Virtual School
The challenge
With covid-driven remote homebased learning, parents have become far more engaged with kids’ daily education than ever before. This will not necessarily subside post-covid and might just become the new normal. Some challenges are evident, particularly the lack of web based learning container or portal to;
- facilitate parental immersion into their kids' learning.
- orchestrate kids' learning cadence, channels, flow and interaction points
- host, amalgamate and sequence content, activities, tools and other learning artifacts.
- track everything amidst the busyness of daily life such as working from home
We have a big picture view of the possibilities. In addition to in-house web technology expertise, one of us has considerable university level instructional experience using 100% remote and virtual instructional tools. But then tools and techniques used for university level education are not necessarily optimized for elementary and high school education. There're are no doubt exciting challenges in developing the portal we've conceptualized, targeted at elementary and high school kids.
Post-covid, many parent may be thinking about hiring a tutor for the kids to continue the engagement. But even then, how do they keep on top of things, track tutoring activities and support the tutors??
Solution & opportunity
This has generated empathy in our hearts and minds for parents who, for some reasons, chose to entirely homeschool their kids. We have therefore decided to explore possible development of a portal to help parents home school kids entirely and others tutor their kids to supplement public education offerings. This exploration will in all probability take about 90 days.
Our global next steps
- This exploration project or proof of concept (minimum viable product -- MVP) in now in progress to validate assumptions and notional solution. The project will involve building a few lessons and topics including content, tools and techniques such as flash-cards, discussion forums, assignments, quizzes, animations, videos etc. on the portal. The proof of concept will demonstrate that these carefully selected tools can be deployed to meet learning goals, based on solid cognitive science, such as;
- Knowledge acquisition, understanding and retention.
- Also, engagement, commitment and fascination with learning.
- Scale out will then follow, if the proof of concept validates our assumptions as relates to technology, techniques and tools to meet the mentioned goals.
Overall, the project seems a daunting undertaking with unclear results. That is not a good reason not to try though! Often it is along the journey that one gets clarity