Gamification of Education Done Right with Shawn Young of Classcraft

Shawn Young is a co-founder and CEO of Classcraft Studios Inc. He taught 11th grade physics for 9 years, holds a bachelor’s degree in physics and master’s in education from Université de Sherbrooke and is also a seasoned web developer. Shawn is the vice-president of the Edteq Association and is an Ambassador for the Education faculty of University of Sherbrooke. 

Classcraft is an Engagement Management System for schools, making it easy for schools to inject gamification into many aspects of learning. Classcraft is based on research in Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS). PBIS is an evidence-based three-tiered framework to improve and integrate all the data, systems, and practices affecting student outcomes every day.

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Alexander Sarlin: 0:05

Welcome to Season Two of edtech insiders, where we talk to the most interesting thought leaders, founders, entrepreneurs, educators, and investors driving the future of education technology. I'm your host, Alex Sarlin, an edtech veteran with over 10 years of experience at top tech companies. Shawn Young Welcome to Ed Tech insiders.

Shawn Young: 0:31

Hey, Alex. Thank you. I'm happy to be here.

Alexander Sarlin: 0:33

I just really nice to have you here. I've been following your work at Classcraft for many years, and you've been doing Classcraft. For eight years, you've also been running an ad tech Alliance in Quebec for five years. Give us a little overview of your background in edtech. And what brought you to Classcraft?

Shawn Young: 0:49

Yeah, well, I've been in education for my whole career, getting older now almost two decades, but I was a, I was a teacher for 10 years, and also a freelance web app developer during that time before before starting Classcraft. And, you know, I built Classcraft, in my own classroom, it wasn't going to be a company, I really just built it for myself, I was, you know, my quest, as an educator was really about how can I foster better relationships between students? How can I make learning meaningful for them? In essence, how can I make you know, the fact that they have to be in school, because they have to be something that we respect and, you know, make the most out of, and, you know, it was kind of out of that idea. I'm a gamer, so we could talk about that if you'd like, but ultimately had the idea of let's make my classroom run and feel like a video game, and had the idea just really, you know, very quickly built up a working prototype, like, you know, weekend type of thing. And I started using it with my students. And you know, at the time, I was consulting for pretty big companies, you know, like, we worked three years for Chanel, the perfume brand and beauty brand. And, you know, we, I wasn't looking to start a company, or this is just something I was doing with my students. But after three years of just like tweaking it and adding stuff, they're like, Hey, be cool. If this features I'm not sure I'll code it in, it became really clear that it was having a huge impact on how they were showing up for each other on how they were relating to the class on how they were related to the coursework, on their motivation, and on my relationship with them. And so I made a website to talk about it, like, literally, like, you wouldn't believe I made this website in like an hour. It was like one page. And the day that website went online, 130,000 unique visitors came to the website, oh, my god, yeah. Right. Like what's going on? Like, I put it online, and then I went to bed. And then the next morning on my other websites down, like, what's up, and sure enough, it was like, there was too much load on it and etcetera. But it's already trending on Reddit gaming is what happened, and, you know, very popular Reddit thread, and I was just getting emails from teachers all over the world, like, how do I get this? How do I download this and like, you can't, there's no company there's like, like, it's just totally not meant to be used by other people in its current form. And so, but with all of that, like interest, you know, my partner in crime at the time was my brother, he's a creative director in New York. And so we decided to start the company. So since that time, you know, we've scaled now to like, you know, 10s of millions of students, and, you know, tons of countries, 165 countries, and, you know, throughout all of that time, this was, you know, we started the company, right at the end of 2013 have done a lot to as well move the industry forward. So, you know, I really believe that, you know, Classcraft is a platform about using the power of collaboration and engagement and a commitment to one's own personal growth to become a better learner. And, you know, those values are at the core of how we operate, but they're also at the core of how we look at the market and how we want to partner with other companies. And, you know, they, there's a strong belief that, you know, at Tech is hard enough space to be in. And, you know, Classcraft isn't competitive with a lot of most companies aren't our competitors, and, in fact, our potential partners and so we've really, like, done our best to create conditions where we can collaborate, help each other out. An example of that is, you know, I, along with some other founders here in Quebec, founded the tech Association here in Quebec, it's a tech with a queue if you want to look it up. And we're now 100 organizations strong are based here in Quebec and Canada, working in tech, and there's nonprofits on on there, there's, you know, private companies and everything in between. But basically, the goal of that is to collaborate, work together, create synergies, help each other out, you know, create template, things like privacy policies that, you know, smaller companies can use, and also, you know, just evangelize about the impact that tech can have on education. So let's go don't have it in a nutshell. But you know, been at it for a while.

Alexander Sarlin: 5:03

So interesting. I mean, that's the famous, you know, lean idea of putting up a sort of painted door, putting up your website, putting up your product and seeing if anybody bites, if you had 10s of 1000s 100, over 100,000 visitors to your site before the product was live, that's about as good a signal as you can imagine that.

Shawn Young: 5:21

And, you know, Alex would probably wouldn't have started the company if that hadn't happened, right? You know, like, sure. It was just, I

Alexander Sarlin: 5:27

mean, it feels like, yeah, totally. So let's talk for anybody who is listening to this, who doesn't isn't familiar with Classcraft, you've mentioned some of the aspects of it. But you know, you name that you don't have a lot of competitors. And I really agree with that, because you have sort of gone deeper into this sort of fully game based learning sort of gamified learning space than most other companies. Classcraft itself is sort of an homage to the World of Warcraft, video game series that aim. And you use a huge variety of different game methods as quests and storytelling, and really, really elaborate avatars give a little overview of sort of how you use game based learning at class craft and what you've learned over the years about what works and, and what doesn't. And that space.

Shawn Young: 6:11

Yeah, we've been at it for a while I'm, and I'll start with one distinction. You know, I think that, you know, for us, we're more doing gamification versus game based learning. And it's an easy, you know, overlap to make. But you know, game based learning is like, play a game to learn. And, you know, you could think of math games, you know, play this video game, and you'll learn about how to do fractions or whatever. And there's a fair amount of those actually, in the math space, particularly, what we're doing is really saying, let's take the mechanics, let's take the culture, let's take the design elements that make games so compelling, and apply them to a situation, which is not necessarily a game. And in that sense, there isn't a lot going on it, there's there's a fair amount of like game based learning stuff, that's hard to scale, for the most part, just like as, let's say, make a great fractions game. And then I make an algebra game. And then I need to, like if I want to cover the entire math curriculum, like I need to make a lot of games. So there's a real challenge there. And you know, video games are prohibitive to produce good video games. And so, you know, I think there's a lot that we can still do in this space there. What we've done is say, how can we give teachers schools, the tools and the tool sets in the platform to take what they're already doing, and make it a lot more motivating, like a non education example that I like to use a lot is golfing, golfing, everybody, I assume here is listening to this as hard today. It's a sport, but it's a game, where you try to put a ball in a hole. And if I were to say, Hey, Alex, like, take this ball, put it in that hole, and you never heard a golf, probably what you would do is take the ball, pick it up, walk over, drop it in the hole, and you'd be like, done. And I'm like, great, thanks. Now do that 500 times, and then you would say, well, that's gonna take me like two days. And that's work. Like, you're gonna have to pay me to do that. And I'll say, Well, we know Sorry, sorry, Alex, you know what, let me rewind here, actually, you can't pick up the ball, you need to use this bag of metal sticks, let's call them clubs, just to give them a name. And they're all different, and you're gonna have to figure it out. But basically, you need to hit the ball with the stakes. And oh, by the way, you don't get an infinite number of shots. Like you actually need to count your shots to do the least amount of shots possible. Oh, and by the way, that jacket you're wearing, you're gonna have to go home and change, you need to wear different clothes to play this thing. And in doing that, I'm taking a meaningless task, reframing it completely by design, like I'm designing into that experience different motivators, and completely flipping the script, right? Like, it's not like, oh, I need to pay you to do this task. Now people are paying to go play golf, they're the ones paying to do the task. And what I've done there is by design created specific conditions that fulfill fundamental human needs that we have. So the need for competency, the need for control, the need for social relatedness, those are the things that drive intrinsic motivation. And games just happen to be really, really good at creating situations where that happens, and so on. Classcraft what that looks like. So, put ball in hole, replace that with, you know, go to school and do schoolwork, for most kids that's not that meaningful, and feels like work. And, you know, replace like you have to do this with no, no, you'll get points if you do this. And if as you earn those points, you'll level up and as you level up, you'll unlock really cool things and you'll progress and you'll help your teammates and you'll get real life benefits like being able to eat in class or hand in your homework late. And so ultimately what we're doing is adding this layer of design, making it super easy for teachers to customize and tweak added on top of their own class. And in essence, use all the design that makes games you know the most successful cultural medium in history and a Applying that to how we're running classrooms.

Alexander Sarlin: 10:03

I have to ask, you know, it's so funny, you correct me and say we're really gamification that game based learning. And I agree, gamification is a term that, you know, has gotten sort of, he's gone in and out of fashion for the last few years. And I'm so proud of this. And, you know, there's been a lot of different sort of attacks on it, there's been a lot of different advocates for it. I happen to agree with you very strongly that, you know, the gaming world and all of the structure around gaming is incredibly powerful motivator. I've sat in classrooms and seen teachers run their classrooms like games and have all sorts of rewards and things and it's worked incredibly well. But one of the common attacks on gamification is exactly that intrinsic motivation, idea. And the concept of, well, in an ideal world, yes, kids might not start by liking schoolwork, but then they grow to like it, they grow to like doing what they're doing in school. And if you're rewarding them without side rewards, might you be, you know, messing with that intrinsic motivation. I'm curious, you know, how you think about that spectrum, just because it's been this sort of 10 year nuanced sort of debate among different camps around how that works.

