Edtech Insiders
Edtech Insiders
Week in Edtech 7/31/2024: Microsoft Outages, OpenAI’s GPT-5, 2U's Bankruptcy, Instructure's Big Buy, Enrollment Trends, NWEA’s Latest Findings and More! Feat. 2024 Tools Competition Winner: Tyto Online by Lindsey Tropf of Immersed Games
Join Alex Sarlin and Ben Kornell, as they explore the most critical developments in the world of education technology this week:
🌐 Microsoft’s investigation into service outages following CrowdStrike chaos
🤖 What to expect from OpenAI's upcoming GPT-5 release
💼 Instructure's $4.8 billion acquisition by KKR
💸 2U's strategic moves amidst bankruptcy and what it means for the industry
📊 NWEA's latest research on COVID academic recovery and its implications
📉 The future of school enrollment trends and their impact on education
📝 Changes to the ACT exam and what it means for students
Plus special guest, 2024 Tools Competition Winner: Tyto Online by Lindsey Tropf, Founder & CEO of Immersed Games
Upcoming Event:
📚 Book Club with FOHE: Discussion on Sal Khan’s new book Brave New Words: How AI Will Revolutionize Education (and Why That’s a Good Thing)
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This season of Edtech Insiders is once again brought to you by Tuck Advisors, the M&A firm for EdTech companies. Run by serial entrepreneurs with over 25 years of experience founding, investing in, and selling companies, Tuck believes you deserve M&A advisors who work as hard as you do.
All right, everyone, it is August. We've made it back to school. Here we go. Buckle up your seat belt. It's going to be a crazy ride. I'm Ben Kornell. This is Alex Sarlin. We are Edtech Insiders. So great to be coming back to you ready for a great 24/25 sprint to transforming education. We're going to be covering all things AI, all things K 12, higher ed workforce, early childhood in today's pod. But before we dive in, Alex, what do we have coming up for the podcast?
Alexander Sarlin:Yeah. I mean, we have had a pretty spectacular summer on the EdTech Insiders interview side. You know, not only did we have Ethan Mollick and Lilach Mollick at the beginning of July, we've had Sarah DeWitt, the CEO of PBS Kids, Scott Kirkpatrick, CEO of BrainPop, and our most recent is Joe Connor, CEO of Odyssey, which is doing these incredible work with these esas, these education savings accounts. August, it's we're going to keep it flowing. We have Kevin Leem, the CFO of Mathpresso, which is the biggest edtech company you may not have ever heard of. Out of Seoul, South Korea has the biggest, basically homework AI app in Asia, and is coming to the US now. We talked to Paul LeBlanc, the epic, legendary Paul LeBlanc OG, I think, one of the most important people in ed tech period of the century. We talked to Andrew Goldman, who is the head of HHM Labs. He was the CEO of Writable, which got acquired by Houghton Mifflin, he's doing amazing things in AI. And we talked to our friend Mark Miller from Good Harbor Partners about M&A and the landscape for mergers and acquisitions in ed tech. So keep listening to these episodes. I can't even tell you how much I am learning with these conversations, and I hope you will learn at least as much as I have. They're amazing, amazing folks. And we're going to keep it rolling through the fall as well.
Ben Kornell:Yeah, on the event side, we've got several good events coming up. We had the UX mindset with Nicole Gallardo on August 1 so sorry for those of you who missed that, but we'll be having more sessions where we deep dive into a topic like this, our ed tech and AI book club with future of higher education is coming up on August 22 from three to 4:30pm we're reading Sal Khan's new book, all about AI and education. Please sign up and join us there. We've already got several 100 people signed up, so it's going to be a big, big group discussion, and then we have our happy hour first kickoff for the year, September 5 in San Francisco. Man, our event calendar is filling up, so make sure you check that out. September 5. We also have our New York ed tech week date is going to be October 8. So we hope to see you in New York City in October. So many great things going on in terms of the ed tech space, I think we've got a little bit of some summer catch up to do. For those of you who haven't listened to the Claire Alex episode, highly, highly recommend it. They'll catch you up on everything going on in AI in education this summer, we have a lot of kind of non AI news. So let's start with some of the big headlines, and then we'll bring up the back with some of our AI latest updates. So where do you want to start? Alex, I'd like to start with to you.
