or it's really complex. And I love your take here to sort of build from the ground up, think about what's already out there, find the research, have your theory of change in hand, and don't think about it as so intimidating. Instead, just sort of go step by step and make sure that you're always achieving the outcomes that you want to achieve, and that you know how to measure that and that you're doing it every step. It feels very natural coming from you. You know, I'm just not sure it's always the obvious take for a tech entrepreneur. So I love hearing your take on it. I want to ask a little bit about inequities. You know, you've mentioned working with Title One schools, in districts with high poverty. One of the things that's that's always struck me as really interesting about age of learning is that the products are often offered for free in schools at times, and certainly through libraries. And they're really accessible to a wide range of students, even those who don't have maybe money to buy it on their own or whose parents don't have money to buy it on their own. How do you think about age of learnings role in decreasing equity issues, and just making sure that every student can actually succeed?

Sunil Gunderia:

The role of Age of learning in that, and you know, in extending our business into, we're a b2c business with ABC Mouse and adventure Academy, and extending with our new products, it really happened during the pandemic. And the realization was that to be effective, and achieve our purpose of getting all kids to proficiency, we needed to be in our schools. And, and there's two part Reason one, to get products that worked that really serve the student, but also move the conversation forward in terms of, of the future of education, which should be personalized mastery based, and drive towards this idea that there is no average student, and that we need to approach it this way. And technology allows us to do this way, by going into this schools, business and space, is our approach to ensure that our products get implemented, the philosophy behind the products are known, and that we show the results that you're gonna get, we had a lot of success and kids and teachers and kids and then their students really benefited from free usage of ABC Mouse. But what we learned is that if you don't have high fidelity of implementation, we sweared a lot of times like my kids love ABC Mouse, but our administrators make us use x. And we can't take that time on a classroom to use ABC Mouse, because we've paid for another product. So as we look at this solution, we want to be broader, we really want to drive, solving for equity in education. Part of it is changing the model in terms of how we deliver education to follow what the research tells us is going to be most effective. And also get that high fidelity of implementation when I say that we want in need and the students need 45 minutes a week, somewhere which are 45 minutes to an hour, we usually recommend 15 to 20 minutes, three to four times a week for our math product and our reading product. And that will get you results. We've seen it over and over through our efficacy studies. We're able to say that, you know, and when when we talked to legislators and we talked to departments of Ed and we talked to districts saying that we can do that for a population that we are underserved. And if you know we I've talked to a lot of legislators as well. And they're now realizing and there's a real real, especially in early childhood, that evidence based solutions, we have to do something, or I was talking to somebody in Texas, and they're like, it's going to cost the state of Texas $2 trillion in future economic output. If they don't get more kids to proficiency early on you, we need scientists, we need people who are critical thinkers. And that's what reading and math, you know, are foundational to So yes, we have to solve for equity.

Alexander Sarlin:

We absolutely do. And it's so great to hear that you're thinking about it directly in all your research. Unfortunately, we're coming on the end of the time, there's so much to talk about with age of learning. And I am really glad to hear some of the fascinating things that are happening with my Math Academy, my reading Academy, and, of course, the future of ABC Mouse and adventure Academy. I have two questions that we ask every guest at the end of our interviews, which is what is the most exciting trend that you see in the Ed Tech landscape right now that you think our listeners should keep an eye on?

Sunil Gunderia:

From a trend perspective? consumerization of education, right. So it's unbundling education, and learning is not only institutional in that there are institutions unknown and whether they be in cage well, whether it'd be higher ed, and beyond, it's how do we address that learning is something that needs to happen over the course of a lifetime, not measured in just you know, time in school or timeout in school, it is always happening, and making it so that it's both accessible, as well as effective. And then effective is both with the acceleration of learning and outcomes, but also effective in terms of motivational and keeping learners on the platform. That's very, very exciting. And it is definitely the future of learning the future of education. The direction is going. Yeah,

Alexander Sarlin:

I agree. And what is one resource can be a book blog newsletter, Twitter feed that you would recommend for somebody who wants to dive deeper into any of the topics we discussed today that might be reading proficiency, evidence based curriculum, anything that you want to recommend, as somebody

Sunil Gunderia:

that cares a lot about innovation. And the first stop is Christensen Institute, look at innovation theory, look at jobs to be done, look at modularity and apply that to what we're doing in education. And they do. Michael Horn is a tremendous resource for our industry, somebody to look at. I can't just have one, by the way I need. As you look at an early childhood, Isabelle house small talks rate newsletter blog that she does, and everyone should read end of average by Todd Rose. It is an essential book to understand how this notion of average doesn't exist. Humans aren't average, everybody's a bit jagged. And if we address that jaggedness we're gonna get so much more out of the human potential that Everyone possesses awesome recommendations.

Alexander Sarlin:

That was, you know, the Christiansen Institute's Publishing's including the work by Michael Horn like disrupting class is about how small talks newsletter and the end of average by Todd Rose. As always, we will put links to all of those resources in the show notes for this episode. Sunil Gan Derya thank you for everything you do. And it's been a really interesting conversation age of learning is doing so much.

Sunil Gunderia:

Appreciate it, Alex, this has been wonderful and thank you for pushing the future of that tag. This is a great podcast and I'm really appreciate the opportunity to be on it.

Alexander Sarlin:

Thanks for listening to this episode of the EdTech insiders podcast. If you liked the episode, remember to subscribe on Spotify, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you're listening on Apple, please leave a rating and review so others can find the podcast. For more ed tech insiders content subscribe to the Ed Tech insiders newsletter at edtech insiders.substack.com