Shawn Young: 11:11

I'm really passionate about this question. So it put your seatbelt on. The first element that I would put on the table for this is, if that was the case, if we could just get kids to, you know, love their learning, etc, we would be doing it and no, but for why isn't it already the case, like kids love to learn, like, you know, you have a young child, I've, I've an eight year old kids, you know, when they're five, you just go put them outside. And they like learning, like, human beings are wired to want to learn. That's how we, you know, forget fulfillment, we we evolve, get satisfaction. And so they're like, why don't they want to be in school. Now, that's a completely different thing, right? Like kids want to learn, they don't want to be in school. And the reason they don't want to be in school is because it's a really poor experience, if it was a really awesome experience, they would want to be there. And so we can, we can go back and forth about games versus no games, gamification, versus no gamification. But the truth is, is is school is a designed experience, like it's a made up human construct of this is the best way to have, you know, at scale gain learning. And you know, I come from the system, I happen to believe that there's a lot of good going on in schools. Now that said it, because it's a design experience, just like a video game, just like any game, while we actually are, are in control of the parameters that make for the design of that experience. And so let's say I have an experience that's not super well designed school today for learners today. And I wanted to improve it to make it more motivating, more engaging, that would mean going back to the drawing table and looking at what needs to be redesigned. And it just so happens, games are really, really, really, really, really good at doing this. So it's not like, oh, you know, games are more motivating, or less motivating, etc. It's, here's a design to experience we have the opportunity to have the benefit of billions of hours played in these games, we can learn from that. And and from there, redesign the school experience. So that's one element. Element number two is a lot of gamification examples, and I'll you know, pat myself on the back here, just for to say other than Classcraft are really poorly designed. So I go back to my design experience. Oh, let's gamify this, what are you doing while you're making it? You're like most a lot of it is like badges and leaderboards, right like, which happened to be a not super meaningful, like, what's the point of a badge? Like the only value it has is the value other people see in it. Like, if nobody knows about the badge, there's no value. If nobody cares about the badge, there's no value. So So badges in themselves aren't intrinsically motivating. And it's the same with leaderboards. Like when you think about, you know, gamifying education, a lot of people are like, oh, yeah, we can make it more competitive. You know, school is already competitive enough. And in fact, the kids that are demotivated in school, are the ones that are losing at that competition. They're the ones who never get, you know, praise are the ones who never get good. The best grades are the ones who never get picked for sports teams. That's the bulk of kids, and those are the ones we need to be motivating. So there's that element. The arguments against it are good, but they're good because we're looking at poorly executed examples. The third element and here's where like Classcraft stands out, in my opinion, is we've done a lot to be Classcraft. And you said it earlier, like there's so many different elements. The reality is that human beings are generally motivated by the same things. But individual human beings are individually motivated by different things like if I have a menu of like five things that motivates people in general Well, maybe what motivates you like the percentage of those things that motivates you is pretty different from what motivates me. You know, an example of video gaming is like, I really like leveling up like I'm, I'm that type of a player, I can't be bothered of collecting all the little polka bonds and whatever, like, I find that super boring, but I do care about like progressing, getting to the highest level. Some other gamers, like they really love collecting Pokemon, they don't care what level they are, they just want to get them all. And those are very, very different motivational mechanics, and so on Classcraft, we've really looked at like, what are the different levers that exist to drive intrinsic motivation? And how can I create a system that is rich enough, robust enough that different types of learners will be motivated, you know, no matter what your profile is, we're touching on it, you know, so there's, there's points, there's avatars, there's leveling up, there's collecting little pets unlocking gear, there's discovering locations, there's whole team based dynamics where you know, you to succeed, you need to protect your teammates, and help them out. And that's the best way to level up, there's control of a real life. So it's not just, you know, winning in the game, it's actually having giving you more control over your day to day experience as a student, there's elements of surprise. So there's all these different elements that make up you know, that experience. And for some kids, it's one thing and for other kids, it's something else that's motivating them. And I think that like the for or against gamification argument is actually, you know, for or against. Good gamification, I think would be pretty different argument versus like, Oh, look at all these examples that are crappy. Therefore, it doesn't work. You know, I think we're kind of looking at primitive examples, all sorts of air quotes around that and saying, it doesn't work, right. But it's like, okay, yeah, you have a Flintstones car, that's not going to get you where you need to go versus, you know, a Tesla, but you know, what cars can actually work? You know? So,

Alexander Sarlin: 16:57

I think that's a very comprehensive answer. And I happen to really agree. I mean, so I'm hearing you say, you know, gamification hasn't been done well off. And I totally agree with that any kind of really bad reputation as a result of Exactly, yeah, and that, you know, I love the idea that both school and games are both designed systems, I think we sometimes don't think about them through that lens of it's really interesting lens to look at them. It's like school is a design system that has this very delayed feedback loop, for example, yeah, get a great end of every semester, or like you planted a paper and you get something on it a week later, where you've totally forgotten about it. Games are all about immediate feedback. Very, very useful feedback, actionable feedback. So I love that answer. So you're talking about games as sort of motivational tools. And one thing that stands out to me about where Classcraft has really sort of evolved is that it has this whole sort of behavioral intervention system involved in it, there's sort of creates a learning environment in schools that teaches and reinforces positive behaviors rather than punishing misbehavior. And I'd love to hear you sort of make that leap between all of these amazing game elements, the avatars, the quests, finding new locations, all of that great stuff, and how that actually changes behavior in the classroom.

Shawn Young: 18:15

I love that you're asking that Alex. It's pretty insightful, because maybe we're doing a better job explaining what we're doing now. But like at the beginning of class craft, I very naively was saying, like, let's just get kids motivated. Well, you know, this works, we'll we'll figure out which pedagogical category it fits into later. And so people would come to class craft and be like, Oh, I thought this was a video game. Because, you know, it looks like a video game. I thought this was a video game, where just like, my math games were like, oh, that's game based learning. We're not doing that. Although this was what we had been doing all along. And we had to go back to the drawing board and explain, you know, hey, like, here's where we fit in into what people are trying to do in schools. And then as we did that, we of course, developed a whole bunch of features behind the platform that aren't related to the game that are more related to analytics and understanding student behavior and running a school. And so ultimately, you know, we're at Costco. Costco is like the confluence of like two things, this whole game thing, the motivational element. And the other part of that Venn diagram is behavior intervention. So we're not teaching math, we're not teaching in English. We are teaching kids how to be better learners. And you know, when you think about that, what does that mean? That means like, if I wanted to teach you karate, for example, let's say I'm a Sensei, in your in my dojo, I'm not just going to like read to you from a karate textbook, right? And I'm not going to just show you YouTube videos of people doing karate. Now, I may do some of those things. But ultimately, what I'm gonna do is say, Here's what a good like karate drop kick looks like. Now, go practice. And while you're practicing, I'll go next to you and be like, obviously, gotta get your knee up higher, or hey, you gotta like twist your, your hips or whatever it is. And in doing that, what I'm doing is setting clear expectations for you. Like, here's what a good drop kick looks like, then I'm doing, like I'm looking at you in action. And then I'm giving you feedback. And what we know about behavior intervention, it's exactly the same thing. If I want to teach a kid to, for example, be organized, or I want to teach them to be more respectful. These are skills that are be more autonomous. These are all skills that kids need to learn to be better learners, and how can I teach you empathy? Well, I can't just read empathy from a textbook to you. And therefore, what I need to do is like, here's what it looks like. And while you're doing other stuff, you're doing your day to day life, as a student, I'm going to identify specific behaviors and say, Hey, Alex, that's what empathy looks like, good job, here's a high five, in Classcraft. A high five is, here's experience points in karate, you know, it's like good job, whatever. And so, what that does is reframes classroom management from an idea of, I need to control students to get them to shut up, sit down and do what I want them to do to I'm going to teach them how to be really good at this game that is school that's designed experience, and you know, incidentally, teach them to be better human beings. And all the research around behavior intervention is super clear that that's the way to go. It's positive, frequent feedback, set clear expectations. And when kids do it, tell them that they're doing it because like, for example, let's say I'm trying to teach you math and you're, you know, a kindergartener, two plus two, you know, you're trying to figure it out. And you're, you know, is it for, let's say, you were to tell me that, and I gave you no feedback at all, like, you would have no way of knowing like, that's the right answer. That's what I'm supposed to do. Right? And it's the same for behavior, we often just course correct, negatively, right? So if you were to say two plus two equals five, like, no, two plus two equals no, and all I do is tell you like, no, that's bad, you're never going to know what's right. And you'll never be able to actually integrate and develop the skill. So that's, that's where we're falling under. And so teachers when they they define or schools, we can do the school level as well, when, when they define what are the ways for kids to gain points, it can be like things like hand in your homework or you know, be on time seated at the bell like these types of like basic things. But we're really encouraging them to go beyond that and being like, give them points for identifying their emotions in real time managing their stress, being inclusive with other students working with somebody they normally wouldn't work with, like, these are all things we want kids to be doing. If we spell it out in the game and say, here's how you gain points, kids are going to start doing it. Like our data is super clear. There's a lot of research about class graph that's like, this thing's works. Like if you put a behavior the kids start doing it. And so we follow very clearly there. And we have already made like templates for social emotional learning for developing, we have one of the only set of standards for students to develop diversity, equity, inclusion behaviors, you know, there's all these types of behaviors that we want to be helping teachers develop. Now, incidentally, it turns out that post pandemic, this is probably the biggest issue in schools today. Like we work with school districts, and they're saying, you know, pre pandemic, we had X amount of behavior interventions, and now post pandemic, same students, it's up 300%, referrals and suspensions. So there's a massive problem right now around student behavior. And it's, it's actually the number one reason for teachers leaving the classroom, which is another massive problem in education. Right now, teachers are leaving in droves. And it's because of student behavior. So we really need to address this. Yeah. So many

Alexander Sarlin: 23:43

responses to that just before you leave the karate metaphor behind, because I think that's such a good one. You know, I think what's so interesting about class craft is that it designs, even small little moments like that doing something for us pillow student or being in your seat by the Bell within a larger structure of a level of experience, and so does karate. Yeah, you know, you have these belt system, and every single piece of practice builds towards a sort of epic narrative. They do say in gaming. I think that, you know, it's a really insightful way to see schooling that if you structure the experience and make every moment as sort of teach every teachable moment add up to something bigger. That's really powerful. Students can contextualize it, it doesn't feel like it's out of nowhere. But my question is actually about the social emotional learning. We talk a lot on this podcast about how pandemic has just driven social emotional learning, really into the into the spotlight because of exactly the problems you're saying. discipline problems, teachers are burning out, students are burning out isolation, amounts of anxiety and stress in all levels of education, especially in higher education, but in K 12, as well really, really, it's been very bad. And you know, Classcraft because it has this motivational structure can do exactly the kind of social emotional learning that you're mentioning. And you know, I noticed there's a whole, you know, curriculum in Classcraft aligned to that Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning. That's Hazel, I think you pronounce that, you know, organization out of Chicago, it's sort of been the been the organization pushing for social emotional learning for many years. And now they're really leading the way. How did you decide to sort of incorporate social emotional learning into what Classcraft? Does? Was it? Did you decide before the pandemic or was it that as the pandemic came down, and the schools were telling you, this is our number one problem now? Did you sort of pivot that way?

