It's About Learning

In the book Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns, Harvard Business Professor Clayton Christensen and co-authors Michael Horn and Curtis Johnson identify intrinsic motivation or rather the lack of intrinsic motivation as one of the fundamental problems with our K-12 educational system. They subsequently argue that because students have different learning needs a key step in making schools intrinsically motivating is to customize education to match the way each child learns best. Christensen, Horn and Johnson further point out that the interdependent architecture of schools forces them to standardize the way that they teach and test and it is this standardization that is at odds with a student-centric approach that would address each learner’s fundamental needs. To move away from this monolithic instruction of batches of students, the authors argue that schools must move toward a modular student-centric approach and use computer-based and online learning as the catalyst for disruptive innovation.

The notion of intrinsically motivating student-centric instruction is not new nor is the argument for computer based instruction. To immediately address expected objections from educational administrators, Christensen, Horn and Johnson explain that the 60 billion dollars spent placing computers in K-12 schools in the US over the past 20 years hasn’t shown any improvement in the system because schools have done what all organization do when instituting new technology:

They have crammed the new technologies into their existing structure, rather than allowing disruptive technology to take root in a new model and allow that to grow and change how they operate (p. 12).

Rather then engage in the traditional educational debates Christensen, Horn and Johnson use Christensen’s disruptive innovation theory, detailed in the book Innovator’s Dilemma, to identify why the current educational system is unable to change and to also prescribe a process of how true innovation can be realized. In a nutshell disruptive innovation:

…is not a breakthrough improvement. Instead of sustaining the traditional improvement trajectory in the plane of competition, it disrupts the trajectory by bringing to market a product or service that is not as good as what companies historically been selling. Because it is not as good, existing customers in the back plane cannot use it. But by making the product affordable and simple to use, the disruptive innovation benefits people who had been unable to consume the back plane product-people we call “non-consumers”. Disruptive innovations take root in simple undemanding applications in a new plane of competition-where the very definition of what constitutes quality, and therefore, improvement means, is different from what quality and improvement mean in the back plane (p. 47).

Because companies or organizations are focused success and on satisfying needs of their current customers they build systems and infrastructures to ensure that those customer need are met. Ironically the system and infrastructure that make them successful with their current customers are the same systems and infrastructure that prevents them from being innovative and engaging entirely new customers in the disruptive plane.

Perhaps the best example of disruptive innovation is the personal computer (PC). Companies like Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) were destroyed by the PC because they could not see past the huge margins (over $100K per unit) in the minicomputer market and saw the $800 margins of the Apple II and its focus on non-consumers-children as non threatening. The more DEC listened to its best customers who demanded improvements with their minicomputers, the more they overlooked the growth and expansion of computing until computing power increased to the point where smaller PC were capable of doing the work previously done by mainframe and minicomputers.

How could DEC have missed seeing this coming? Investment and budgetary dollars are traditionally allocated toward sustaining innovation and improvements in existing infrastructure. Research has revealed that true innovations comes not from existing organizations but by new entities that are not bound by an asymmetrical motivation to keep on focused on sustaining rather than disruption.

But how does this radical and disruptive change come to the institution of Education? Christensen, Horn and Johnson argue that:

virtually every successful disruptive innovation took root similarly-competing against non-consumption-so that people were delighted to have a product even if its capabilities were limited … By migrating instruction delivery to custom-configured vehicles able to meet individual students’ needs schools can realize the dream of transforming the classroom from a monolithic one into a student-centric one where all students learn in ways their individual minds are wired to learn (p. 86).

The authors point to the growth of computer-based learning in Advanced Placement (AP), and other specialized courses in small, rural and urban schools unable to offer the breadth of credits. Home-schools, charter and private schools are additional areas where computer-based instruction is gaining a market foothold.

The disruption is likely to proceed in two stages. The first stage is computer-based learning and it is well on it way to maturing to the point were proprietary and relatively expensive software that is really not much more than an extension of the current monolithic system is giving way to modular student-centric technologies that can respond to the unique needs of the learner. These student-centric technologies will focus on customization and will allow the teachers, parents and the learner to customize the system to help learners to learn each subject in the ways that their brains are wired to learn.

Christensen, Horn and Johnson also suggest that the following four factors will accelerate the substitution of computer-based learning for monolithic learning:

Computer-based learning will keep on improving to the point were it no longer is considered just an alternative-or better than nothing.
The ability for students, teachers, and parents to select a learning pathway for each body of material that fits the learner
Looming teacher shortage.
Cost will significantly fall markets scale up.

When can we expect this substitution to take place? Christensen, Horn and Johnson claim that:

this will happen in approximately 2014 when online courses have a 25% market share in high schools-six years from the publication date of the book. Student-centric learning is not far away (p. 143).

To forge a consensus for this type of radical change in the public school system the authors also point the need for leadership in establishing a common language (identifying and agreeing on the problem), the effective use of power (required when there is little or no consensus) and separation (a new entity must be spawned that will facilitate the innovation). Separation is such a significant factor that in the author’s studies of disruptive innovation:

The only instances where an industry leading company remained the leader in disruptive technology while becoming the leader in the disruptive wave as well occurred when the corporate leaders wielded the separation tool. They established an independent business unit under the corporate umbrella and gave it unfettered freedom to pursue the disruptive opportunity with a unique business model (p 191).

With this research fact in mind the authors deplore the school system leaders, elected officials and administrators to have one person–and over time an organization reporting to that person-whose sole job is to implement online courses.

Perhaps one of the most refreshing aspects of the book was that the authors were not education bashing but rather suggested that the institution of education is the only institution capable of rebuilding itself and meeting these challenges. Society has continually asked education to change itself to meet new needs which is equivalent to rebuilding an airplane in mid-flight. The institution of education has repeatedly meet these challenges and the authors hope that their book can be a manual for this next rebuild.

This is a must read for everyone in education. The book has encourage me to consider many many questions. The following is just a few that come to mind: