Clayton Christensen |

One out of every 110 babies born in the United States today will be diagnosed with autism, according to the CDC, and the diagnosed incidences of autism over time have been increasing.

One of the evidenced-based interventions for autism is called Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), but there are few people certified in ABA so many families and school districts with autistic children do not have convenient access to a trained professional. In addition, when a professional is nearby, the service is costly—in the range of $100 an hour—so even more cannot access this service.

When we see a service that is too expensive, inconvenient, and centralized such that a large population cannot consume it, it’s an indication that it is a prime area awaiting a disruptive innovation.

Rethink Autism is attempting to pioneer such a disruptive solution—and it bears many of the classic traits of one. Profiling it helps to clarify the pattern that characterizes disruption.

In brief, the way Rethink Autism works is that a parent or adult fills out a skills checklist online, and Rethink Autism creates an individualized ABA-based plan for the child. That plan in essence guides the parent or teacher in what to do with the child and how to do it through the use of videos of experts demonstrating the interventions and so forth that break down complex tasks into short, easy-to-understand steps. As the child learns new skills, the platform adds new lessons to his or her curriculum and continues to customize over time. Much of the interventions are, of course, offline, but the platform is delivered in a child-centered way online. No expert is involved.

In essence, Rethink Autism does several things to allow nonconsumers the benefit of an ABA intervention. First, it commoditizes the expertise of trained ABA professionals and allows less-skilled people—parents and teachers and the like who are not trained ABA experts—to do ABA interventions. Sure, they aren’t as good as the experts, and the platform probably isn’t as good at customizing a curriculum for a child as an expert guided by rich intuition, but for the many autistic children who do not have access to those experts, this is far better than the alternative, which is nothing at all. And like all technologies, it will improve over time as it scales, just like transistors and personal computers did. As a result of commoditizing the professionals’ expertise, it’s also a lot more affordable than the traditional service. Instead of $100 an hour, it costs less than $100 a month—a price many more families and school districts can afford. Now that’s disruptive!

Although it is certainly not the flashiest technology out there, how it’s used and the business model in which it is planted is far more important in determining if it’s disruptive, and this meets the tests. That isn’t to say Rethink Autism is guaranteed of being successful. It is off to a good start, however.

Online learning conjures up lots of images in people’s minds. Some people imagine the vast possibilities for how it could develop as learning migrates to an online platform that allows for rich collaborations and private explorations both online and offline. Others think drill-and-kill software and imagine offerings that drive education to a narrow and sadly limited definition of learning.

As with most disruptive innovations, the first examples of online learning were primitive. They often represented a PowerPoint simply put on the Web. Students clicked through some material, maybe answered a few multiple-choice questions, and exchanged a few emails with a teacher perhaps.

But technology improves predictably. Online learning has been no exception.

It has improved in several ways. First, in the beginning online learning was primarily a form of distance learning. That is becoming less and less the case as online learning snaps into brick-and-mortar hybrid environments of various sorts in which, among other things, students can have access to in-person peer interactions and relationships with caring adults.

Second, the communication vehicles that connect humans in online learning environments are improving. Companies like Elluminate are making strides in enhancing the interactive experience of online learning all the time through improved and varied video, chat sessions, and so forth. As the hardware improves and 3D and other technology becomes more affordable, who knows how “real” a 2-way video conversation in the future could feel like.

Finally, the basic content and pure technology behind online learning are improving as well. Providers are moving beyond the basic PowerPoint, and we are in the beginning stages of players architecting systems that actually “learn” and improve real time based on the results of different students’ experiences. Companies like 360Ed in partnership with the Florida Virtual School have built full video game-based courses such as Conspiracy Code that are making the content far more engaging. Other players like Agilix, Knewton, and Renzulli Learning are working on making the content increasing adaptable for each individual student. And, as this fascinating article in Education Week discusses, researchers are making advances in creating “intelligent tutor” systems that pick up on student’s cues about their emotions and adapt accordingly.

What could online learning look like in 10 years time? Who knows, but the smart bet is a lot different and better from what it is today.

I spent last week in Japan as the guest of Sumitomo Corporation to learn about and research the potential for online learning to help the Japanese learn English. One night at dinner, one of my hosts, Chris Campbell, said: If you were to write a second edition of Disrupting Class, I would include a chapter about why video games are so motivating and what we can learn from them.