Shawn Young: 25:37

Yeah, great question. I mean, we've been actually doing this for a long time, we've gotten better at making it explicit. But we've been working on social emotional learning, since the day we started class craft, you know, is now super trendy. And it's kind of annoying, actually. Because for those of us that have been in the space for a while, like, oh, everybody's calling their stuff SEL now, but you know, I'm co chair of the global collective for UNESCO on Social Emotional Learning and Digital Learning. And there is a huge opportunity right now to bridge the gap between real life behavior and what's happening in digital platforms. And I would say that Classcraft is one of the platforms that's at the forefront of that. And the reason for that is, a lot of what's happening right now in SEL is either program based or curriculum based. So in essence, you know, curriculum that we give teachers that they need to teach students, you know, here's a class on empathy. And now let's practice empathy. And you know, this type of like, you know, hey, we know how to teach, you know, math, let's take the same type of logic around curriculum and apply that to sel. And that's, you know, school is really used to doing that. So there's a lot of that happening, which is an important part of what's happening, like, it's important that it happens. On the other hand, it's not enough going back to my karate analogy, you know, when you look at Castels framework, it is 100%. skill based, there's five competencies. A competency, a skill is knowing how to do something a competency is knowing how to do it and when to do it. So you know, applying it in a genuine context. And so the five core building blocks of kasal are competencies. And if you go look at how I would structure there's observable behaviors, that because you can't observe a competent second observe, you know, your capacity to manage emotions, what I can observe is behavior that leads me to think that that's happening. And so there's a whole part of the SEL conversation that is not sufficiently in the forefront, which is the like, practice and assessment, part of SEL, lots of curriculum, lots of you know, things to make kids think about it, not a lot of structures, tools, platforms, approaches to give kids genuine feedback in real contexts and assess them. So with Classcraft, because it's digital, like I'm giving you points, let's say for, you know, listening respectfully to somebody else, for example. So that's a behavior that's tied back to kasal competencies, when I'm giving you points for that I'm both developing your skills, I'm giving you feedback and like, Hey, Alex, that's exactly what that looks like, keep it up. Oh, and by the way, everybody else, that's exactly what this looks like, you should all keep it up. But I'm also assessing like, I now have a digital timestamp of Alex did that this date at this moment. And you know why he did it three times more this semester than last semester, therefore, I know he's developing. There's a whole problem around assessment with SEL, because that's really the only approach to be able to actually see that these skills are developing is observe them in action and see if there's a difference. So there's also a problem there, in my opinion, in general in the market, that we just don't have very robust assessment tools. Now, what's cool about Classcraft is the teachers can put their own stuff. So we work with schools, and, you know, we give them a readymade case, a line, like your case will behaviors, just get all your teachers to give kids points for this stuff, you'll be developing it, we have a curriculum, it's all quest based gamified story driven curriculum. So teach them explicitly, like you do need to tell them what empathy is, right? So teach them about it, get them thinking about it, reinforce and observe, you know, the the practice of that, and then go look at the data and see if kids are actually developing. And then you'll know that you have a comprehensive SEL program. So it's super trendy, but I do think there's still a lot that needs to be, you know, pedagogically made sound. You know, and I don't think Classcraft is the only answer to that. But I do believe that actual in context, observation and development is the key and there's not enough of that going on.

Alexander Sarlin: 30:00

I love your point about the assessing in the sort of quantification of this type of behavior, because, again, feeding back into sort of one of the things that gamification, and that does really well is it makes any kind of progress, tangible and visible and make, right. So I mean, the, if you're getting points, as you say, you're getting points for something, then there's a timestamp on it, it's stored, you know, exactly when it happened. So, if you're getting points for social emotional behaviors, then that is timestamp. And you can actually measure it. And it struck me, as you know, in some of the case studies that Classcraft really features has things like, you know, what is the drop in classroom disruptions? What is the reduction in administrative work are the disciplinary referrals? And you know, it's funny, some of those are data points that were already in the system, but sort of in an si s somewhere, others were probably never tracked at all. It's certainly something like how many times somebody listens respectfully or empathizes with another student? Teachers have seen that in their classroom their whole life, but they've never been able to say, oh, yeah, it's 30% up this year. And I think that's like, that's, that's an exciting thing to be able to do. You mentioned, the Classcraft is in, you know, 10s of millions of students all over the world right now. I'm curious, you know, I think when people think about gamified learning, or, you know, this type of system, sometimes they associated with a certain gender with something that people think it's sort of a boy focused platform or maybe certain ages. I'm curious what you've seen, you've been at this for eight years, you know, do you feel like some of the mechanics that class craft operates work particularly well, for certain groups? Or is it sort of that we all share an underlying motivational structure? And that, you know, and that the same tools work for everybody?

Shawn Young: 31:44

So the same set of tools in different proportions works for everybody? I believe that? Is it possible to say, oh, for example, Leveling up is more motivating for boys than girls, but decorating your avatar is more relevant for girls and boys, you know, like, that's the type of like little micro distinction we could get into. My belief is that it's a lot less gendered than we think it is way less than we think it is, for a couple of reasons. One is, we've been fortunate, there's a lot of research has been done on Classcraft, without us being involved at all, because a lot of people interested in gamification and motivation in the research space in education, and not a lot of platforms to do it with. So they ended up doing research on Classcraft. And one study was specifically to that question. So they looked at 130,000, game events in Classcraft. And segmented it between boys and girls. This was University of Freiburg in Switzerland. And they saw no statistical difference in terms of motivation and engagement and participation between the boys and the girls. And what they did see was that the girls immediately in Koskoff, you can have collaborative powers and powers to help yourself. The girls started the game much more strongly picking collaborative powers, and the boys picked powers to help themselves. And Koskoff rewards you for using collaborative powers. Like you level up faster, you get more points. And so after a three month period, they saw that the boys started using more and more collaborative powers. And so there are differences. But in this case, it was like, Oh, they're really differences about how they approach the gameplay. And you know what, we were able to teach these boys how to be more collaborative, which is pretty powerful. Incidentally, we've also like interviewed students as well. And I'll always, this is sixth grade student about three years ago, and we're like, some people think, you know, warriors and mages is more for boys and for girls, and this is sixth grade girl in Illinois. And we asked her that question, and you wouldn't believe the look of confusion on her face. Like, what girls like swords too. And she was like, really exalted. And, you know, we live in an era where, like, okay, so Koskoff has like a fantasy theme, right? Like where's mages? Healers, that type of stuff. Harry Potter does to like his Harry Potter for boys or for girls, I would say Jury's out on that, right. And we live in an era where, you know, these kids parents have all seen the Lord of the Rings films, the biggest single franchise is Harry Potter, but also like Game of Thrones. And even all the Marvel movies now are all like magic users. So we're really living in an age where, you know, these types of themes have become pretty mainstream culture. Now games as well have become very much mainstream culture. When you look at you know, this is the pre pandemic data. But you look at, you know, boys versus girls gamers in the United States, people who play video games more than a few times a week. It's pretty close. 5050 boys versus girls, and the average age is actually 34. So when you look at like, gender and age that typical gamer is actually a 35 year old woman, because games have evolved. They're not just like when I was growing up games were like Warcraft and like shooting games. And that's all there was right? But now there's like Sims and all these mobile games and online and a candy crush and birds with friends. These are all video game experiences that use the same motivational mechanics that have the same cultural impact. But that ultimately, you know, just, it's too diverse medium, right? Like, it's like, oh, is Netflix for boys or for girls? It's like, well, Netflix has all the things. It's for everybody. And it's kind of the same thing with gaming. ROBLOX Yeah,