Alexander Sarlin:We have talked about to you a lot over the last few months, it's been, as they say in the headlines, embattled. It's been going through a lot of really stressful Financial Times with its debt, obviously, Chip paws, the CEO, for many years, stepped down in favor of the CFO, which everybody said, Oh, this is going to be about restructuring to you this week, finally did the deed and declared bankruptcy, and they still owe, you know, $20 million to university clients during their bankruptcy. They're obviously doing all sorts of restructuring. But that is big news to you, one of the, you know, very few public ed tech companies, and one that has been basically defined the OPM space among a handful over many years. This is big news and lots of coverage from lots of different players this week. What is your take on the to you? Bankruptcy? Ben,
Ben Kornell:well, you know, you'd have to listen to two years of Ed Tech insiders to hear everything that we've talked about in relationship to to you, from, is the OPM model viable? To, how do universities work with Ed Tech vendors? And then also, you know, how do you grow a company with a mix of equity and debt. My takeaway here is that while we could talk about all those things again, I think the debt is what killed the company here, and when we're talking about a bankruptcy, let's be clear what we're talking about. They're not going out of business, right? Stop. It's just that the people who own equity in the company are all washed out, and the people who owned all the debt now own the company. And the thing that that opens up is a possibility to have a healthier business where they're not paying high interest loans, and they're able to actually take the money that they're earning and reinvest it in the business. All of this said, it really puts a bright light on some of the acquisitions that to you made with that debt. And those main acquisitions, there's actually several, but trilogy and edX. And in particular edX, it's a very, very important acquisition, because it was incubated at MIT as a nonprofit, then sold to a for profit, and now it's part of a bankrupted for profit. It really could have a profound chilling effect on these nonprofit for profit hybrids, or any of those transactions. And then overall, this has a big chilling effect on Ed Tech multiples and the view of where are the exit options for ed tech companies and so on. So I think it is a important move for to you to kind of re emerge as a sustainable, hopefully business, but the damage in its wake is pretty profound. Yeah,
Alexander Sarlin:well put. And I mean, I have some personal experience in this story as long time. Listeners may know, I was working at trilogy education when it was purchased by to you. So became a to you employee, and was there for a year and a half or so, maybe two years, you know, seeing the sort of fallout of the acquisition. And, you know, I'm not trying to spill any company any secrets there, but I definitely think that the story, for me, of this is it's also wrapped up in the sort of pandemic boom and bust. Because I think that, to you, has always been a company with a lot of self confidence. It was sort of bred from marketing folks. I mean, our at least chip was a marketing person from the beginning, it's always sort of had a very high opinion of itself. It's always been one of the more visible OPMs. A lot of the other OPMs, you know, are basically white labeled, and you don't even see them at all. To you, is a real brand. And not only is it a real brand, they've been looking to build that brand consistently for many years. In the last few years, it was through acquisitions, and those two back to back acquisitions, which were both enormous. Trilogy was $750 million edX was$800 million Those are big acquisitions, very big in the ed tech world. I think the thinking there was in the high of the pandemic, in this sort of feeling of, Hey, Ed Tech is hitting its stride. And to you is one of the you know, companies out front with a big brand that has really good university relationships. It wanted to sort of pull together all the different university plays, right? Trilogy was doing boot camps with universities. Their original OPM business, doing courses with universities and degrees with universities. EdX, doing all sorts of MOOCs, obviously, and micro degrees and various things with universities. They were like, we're going to be the university partner company that does it all. They also had to get smarter, which was business classes with top universities, top business schools. So strategically, that sounds reasonable to me. I mean, it's ambitious, but it's reasonable. I think the ambitions and the actual execution just weren't matching. They purchased these companies, they pulled them together. They were trying to make it into this one stop shop and be the place where students could go from anywhere in the world if they wanted to access these us courses, and then degrees, and then, you know, boot camps and degrees, they just couldn't pull it off yet. I mean, it's not over, right? To your point, the story of to you, is not necessarily over. It's not actually out of business at all, but the debt side of that equation, especially post covid and as interest rates changing, just absolutely put it into the water, into the red. And it's not a surprise, I think long time people watching this would not be surprised to hear the two declare bankruptcy. But it is also a little bit of like a milestone, I think, for to you, for sure, and for sort of Ed Tech, for, like, the Big Ed Tech players. I mean, we've seen Chegg. People struggle a lot recently, we've seen Coursera struggle recently, especially in its sort of public facing stuff and stock price. But to you, this is sort of an official it feels like a flag in the ground, like a moment we will, you know, note in the history of Ed Tech.