He continued: It’s useful to think about why video games are so motivating; in many cases it’s not obvious that they would be. Their topics are not always inherently interesting; they can be quite challenging to access. To bring the point home, think about it this way: what if video games were like schools?

I had never thought about it that way. I’m sure people have written about this, but it had not hit me so clearly. Despite reading Prensky and Gee and others about the potential for video games in learning, I had not seen it from the reverse perspective.

The answer is that if video games were like schools, they would be incredibly de-motivating for most no matter how interesting their topic. Just imagine. You have cleared a maze of enemies perhaps. Sorry, you can’t advance because it’s not the predetermined time when you are allowed to yet. Or sorry, you cannot level up or advance to another challenge until everyone in your randomly assigned cohort has done so as well. You say you’ve been through the challenge 5 times already and mastered it? That’s nice but sorry.

Or perhaps think about the reverse. You’re struggling with a certain challenge and have not yet mastered it, but some arbitrary time limit doesn’t just say time is up, you lose, try again. Instead it says: Time is up, on to the more advanced challenge. You need tools from the previous challenge to conquer the further problems? Sorry, that’s just too bad. We have to keep moving.

It’s not hard to extend the analogy further into team “project-like” settings and others. I’d love for people to do so here. But can you imagine the frustration? Or boredom? Or downright bewilderment? Could you blame someone for tuning out?

There has been some buzz in the media (here and here for example) about a new school that opened this year in New York City called the Quest to Learn (Q2L) school—the curriculum of which is based entirely on learning through (mostly video) games.

The idea that students could learn through playing video games is not new. As we’ve written in Disrupting Class and on this blog, many have written and researched about this—from Marc Prensky to James Paul Gee most notably. As we’ve discussed, Florida Virtual School pioneered a revolutionary fully online video-game based American History course, Conspiracy Code, earlier this year, under the idea that it should be working to make the work itself in education more engaging.

The research behind Q2L is in fact inspired in part by Gee’s research, according to the Economist. And the school itself appears to be the brainchild of Katie Salen, a games designer and a professor of design and technology at Parsons The New School for Design in New York.

What is new about the school—which started with 12-year-olds this year and will keep the students until they are 18—is two-fold. First, the whole curriculum is based on games. Second, the curriculum is dramatically different from that of the traditional one with the familiar English, Social Studies, Math, and so on. According to the Economist: “Quest to Learn’s school day will, rather, be divided into four 90-minute blocks devoted to the study of ‘domains’. Such domains include Codeworlds (a combination of mathematics and English), Being, Space and Place (English and social studies), The Way Things Work (maths and science) and Sports for the Mind (game design and digital literacy). Each domain concludes with a two-week examination called a ‘Boss Level’—a common phrase in video-game parlance.” Because the school is public, its students will still have to take the normal subject-matter tests.

Now it’s true that we wouldn’t call Q2L a disruptive innovation (although perhaps some of its components may prove to be just that). It is also true that this dramatic re-envisioning of the fundamental architecture of a school reveals the power of utilizing heavyweight teams (which we wrote about in Chapter 9 of Disrupting Class) when rethinking the architecture—what components are needed, how they fit together—of a product or service is the goal. This use of games—that fundamentally rethinks schooling—could likely only come about in a new school like Q2L. As the Economist concludes,  “In education, as in other fields of activity, it is not enough just to apply new technologies to existing processes—for maximum effect you have to apply them in new and imaginative ways.”

There’s a great story about the future of higher education out in Fast Company. I’m sure many have read it by now, but if not, I recommend it highly. The article by Anya Kamenetz is titled “How Web-Savvy Edupunks Are Transforming American Higher Education.”

The piece focuses on how the Internet has the potential to be an enabling technology for a massive disruption in higher education that challenges many of our conventional assumptions. The Internet has been at the heart of the disruptive online universities for some time, but this article takes it further. One of the biggest insights is this: it’s not simply the technology, it’s the model in which it is used that matters. That’s true of all disruptions—they are enabled by a simplifying technology, a business model innovation (and this is perhaps more important), and wrapped in a new value network.

Some highlights:

- From David Wiley, a leading light in this space: “The challenge is not to bring technology into the classroom, he points out. The millennials, with their Facebook and their cell phones, have done that. The challenge is to capture the potential of technology to lower costs and improve learning for all.”

- And also from Wiley: “‘A sufficient infrastructure of freely available content is step one in a much longer endgame that transforms everything we know about higher education. … If you didn’t need human interaction and someone to answer your questions, then the library would never have evolved into the university,’ Wiley says. ‘We all realize that content is just the first step.’”