Alexander Sarlin: 35:39

it's so funny. There's some really interesting research about computer science undergraduates that basically said that part of the reason why men were overrepresented in computer science is that it was often framed as a way to sort of get ahead personally. And that when they tried reframing computer science as a way to sort of help the world and help each other and be more social, and like, you know, connect to solve problems, it immediately started changing the gender dynamics. And if you when you mentioned that the girls sort of move towards collaborative goals more upfront, and boys try to sort of be more competitive upfront, I think there's some really interesting psychology there. But I agree that yeah, gaming is not gendered. I want to ask a couple more questions about Classcraft. Because there's really so much in there, you do have a whole set of API's requests. Yeah, yeah. And you make it sort of interoperable. I know, it connects with Canvas and connects with Google Classroom. I want to just ask about your strategy. There. We talk on the podcast about interoperability and how teachers have at something tools sometimes to use, everything needs to be seamless. How do you think about interoperability for Classcraft? And making it work alongside other tools in the classroom?

Shawn Young: 36:49

Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, I think that for us, you know, we're talking about behavior all this time. The reality is that all of that was contextualized. To physical classroom, if we start thinking about school is also a set of digital platforms, and a physical classroom, then what are the behaviors we want to see in these digital platforms? Because kids are behaving on those platforms. And they're specific behaviors that lead to student success and better outcomes. And so when you think about, for example, so you mentioned, we're integrated with Canvas. So in Canvas, when students hand in assignments, they automatically get points in Classcraft. If they hand them in early, they get bonus points. If they participate in discussions, they get points. Like if they contribute to wikis, they can get points, like these are all ways that like, what do I want these kids to be doing? Because when you think of an LMS, it has unfortunately, devolve for a lot of them into just a way for teachers to push resources to students. And then hand in work, when there's a potential for so much more, right? Like the LMS should be a place where community digital communities are developing around the classroom. Like there's the potential for that. And it's not happening, because we're not teaching them the behaviors that we want them to exhibit in these platforms. And so same thing with Google Classroom, if you hand in assignments early, you know, et cetera, et cetera. So our philosophy is I don't actually need teachers to be in class craft physically giving points, what I need them to do is have the metaphor of class graph running in the background. And the points can come from wherever. So we have teachers, we also have bus drivers giving points, we also have like cafeteria. Yeah, we have like a staff app. So like a simplified version, where they can just give points. And it's the same thing for digital platforms, right? Like, when it Kahoot, get points and Classcraft, you know, watch a Khan Academy video, get points and Classcraft. Like, I don't care what it is. The point is, if there's things that I want kids to be doing that will lead to their success. And ideally, I can automate it to take time and work away from teachers save them time and work. That's a win for everybody. It's a win for the partners, because they're seeing more, you know, engagement and better behaviors within their platform, it's a win for teachers save them time. And it's a win for students actually, because it a connects digital experiences to the real life experience in a way that's explicit. And B recognizes them for all the work that they're doing that is often unseen. So, you know, our vision is, you know, we have an API, it's super easy to connect to. And we've done integration, work ourselves, you know, to connect to the platforms that have API's as well. And we're continuing to do that in a real way. You know, because ultimately, what matters is the meaning making like I go all the way back to my initial statement here at the beginning of this podcast, I was really obsessed with making school meaningful for learners. And I think Classcraft can do that, across the EdTech experience.

Alexander Sarlin: 39:51

It's so interesting. I mean, so what I'm hearing you say is that you can sort of expand the incentive structure of Classcraft throughout The school day even outside of school so that when the students are on the bus, when they're in the lunchroom, when they're in a hallway, they can still be sort of in the game in the magic circle, getting points that makes school even more integrated and more relevant. And I'm sure that's super relevant for behavioral interventions and for social emotional learning, because if they do something nice to, for somebody on the school bus, they can actually see a reward for it. It's really it's really interesting.

Shawn Young: 40:29

Well, and one of the places we see the worst behavior is in the school bus. I'm sure the data there is terrible. It's horrible, you know, and bus drivers are super ill equipped to deal with that. I mean, they're not trained and be there driving a bus while having to manage kids, often kids that aren't from the same schools. Like it's, that's one case in point. But then like, think about, you know, kids bullying each other, through a lot of edtech platforms, like the number one place where bullying cyber bullying is happening is in comments in Google Docs in schools right now. Like really, pretty fascinating when you think about it. Like all the kids in the classroom, participating in a Google doc when created, sharing it to another student and be like, Hey, Alex, you're a dork and all the kids like, Yeah, you're a hole, you're doing Bubble Bubble, like, and then delete it. Like, think about like, that's the reality that these kids are in, they will find ways to use what seems like you know, you expect like bullying on Tik Tok, not unlike school provided Google dogs, you know, but there's a lot of that happening. And we need to teach kids about how to be good learners and good to each other in these digital platforms.