Ben Kornell:Yeah, I think just to put a fine point on that, you know, when we were in the heyday moment, we were looking at Chegg at about $100 a share. Chegg is now at $3 a share. In the heyday we were looking at Coursera at 50 or $60 a share. It's now around $10 a share. So there's been an
Alexander Sarlin:overall was$90 a share, and now is, yeah,
Ben Kornell:there's an overall market correction here of a magnitude of, like, 5x to, you know, 20x market correction. And when you add debt on top of that beta, which, you know, basically tracking the extreme highs and extreme lows, that amplifies your highs, and debt amplifies your lows, and this, that is the warning signal here. But I want to make sure we're also not losing another important story here, because I think the way the company was structured and run in the M and A definitely tells you the majority of the story of why to you specifically is where it is, but when to you started 15 years ago, higher education did not have the capability to run online schools and courses, and so they were really eager to outsource it, and they were willing to partner with somebody and give You know, 50 to 80% of the upside of these digital experiences to the OPM, and that was really a big shift in practice for universities to say, we are now going to unlock digital options. And they wanted to kind of go fast at the market. They wanted to have high quality and this was often like graduate school programs that they would launch fully digitally. The world has changed. These universities are now sophisticated. Online School operators. Are they as nimble as an ed tech company? May be quality variances all over the place, but I think what ended up happening is the technology readiness of the sector caught up to where to you was, and the marginal benefit of a to you versus doing it yourself, essentially reduced to zero. And so if you even look at Coursera, they've evolved. And by the way, Coursera has had a very different path to market for a similar adult learning audience, but like corporate learning has been a big part of the Coursera story, a consumer focus has been a big part of the Coursera story. The kind of B to B partnerships with universities was a huge chunk of where to you was headed. And unfortunately, I think they brought down edX, which was consumer facing, and they brought down trilogy which had consumer facing and was probably a good, sustainable business on its own. Yeah, so you know what is left here of the pieces. How can you spin it out? But what does 2024 look like versus 2010 that is really a big part of this story as well.
Alexander Sarlin:It's true. And my last thought on this, one of the things that was so odd, and I've said this before, but it was so odd about two years strategy, is they were trying to sort of thread this needle of investors were asking them the question, exactly what you just said, is the OPM model still viable. Are universities going to do this themselves? And their stance had to be, no, we still have robust partnerships, all that great stuff, but they were making these acquisitions which looked exactly like hedges against that they were hedges. I mean, edX was their attempt to have a Coursera like B to C facing, you know, relatively small dollar program, instead of only graduate degrees. Trilogy was their attempt to move into boot camps. They never cracked B to B for corporate education at all. It was just zero or virtually nothing. So you could see them trying to, sort of trying to diversify through acquisition, and I think they just didn't do it fast enough, or they spent too much on it. I mean, let's just be honest. Let's talk about the other big business story. Ben So Instructure. We just talked to Steve Daly from Instructure just a few weeks ago on the podcast. He's the CEO. They have a majority market share in higher ed and about 30 something percent in K 12, for learning management systems, was acquired this week, or are announced to be acquired by KKR, which is a private equity firm for $4.8 billion that's a good amount of money, and that's taking them back private. They had been owned by private equity, which then took them public in 2021 and I think this means they're going to go back private, right? Ben, yeah, yeah, exactly. This is interesting, because Instructure has a really pivotal role in the AI world, in that. By being the dominant figure, or one of the very few dominant figures in both higher ed and K 12, and they do corporate learning as well. They are sitting on a huge amount of student data, and they're basically the gatekeeper for course data, student data, scheduling data, academic work, quiz data, all sorts of things, which would really be huge for AI and Steve Daly was saying, Hey, we know this, and we want to be part of it. What do you think it means? Do you think private equity taking them over? Does that mean it's going to be squeezed just for money, money, money, or does it mean they're going to start try to be really innovative and take advantage of instructors like pole position at this time? Well,
Ben Kornell:I think it's important to note that the deal is not all the way closed. They've announced the deal. But I've also heard that there's an investigation that where shareholders are protesting because they believe the price is too low. This is like, hot off the press, by the way, because I was looking at the stock and I'm like, Oh, the stock just crashed. So what does that mean? So there is a possibility that the deal doesn't go through, or shareholders block. Interesting. I mean, look, headline news. When I'm looking at the deal, I'm saying this is a really good deal for the ed tech space. If I were a shareholder, I would be very happy to kind of take this buy out. What's going on here is actually the opposite of what we've just talked about with to you, which is Instructure has been super frugal. They have been incredibly consistent in getting market share, and they're a kind of a lower growth company where customer retention is incredibly high, and so venture capital tends to chase high growth companies that may have high burn, but they're grabbing more and more share that eventually could turn to profit. Instructure has been playing a kind of steady as she goes. You know, the tortoise wins the race kind of thing, and they've been incredibly good at it. Now let's also look at their history. They've been owned by private equity before, and then they went public. So the back channel, word on the street is that Francisco partners and KKR were having a bidding war over who was