- “‘Open courseware is hard for the self-learner,’ agrees Neeru Paharia, a PhD student at Harvard Business School. Building a social network to make it easier is the goal of her newest project, Peer2Peer University. … She wants to address ‘all the other things that a university does for you: It provides you a clear path from A to B, provides social infrastructure of teachers and other students, and accreditation so you actually get credit for what you do. So the question becomes, Is there a way of hacking something like this together?’”

(This is something I’ve been talking about on the stump in the K12 space as well for some time.)

- Ultimately what interests Paharia is proving the model, demonstrating that there’s a way to provide education cheaply or even for free to all who are qualified.

- From Bob Mendenhall, head of Western Governor’s University: “‘We said, ‘Let’s create a university that actually measures learning, … We do not have credit hours, we do not have grades. We simply have a series of assessments that measure competencies, and on that basis, award the degree.’ … Most students, though, do the full coursework, working at their own pace through online course modules, playlists of prerecorded lectures, readings, projects, and quizzes. For every 80 students, a PhD faculty member, certified in the discipline, serves as a full-time mentor. ‘Our faculty are there to guide, direct, counsel, coach, encourage, motivate, keep on track, and that’s their whole job,’ Mendenhall says. Multiple-choice tests are scored by computer, while essays and in-person evaluations are judged by a separate cadre of graders. What WGU is doing is using the Internet to disaggregate the various functions of teaching: the ‘sage on the stage’ conveyor of information, the cheerleader and helpmate, and the evaluator.”

- “Mendenhall is impatient with those who argue that what he’s doing with education and technology is unworkable. ‘Technology has changed the productivity equation of every industry except education,’ he says. ‘We’re simply trying to demonstrate that it can do it in education — if you change the way you do education as opposed to just adding technology on top.’”

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In addition, subsequent to Kamenetz’s piece, Kevin Carey wrote a thought-provoking piece on higher education as well. Published in Washington Monthly, it talks about this same phenomenon by profiling the disruptive company StraighterLine. It’s called “College for $99 a month: The next generation of online education could be great for students—and catastrophic for universities.”

Educational computer games—video games for learning (a.k.a. serious games or edutainment)—have gained increasing attention over the last several years in academic, education, and gaming circles. In Disrupting Class we referenced a few of the top thinkers on the role games and simulations can play in education—people like Marc Prensky, James Paul Gee, and Chris Dede.

One reason people are so excited about educational games is because of how engaging and motivating games are naturally. Emerging research shows that many students are much more engaged when learning through a game than in more typical learning environments—and high engagement results in higher achievement. It also doesn’t take a whiz to see that many children already spend a ton of time with video games; moving learning to where the students are holds potential.

Yet despite their promise, serious games haven’t had a tremendous impact in formal learning environments to date. There are some limited successes—like Tabula Digita’s math games, for example (this article gives a solid overview)—but for the most part selling to and competing for time within traditional schools and classrooms remain difficult given many of the barriers we articulate in the book among others.

I’ve been left to wonder what would happen if educational gaming companies instead took a disruptive path and targeted nonconsumption rather than trying to penetrate the system by going in head first. “After school” has been one promising place of nonconsumption that has received some attention, but for a variety of reasons, adoption is still spotty although there are some successes.

To me, one natural fit has seemed to be introducing edutainment through the online learning channel. Because of the shift in platform and educational model, online learning is naturally well suited to educational gaming and other virtual simulations. I’ve always figured that offering educational games as a part of or an option in a course for those who would learn best through this path makes eminent sense.

Florida Virtual School is showing that that instinct could be right—and that I may also have underestimated the potential synergies—as FLVS is launching the first complete online game-based course for high school students in the form of a full American history course based on an online game scenario.

It’s called Conspiracy Code and FLVS designed it in partnership with 360Ed Inc., an educational game development company whose CEO, Ben Noel, is a former Electronic Arts employee.

The game has the potential to scale, according to Noel in the eSchool News article, and it is in beta testing right now with 65 students to understand how effective it is and do further research to improve it. Ultimately the University of Central Florida is planning a study on this using fMRI scans and so forth to understand the learning it produces in students.

It’s going to be fun to watch as the experiment evolves—both from a research perspective and from the perspective of where it goes next as FLVS plans future courses with 360Ed.

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Also, keep an eye on OnLive as a disruptive service for bringing affordable and easily accessible gaming to the masses. Could it suggest a path forward for education gaming, too?

CNN.com published a piece by Clayton M. Christensen and Michael B. Horn today, June 2, 2009, on the recent federal stimulus funds for education–and on what the proper role of the federal government should be in in transforming our schools. You can read the commentary, “Don’t prop up failing schools,” here. Let us know what you think by commenting on the article, and we can also continue the conversation on this blog as well.

A new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reveals that roughly $5 billion of the $19.5 billion in E-Rate funds committed to schools and libraries from 1998 to 2006 were never spent. This article from eSchool News does a good job of summarizing.

For those who don’t know, the E-Rate program helps schools and libraries pay for Internet connectivity. If roughly 25 percent of funds over that period were not used, does that indicate that schools don’t need the funds?

Far from it. Many schools lag in their Internet connectivity, and of those that are hooked up to high-speed connections, many don’t have enough capacity to handle large groups of people online at the same time. This of course limits the ability of online learning to transform education into a student-centric system as we write about since it limits how robust and dynamic an online learning experience can be.

So why would these funds not be claimed then? There are a few reasons, which range from the fact that the applicant’s needs changed or they needed fewer dollars than they applied for to the fact that the sheer complexity and bureaucratic red-tape in the program often caused people to leave money on the table—or, speaking from what I’ve heard on the road—not apply.

This suggests a few things. First, as we think about sending more funding down for broadband, we ought to figure out ways to first use funds already allocated for the cause.

Second, we can learn some valuable lessons from North Carolina’s work with E-Rate. The state of North Carolina saw that many smaller districts would not apply for the E-Rate funds because of the bureaucratic red tape and they just didn’t have the time or manpower to devote to it. As a result, the state stepped in and helped the districts apply for the funds, which has helped North Carolina extend broadband across the state to get every school online.

This effort of course also suggests that the process for applying for funds for broadband needs to be simplified.

And lastly, the federal government should push districts to install the bandwidth necessary not just for today’s needs, but also in anticipation of tomorrow’s. This might include installing wireless and extending that access to the broader communities, not just the school buildings, for example. When we invest in infrastructures of change today, we should do so with an eye toward the future, not just the present.

Is owning content the future in education, or will it be more important to help people navigate through it and filter it to find useful learning that pertains to their needs and desires?

With the free resources increasingly on the Web—two of which we wrote about a few blog posts ago here—one can make the argument that content is becoming more of a commodity. Certainly there are many avenues to find free stuff to help you learn something, and Lifehacker has a post up that highlights several of these.

From resources to help you teach yourself a music instrument or to program code to helping you get a “Personal MBA” or similar formal learning objects that a liberal arts major would work with in getting a degree, there are tons of sites that Lifehacker gives some tips for finding—and then navigating.

There are some neat business models out there as well, such as TeachMate, which allows people to trade skills—the example Lifehacker gives is you can teach someone English and in exchange they teach you to cook.

What other free resources are out there on the Web that you are seeing and using to advance learning?

Days ago YouTube launched a new “channel” or sub-site—YouTube EDU. The site gathers thousands of free lectures from over a hundred universities across the country and offers them online for free. The site doesn’t just have scattered videos—it has hundreds of full courses, too.

As some have been quick to point out, this isn’t “as good” as actually paying thousands of dollars a year to go the universities so you can get interaction with the professors, have a human touch, ask questions and so forth. You also can’t get a certified degree through YouTube EDU.

But as many others have pointed out, you often cannot get that personal touch in many large lecture classes anyway, and what’s more, many people can’t pay the high tuition rates at these universities or gain admission to them. YouTube offers it all online for free—thereby bringing the opportunity to learn from the leading academics to anyone at any time nearly anywhere. It looks like disruption at its finest—and if someone like the University of the People, which is opening in just days, wraps this in a new business model and offers certification and a degree or perhaps a service like StraighterLine offers access to human beings to answer questions, who knows where this all could go and how it might improve over time to meet these initial shortcomings.

There are other players out here playing in this game as well, such as Academic Earth, which offers better navigation features to find the lecture in which you’re interested and so forth, but reportedly has fewer videos up at the moment.

Who knows how it will evolve, but here’s a guess that the disruption will improve in a myriad of unforeseen ways and will come to benefit the lives of many more people who couldn’t access the original expensive and inconvenient offering.