Alexander Sarlin: 41:46

Yeah, so speaking of the variety of digital platforms, I can't let you go without asking you about your thoughts on AR VR, you know, extended reality, because that, you know, is one area that people are potentially excited about, especially when it comes to sort of the overlap of gaming and education. What are your thoughts,

Shawn Young: 42:07

I am skeptical of VR, within a short time span, I have an Oculus quest to, it's amazing, you can see the potential immediately. It's way too expensive to have at scale, in classrooms, both from like, every kid needs a headset perspective, but also from a content production standpoint. So like, I want to believe in it, I just build the system. I'm like, you know, getting like a headset is like $400 per kid, times just one class is you know, let's say 30 kids, you know, I'm talking about like$12,000. And all I've got is the headset, I have no content, I have no like way to manage them charge that, like all of the problems we have with Chromebooks. But now, you know. So I think we're ways off from that, honestly, the price point needs to come down way low. Now AR on the other hand, augmented reality, there's a lot of potential for low price point there, and lots of cool things that can be made and making content is easier. And you know, I could have as a physics teacher, so I could easily imagine, you know, you got glasses on. And it's, you know, you throw up a ball, and it's measuring in real time, although, like, that's super interesting, because now you can do, I've always been like, for example, in science, I was always skeptical of like, simulated experiments, because I'm like, the whole point is to measure real life. Like, if I measured the gravitational constant of the earth in a simulation, what's it tell me that's the actual gravitational constant of the earth, you could just be making it up into simulation. And so but with AR you can, like, look at real life and measure it and infer. So I think there's a lot of really interesting potential for AR, even if, like, from social emotional learning perspective, like you could, for example, it can help you understand facial emotions and other kids on the playground and help you like, hey, this kid's angry, like, were you aware? Like, there's a lot we could do with AR, from an academic perspective, but also from Alex got soft skills development perspective. So and that's just way more close to being ubiquitous versus VR, which is, you know, even even game makers are struggling to make VR, like a viable medium right now. So there's a lot of potential I just think we're better ways. And I have to say one thing that I have to say about VR is you know, I don't know if you've ever read Ready Player One, but Ready Player One is like, you know, a, just for people who are listening. It's a it's a future universe where, you know, everybody's in a VR Metaverse type of situation. And they go to school in VR. So it's like, oh, yeah, everybody's staying at home. They put on their VR headsets. And they go to school and the school that they go to is literally kids in the Deaf seated in rows listening to a teacher and it's Like, part of what's going to have to evolve for, for example, VR to be super compelling from an educational standpoint is our perspective on what school is and how it should be designed. I go back to this design experience, like if I put everybody in VR and give them the same design of experience of crappy school we have now that's not gonna give us anything, and it's gonna be super expensive for no reason. So I'm still skeptical on VR.

Alexander Sarlin: 45:24

I think that's that's a very nuanced and I think it's a sophisticated view on the difference between VR and AR. The cost involved the lack of an ecosystem in schooling. And I think, you know, the jury's definitely out about whether the systems will go in place. But I love the differentiation of AR. I have an idea for you. You heard it here first, right about an AR app where you can look at a kid and see their class craft avatar. There you

Shawn Young: 45:47

go, you know, we're not. That's on the drawing board here for sure. And what about AR for teachers to give kids points as well, so they don't have to use a device like anyone's there's there's a lot there. Sure. Yep.

Alexander Sarlin: 46:02

You mentioned that you run the Keva qua alliance for Ed Tech. And I just have to sort of zoom out. This is an ed tech podcast with lots of founders, lots of investors and entrepreneurs and Canadian ed tech. Tell us a little bit. You know, there's been some really star Canadian edtech companies we talked to a Philip Kotler on the on the podcast a few months ago from paper, we used to be great slammed paper, Desire to Learn as Canadian Top Hat Thinkific. I love redock or CF, small startup, you know, Juneau fresh grade, there's so much stuff happening in Canada and in Montreal, specifically, tell our listeners a little bit about Canadian ed tech, what it's been like being at the forefront of edtech in Quebec.

Shawn Young: 46:44

You know, Quebec is such an interesting place. I don't know if you knew this, but Quebec is after LA and Tokyo, the city in the world, Montreal that has the biggest density of video game studios. And Ubisoft is one but Bethesda has their HQ there, we've got Warner Brothers, there's EA Sports, EA Sports is there and hundreds of indie and I'm not exaggerating, hundreds of indie studios in Quebec is very well advanced in the field of AI, lots of AI in Montreal, a ton of stuff going on there. And also in like special effects and movies. So like series, like Game of Thrones, Star Wars movies, all the special effects are being made in Montreal. And so there's a really strong density of really creative tech people in Montreal and in Canada in general, I would say that the industries are different, but Toronto and Vancouver are also very interesting ecosystems for tech. So there's a really strong Tech game. I think what's interesting about Quebec from an ed tech perspective, is that Quebec, about 25 years ago, made a massive shift towards competency based education. Well, before it was, you know, popularized in a lot of other parts of the world. And also, you know, maybe well, before Quebec even was ready for it was a pretty bold move. But in essence, Quebec has been innovating pedagogically for decades. And so when you take the innovation from, you know, the tech standpoint that exists here, in the entrepreneurial ecosystem, the creativity around designing experiences, going back to that term, and layer on to that, you know, innovative pedagogy and a pedagogical system that's pretty unique. And so creates conditions where specific apps needs to be designed for it, like it has different needs. Now, all of a sudden, you're creating this super interesting ecosystem of, you know, teachers who have access to creators, or technology creators who care about education and have access to educators and vice versa. And so there's just a really strong set of conditions right now. And it's a small market. So Canadian companies that want to be big and successful have to export. And so that's why you're hearing about them, because, you know, we're, we're all coming home, you know, to the American market, or the European market or Asian market, because the Canadian market just isn't big enough to sustain most companies. And so there's like this very, like interesting, you know, there's the tech, there's the pedagogy, there's a requirement to export. And it's also like, because Quebec is Francophone. Within an Anglophone country, there's like a lot of companies are thinking bilingual first localization out of the gate like Classcraft when we built it had four languages built in from the get go. So like, opens up, you know, international markets much quicker than if you're just focused on English language. There's a ton of opportunities internationally for working arteries in they're like, We love Classcraft. And one of the things we love is it's in our language, because there's nothing in this language. And so there's a ton of open potential for Quebec companies. So it's a co op petition model, I would say, you know, like, most of us aren't competitors, but some of us are, but we're still, you know, working to help each other out. And the amount of like, people in this space helping each other here in Canada is is really, you know, something I think American companies should emulate because tech is hard. It's a hard market. And, you know, even some really great big companies have failed. You know, I was looking at, you know, this week, Edmodo closed. And if you saw that, and, you know, just like, there was a moment where it was Edmodo, or nothing, right. And, and they, they didn't make it. And it's just really clear that it's a hard bargain. If you know, we're really well funded company like that, that had some really great innovative ideas is still defunct. A decade later. Yeah, that can happen to any of us. So we got to help each other and stick together.