going to buy in structure, and they wanted to take it private. And their view is ultimately that now Instructure is basically essential infrastructure. You know, Canvas is this incredible platform that is connected to basically every learner in America and a huge number of learners worldwide. And from that, you can layer on new products, new capabilities, and with new technology like AI, the data sets that Canvas has are incredibly valuable, so there is no fact here to cut to eke out more profitability. That is not the play here. The play here is actually we have an entrenched market leader who has channel to everybody. How do we layer on, you know, certain goods and services and products on top of that, to amplify the value? And by the way, I think that's incredibly exciting for education space, because you're going to have KKR, who has really deep pockets, bringing more value, add to the canvas infrastructure in a way that will be interoperable and integrated. And you have to also look at the team who's been running it out of Utah. They've been incredibly disciplined. When it was the heyday. They didn't go out and do crazy stuff when it's child. They haven't done crazy stuff. And their learn platform acquisition, which, in this scheme of things, is relatively small, just goes to show how important they think outcomes, data is and will be. So I'm very excited about this one.
Alexander Sarlin:Yes, I agree. I think the potential for Instructure to be a really meaningful and hopefully very innovative. You know, hub of the AI education ecosystem is there that said in the past, there hasn't always been full execution on that. I mean, they've tried some things that have sort of looked amazing and then not quite come through around integrations, they sometimes are known for not sharing their data in the past. And I really like Instructure. It's an amazing company, but I'm very positive about this too, but there is still stuff to sort of connect and wrap up in the Instructure world. So I hope that part of this KKR, like, there may not be any fat to cut, but I do think there's some sort of execution to hit on when it comes to these big swings, like, Oh, we're going to be an app marketplace, or we're going to integrate with, you know, we're going to, we're going to do LTI, or some kind of really good, thorough, complex integration, maybe join project unicorn and be really data interoperable in a safe way. Like, I think there's been these sort of bubbles of this and, you know, or, like, we're going to do improve our assessment system, enormous. They could incorporate all kinds of interesting assessments into into structure, and they've done some of that. So I think it's like, it's incredibly exciting. I'm hoping that somebody, I don't know much about this KKR group but, and I didn't know that the deal was at risk at all, but I'm hoping that this group sees all the business potential that you're naming Ben, which I think is dead on, right? They've grown really consistently. They're a market leader in multiple sectors. But the trick with being an LMS is you have to please many different people for many years and in many different use cases. And it can make it can make very bloated, complex products, just with my product hat on. And it can keep you from being very innovative. Over time, it beginning you very innovative, and it becomes less and less, and I think you've seen a little bit of that within structure. I hope that this is a sort of push to really do all the things that we both just said, right, use the data in a way that actually makes sense. We can actually envision that personalized, you know, precise learning future. I hope so it could be big. And, yeah, I mean, I just think it's a real it's a it's a fascinating company. I think it's one of the most interesting companies in ed tech, in that it sort of plays the central role. We also, we have mentioned this, but, you know, we saw Bain Capital purchase power school just a few months ago, which is the, sort of the third big player in this space. Do you see any connection between those two? And
Ben Kornell:not directly, but I think from a strategy standpoint, what we're seeing is that this infrastructure layer is showing the most value for acquisition. And I think, you know, we should even connect it with clever. You know, clever was acquired as an infrastructure player. Thing you know, products and tools that have to do with shifting the instructional paradigm are harder to grow and are harder to maintain the product because you have to continue to invest in quality curriculum, pedagogy, use cases, etc, and you're getting attacked by competitors all the time. And so these, like large curriculum players out there, Hmh would be an example of a company that was publicly traded got bought by a private equity firm to do exactly what you're talking about, have more focus, more integration, and so on. But the story of the last decade of Ed Tech has been these infrastructure players having success. It's true, we get to the application layer and the instructional capabilities in this next decade, I sure hope so with AI, but that so far hasn't proven out to be as consistent a winner for investors. We need more of those kind of instructional layer things. And you know, we've had a bevy of reports that basically hit on a number of concerning topics. First, the NWA Research Group, which they are owned by, Hmh, appropriately, basically showed that, you know, there have been minimal gains in terms of closing achievement gaps in reading and in math, and that we've spent all of this money during Esser and we really don't have much to show for it, and then that combines with a bunch of negative trends in terms of the financing for K 12 going forward. Number one is that Bloomberg reports that enrollment is down by as much as 14 to 18% in large urban areas. That is a huge cut to their budgets. Then second, you're seeing that the stimulus money basically the Esser this fall is the last breath of that. So Ed Week has a great article that is basically talking about budget constraints are forcing most schools to not consider new vendors, and they're really just looking at, how do they find new pots of funding for their existing vendors? So very tough market to grow in. And then you've also got the overall trend around inflation and the cost of labor, the cost of goods is going up overall. So it's painting a really tough picture for K 12 education sector, which may be why we're seeing so many of the valuations of both publicly traded and private companies coming down.
Alexander Sarlin:Yes, they are all concerning. And you know, some of this is purely demographic trends. You just have people moving around a lot since the pandemic, a lot of emptying out of urban areas and moving, especially families with children, moving to a whole different set of cities, and then you have people. This actually extends a little bit to higher ed as well, which is pretty interesting. The number of 17 year olds graduating into the traditional student higher ed ecosystem is about to drop significantly for a variety of reasons. So I think, combined with the FAFSA debacle this year, I think the higher ed space is also, we've talked about this before, but they're also quite worried about, you know, enrollments, just having students in seats. None of these things are good for the ed tech space.
Ben Kornell:Just to put like numbers on that. Specific topic, in K 12, in 2013 versus 2031 we have 3 million fewer students. So just think K 12 has roughly 50 million students. That's almost a 10% decline just in terms of pure enrollment. So none of the other factors that we've just talked about cutting funding, or inflation, or, you know, student attendance going down. But sheer human beings, we are in a place of recession in terms of enrollment, and that will essentially feed up into higher ed.
Alexander Sarlin:Yes, it's a crazy time, you know, speaking of higher ed, and of to you back there. One other thing we saw, and I think we sort of expected a little bit of this, is that the OPM guidance, you know, there was all this different regulatory guidance coming down on the online program management world, you know, over the last year, and it was just officially delayed coming out of the federal government until at least next year. So you know, that means a wait and see for all the people in that space. But it makes sense, I think, you know, combined with the election year, obviously the politics of higher ed are getting confusing, with two declaring bankruptcy with the higher ed space dealing with the FAFSA. I mean, the Congress just subpoenaed the FAFSA paperwork because they're trying to look into this FAFSA issue. That's been another sort of tech debacle. I think people are really confused about what's going to come next. The tools competition announced its winners this week, 50 organizations earning over $8 million for incredibly innovative ed tech products and ideas. And we have one of the winners with us today, Lindsey Tropf, the CEO of Immersed Games. Welcome Lindsey.
Lindsey Tropf:Thanks Great to be here.
Alexander Sarlin:So tell us about what immersed does, and what Tyto online is for STEM learning for students.