Alexander Sarlin: 51:11

That's a great pitch you make me want to move to Montreal.

Shawn Young: 51:15

We love we love smart people come.

Alexander Sarlin: 51:18

It's an amazing city. Amazing food. I mean, it's just a lovely, lovely place. And you do notice the gaming culture there. As you walk around, you see studios everywhere. But I didn't realize there was so much ad tech going on. I love that point about the education and the tech people being in the same place informing each other. That's really exciting to hear. And, yeah, I'm gonna keep my eye on it. I want to keep it close, I gotta come come visit to go do a little tour of the Montreal at tech scene. So Sean, we could keep talking, I find cars we

Shawn Young: 51:48

should do a second episode.

Alexander Sarlin: 51:51

But I'll do those every every interview with the same two questions. And I'm really curious about your answers to that one is about what is a trend that you've seen sort of rising in tech recently that you think our listeners should definitely keep an eye on for the future.

Shawn Young: 52:08

I'm a bit of a broken record here. But I think behavior intervention is a huge problem. And a big solution to other problems like teacher turnover, and severely under digitized like, you know, I said early on, we don't have a lot of competitors. And we were talking about gamification. We actually don't have a lot of competitors in the behavior space, either. It's a tough nut to crack. And, you know, there's a lot of like, in 2021 211 laws were passed in the US alone at the state level, mandating and financing student behavioral health. So it's an issue that is a crisis. And it's also very heavily legislated right now, so it's not going away. So, you know, I have to say that like, to me, this is the core issue right now, relationships between teachers and students, students and students, teachers and faculty and the rest of faculty admitted, like the relationships are at the core right now of the solutions we're gonna see in the crisis is we're gonna see in education in America. Yeah,

Alexander Sarlin: 53:16

makes sense. Yeah, there's a lot of energy there. There's a lot of funding there. And there's increasing numbers of early stage startups. But there's not that many real tools out there, you know, truly focusing on the behavioral space. And I think it's Yeah, I agree. It's a really interesting gap. We've seen a couple of people pop up, especially in the last two or three years. But yeah, I think that's really insightful. And lastly, what is a resource that you would recommend for anyone who wants to go deeper into any of the subjects we discussed today?

Shawn Young: 53:46

There's a lot, I read a lot. So I'm gonna talk about books here. You know, I think it maybe just some recommended reading, maybe not on these topics, but books that inspired me this year, I read that 21 lessons for the 21st century, I forget his last name, but first name, you know, really interesting thinking about AI thinking about global issues. And there's not a lot about education in that book. And there's actually, you know, when you thinking about it from an education lens, a lot of interesting takeaways. That's one, I think, another issue that's going to become more and more prevail. And when you think about 80% of educators in America are white. And if we care about behavior, then diversity, equity inclusion, really important book that I read recently, nice racism, super interesting about how progressive white people are actually perpetuating racism a lot more than they think. And I think as educators, we really need to take a hard look at that. And, you know, Classcraft, in particular, because it's got avatars that represent kids, and it's about behavior intervention, and it's about equity of opportunity towards engagement, which is actually a really big problem in education that the engagement gap is real. You know, I think we have Are responsibility to be thinking about the AI. But I do think every single lead tech company needs to be thinking about diversity equity inclusion right now. And so that's a super interesting book to contextualize that in as well. So a couple of reads from 2020. But yeah, yep,

Alexander Sarlin: 55:18

great. As always, we will put links to these resources in the show notes for the podcast. That's 21 lessons for the 21st century of all know, a Harare and nice racism by Robin D'Angelo. Sean Young, this has been really a pleasure. I am so delighted that you have made gamification into a movement that is really, really making a difference in classrooms, and it hasn't fallen by the wayside because of all the bad actors. Classcraft is an amazing, amazing product. And I'm so happy to see it growing all over the world.

Shawn Young: 55:51

Thank you so much, Alex, I you know, as you can see, I'm pretty passionate about these topics. So I always enjoy speaking with somebody who's like minded and understands it. So thank you so much.

Alexander Sarlin: 56:00

Oh, my God. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thanks for listening to this episode of Ed Tech insiders. If you liked the podcast, remember to rate it and share it with others in the EdTech community. For those who want even more in Tech Insider, subscribe to the free ed tech insiders newsletter on substack.