Lindsey Tropf:Yeah. So immersed is the name of the company, but Tyto is the product we make. And so we've made a video game that we really focused on setting up authentic problem based learning for students. So we've been doing that for a couple years. For science examples might be that's learn about climate change. Students investigate coral bleaching, they go back, they go into a reef, they collect samples, they look under the microscope, they collect evidence, they figure out what's going on. They do it themselves. So the pedagogy we have has been really strong. We've been doing this for a couple years of science. I have some great evidence behind it, both in the learning and even, like stem identity sides of things, but with this, we wanted to start bringing that to math. And so that's what this tools competition is for, is funding us, continuing to kind of explore. And we made a first prototype, recently funded by the NSF, actually. And so we also just got a Department of Ed grant for some math. Around the same time we found out about the tools. So there's just been a lot of interest in us bringing that approach to math, which has been so exciting for us. It
Alexander Sarlin:really is exciting. And you know, the toast competition is really about learning engineering. It has this very specific ideology, and I think it's a really powerful ideology about using the best of what we know about learning sciences. Tell us a little bit more when you say you have research behind it, and you're using advanced pedagogy. Tell us a little bit more about why tyto works. Yeah. I
Lindsey Tropf:mean, at its core, we are doing an inquiry learning process that puts students into an environment where they're put in the role of someone who's solving an authentic kind of problem. So how would a scientist really be doing this? And actually, we just finished up our research pilot with another NSF grant, where that some of the teachers had, some of the students said at the end was like, wow, like, we just did real science. And like in conversations later doing other things, they're like, Well, what would a real scientist do to their teacher after they had that experience? And so being able to set up this environment has been really critical. And I mean, we just use tons of pedagogies and different approaches in there. And so what we see is a 12% increase in science and engineering practice kind of improvements, things like data analysis, asking questions. We see improvements in content knowledge. We see improvements in STEM interest, stem identity and things like that as well that come out of this. And we even see on the engagement side that about a quarter of students play extra quests and do more learning activities outside of what their teachers assign them. So it's been really exciting to do that in science, and I've known that kind of the pedagogies and the research we were pulling from kind of work across the board, their equity base, their kind of good learning, but we had never done it with math yet, and I wanted to start exploring that because, you know, post covid, there's a lot of extra interest in math right now, and some of the publishers I started talking to about partnerships. We're interested in math too. And I guess before this, I pulled up a quote by Joe Buller, who's an incredible math person. Helped revise the California standard. She has an article that, if anyone's curious, go look it up. Why math education in the US doesn't add up in Scientific American. And when I started diving in to see how well would this pedagogy apply to math, kind of her conclusion of everything is, if the American classrooms begin to present the subject as one of open, visual, Creative Inquiry accompanied by growth minded messages, more students will engage with Matt's real beauty. And I was so excited, because this is exactly how we do it already. And as we've started building in math, everything is math like just mapped over. So perfect. Because, like, good pedagogy is good pedagogy despite the subject area. And so it's just thrilling to see students engage in these hands on real scenarios in math and be really excited about it. I love
Ben Kornell:the focus on making math accessible, engaging and lovable to kids. One thing that I've been thinking a lot about is our efforts to raise the floor in math versus raise the ceiling. How much do you think about your product as helping kids reach their full potential versus meet a minimum threshold or minimum bar of skills? Yeah. I
Lindsey Tropf:mean a lot of especially middle school math, which is where we're working on right now, is really about developing these core skills that will be really essential as they continue on, and maybe make choices for doing algebra earlier, although the fact that that tracks is something that the systems need to think about. But I definitely am very focused on all students, kind of getting it at the same time, getting why it matters keeps more students engaged and interested in doing these activities. And so that was important for equity in our science work, and it's even more important, I think, in our math work, because the way it's taught is generally disconnected. And we did about 80 customer discovery interviews when we first started doing maths, including with students who told us, like, math doesn't have real world application, you know, like they literally, like, argued with us sometimes. And so being able to kind of take that group of students and hopefully kind of have more interest persisting ideally with our model, as I mentioned right now, about one in four students do extra quests beyond and so for me, that's also very powerful, that as we get more kind of scale of users, that means, if I have millions of users. If a quarter continue to pay extra, they can go learn more, and we can raise that ceiling as well. So again, a lot of these good systems and pedagogies serve everyone in really compelling ways, and that's what we'd like to do some of that's about implementation and money to do the extra quests and things like that, but letting students have that self directed learning, especially if they're maybe early finishers or just go home and do it like many do, is really important for me in terms of how I think about our reach and scale.
Alexander Sarlin:You've mentioned the stem identity a couple of times, and I think that something really unique and very interesting about what you're doing with tyto and immersed is it parallels what we've seen in computer science education, which is when you make it more about actually solving problems and not just getting right answers and sort of competing, it becomes much more appealing to female students. I think you've done some really innovative work around equity for female students in STEM as well. Tell us a little bit about that.
Lindsey Tropf:It really boils down to showing why it matters and that it's not this disconnected, weird solo activity. There's research that shows, if you ask a fifth grade girl if she wants to be an engineer and if that's a good career, she's like, Nah, that's boring. If you say, Would you like to clean water and create filters that will help communities, she's like, yes, I want to do that career, right? And so it's really about seeing why these things matter, and that's the science or math, right? Why am I doing that? And so using a 3d video game, the reason I did that wasn't just because games are cool and I want to like use gamification is because I'm setting up these environments where some of our math context, for instance, the first storyline we built, there's sick wombats that are very cute. Students wanted to make sure we understood how much they appreciated that, and you need to ship off their poop samples. So you're doing volume and surface area to figure out how to packages and insulate them. Right? Now, we just built a cat cafe, and students are helping the small business owner evaluate some statistical questions about the cat cafe, right? So we're building these things that have meaning that you're seeing why would actually use math? And that's really the core for all underrepresented students. There's other things, like reducing stereotype threat game environments are really great for that. We're building spatial awareness, the fact that it's safe to fail in the game, the fact that we haven't pink washed it, which actually unintentionally sends signals that this isn't for me, because I have to have these special programs, right? There's a lot that we work but I think the core that I just always point to that is great for all kind of marginalized students, is like, hey, it has real world application that makes a difference for our people. So,
Alexander Sarlin:you know, one of the things that's also really interesting about what you're doing with tyto, there's a lot of a lot of innovation here, is that you're thinking about how it might integrate into other systems, and how things might integrate into it. You know, you're thinking of it almost sort of like a Roblox he, you know, how is the could this be a whole world lens that's really exciting and something that not every educational game company thinks about. Tell us about some of your ambitions for the future of Taito.
Lindsey Tropf:Yeah. So the game itself also has an authoring tool behind it that we can use to make this content pretty rapidly, compared to like, hand coding at all. And so at first, we've just been using that to make our own content, but we started talking with partners about using this to help create and embed content in their curricula. So I've been working on a deal that will hopefully be closing soon, that would embed some math content in high school curricula, one of the big publishers, and write within the textbook and like, have a spot which is great to design, like, exactly where students are going to use it to do that. So start. To have a lot of these conversations with partners, but yeah, some of my broader goals, and I've shared goals with that, are things like being able to hopefully have some crossover there, that if students are learning it through this publisher's content, but I have a nonprofit I'm talking to you that does financial literacy, can those students go do extra things at home, earn more rewards, unlock more because they're doing learning activities or just because they're interested? And how can we start getting that cross pollination? Because I know with our first live partner, which has evolved me with ASA, we still have a quarter of students play extra quests. So so far, that's been carrying over to our partners as well. So if I can get this extra dosage as I scale up with all these partners, how can I use that to have this crossover, to let students learn and grow and have this higher ceiling, and then yeah, the data is really useful as well. I mean, I actually we're thinking about different contexts. I met with a workforce development program yesterday about choosing a program to learn about, like welding and things like that, and being able to both create the content with our authoring tool, even in that context, and then something we're building for tools competition is a feedback question that we can loop into the mechanics here for part of the learning engineering. So it's like, oh, we could ask them how much they'd like the career when they show up in your admissions office. You can help them pick the right career based on their in game experience and having that data right. So like, this type of pedagogy, again, works everywhere, and it works for adults as well as well as children. And so I'm really having a great time like coming up these models and figuring out how we can scale impact in ways that have really been inaccessible. If everyone's just kind of hand coding one off projects,
Alexander Sarlin:it's a really bold vision. I think it's so exciting and a very, I think, a modern phenomenon, to be able to build a game environment, an engaging game environment, where you're actually playing a character and doing all these adventures that actually can fit into other like you say, can fit into a textbook content, or things can fit into it, and you can adapt it. This is all you know, really, modern technology or at time. So let me ask you for like a 15 second answer on this. I know this is a tough one. How are you thinking about AI right now,
Lindsey Tropf:speeding up content creation, supporting that we do have plans, kind of our next update there, a human really still has to be in the mix right now, in choices and using our knowledge there. I don't really want it to be going straight to students in the near future. It'll get there. Just not yet
Alexander Sarlin:got it. Yep, and I know there's a lot of AI tools for game content creation started. There's starting to be a lot of that in the world. So hopefully you inherit some of that, be able to make more and more and more and more amazing levels and games and characters. We're beta customers for one thing there so far,vbut being careful about AI in front of students seems pretty logical. Thank you so much. Congratulations on the win for the tools competition. This is Lindsey Tropf, CEO of Immersed Games. Really exciting work you're doing. Lindsey, thanks.
Lindsey Tropf:It's great to talk with you today.
Alexander Sarlin:Thanks for listening to this episode of EdTech 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 EdTech Insider, subscribe to the free ed tech insiders newsletter on sub stack you.
