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🟢 Introduction
Emerson Collective and XQ Institute collaborated with Mesh Ed and Betaworks to host a two-day advisory event. The event culminated in a workshop, which we share here. The gathering aimed to highlight the transformative impact of AI in education, focusing specifically on "High School Redesign" during the second day. The XQ team presented strategic insights that guide their work, ranging from an introduction to Project-Based Learning (PBL) to the benefits of a new Student Performance Framework and learner competencies. The objective of the event was to foster meaningful connections between pioneering AI innovators and seasoned educators and to disseminate these insights across the educational field.
Strategic Framing
While AI is already revolutionizing various sectors, our high school education system remains stagnant, intensifying social inequalities and hindering the full realization of students' potential. This summit aims to pivot from mere theoretical discourse to actionable solutions, emphasizing AI's capacity to redefine high school education, particularly through initiatives like Project-Based Learning and competency-based frameworks. In a landscape cluttered with well-intentioned but often overwhelming discussions on both the transformative promise and ethical dilemmas of AI, our one-day generative session stands out. Its goal is not to unearth a single, flawless solution but to identify areas of mutual agreement and shared enthusiasm among a diverse group of participants, thereby refining our collective direction.
We employed a core framework anchored in an Impact-Effort Matrix—a straightforward yet effective tool for prioritizing tasks based on their potential impact and required effort. This matrix is instrumental in facilitating consensus on which initiatives offer the highest impact for the least effort, guiding our collective decision-making process.
Moreover, we strategically assembled a cross-functional team of experts, deliberately curating a mix of individuals both from within the educational sector and beyond. This included thought leaders in broader AI and design thinking spheres, as well as actual practicing educators and administrators from high schools across America. The intent was to foster a multidisciplinary dialogue that enriches our collective understanding and propels us toward meaningful, actionable solutions."
Problem Statement
How can AI, help make High School more relevant to both the educator and the learner?
High schools are at a crucial juncture, responsible for preparing students for an uncertain future. As XQ Institute's work reveals, high schools face an array of challenges—educational, ethical, and developmental. Artificial Intelligence (AI) introduces an additional layer of complexity to this landscape. While AI has the potential to revolutionize teaching methods and enable personalized learning experiences, it also raises ethical concerns, including data privacy and algorithmic bias.
Beyond the ethical considerations, the introduction of AI into the educational space could have far-reaching implications for the cognitive and emotional development of adolescents. The technology could alter the traditional student-teacher relationship, perhaps reducing human interaction in favor of machine-led tutoring. We need to ask hard questions: What is the role of a teacher in this AI-influenced educational landscape? How will AI affect the critical interpersonal skills and emotional intelligence that students typically develop through human interaction in the classroom?
The summit aims to create a focused discussion among career educators, design thinkers, ed tech specialists, and AI technologists. The objective is not to provide a one-size-fits-all solution but rather to identify overlapping areas of interest and concern. By doing this, we hope to narrow down the scope of our collective focus on the application of AI in education. Additionally, we will perform sentiment analysis to capture the room's collective opinions and emotional responses concerning the state of AI in education as of October 2023.
This gathering is not just about problem-solving but also about understanding where we stand at this particular historical moment. Our aim is to harness this multi-disciplinary knowledge to navigate the challenges and opportunities that AI presents in the context of high school education.
Objectives
- Our primary objective is to foster a focused approach towards integrating AI in education, with an emphasis on Project-Based Learning and the New Competencies Framework for high school stakeholders. Unlike previous discussions that have often been broad and theoretical, this initiative aims to differentiate by honing in on actionable, impactful strategies. Through our engagements with tech leaders and academic peers, we've identified a pressing need for tangible pathways in AI's educational application.
- The event's uniqueness lies in its commitment to deriving practical insights, especially in areas like PBL. On Day 2, our goal is to discern where collective enthusiasm and consensus lie, particularly in solutions that participants rank from "Low Effort / High Impact," to "High Effort/ Low Impact". Instead of chasing a singular solution, we aim to pinpoint where opportunities align with genuine, collective ENERGY and a freshly cultivated group of collaborators who may NOT otherwise have come into orbit on this topic.
Advisors Attendees
Why this workshop structure?
Our generative workshop was a carefully designed blend of many of our facilitator’s experiences, as well as methodologies drawn from AJ & Smart(source for AJ & Smart) and Jake Knapp's Crazy 8s exercise (source for Crazy 8s), adapted to fit the time constraints and specific strategic objectives we faced. We further refined these ideas with input from colleagues and attendees, with an emphasis on quality, engagement, and fun. The goal was to generate a meaningful array of actionable artifacts that could serve as a foundation for ourselves and others in the educational field.
Procedures
- Review materials
- Announce roles:
- 1 Facilitator: guides the exercise
- 1 Note-taker: captures real-time notes and takes photos of the output
- 8-9 Advisors: Provide domain expertise
- Encourage Advisors to log into the Team’s Notion to contribute, especially to add links/resources in the “Notepad” sections
- Conduct icebreaker
- Establish norms for the rest of this day
- Focus, to the fullest extent possible.
- We each have a voice at this table.
- This is our opportunity to take risks. Embrace wild ideas.
Timer [seated]
Materials
- AV for Note-taker to share Notion on screen
- Post-its (plain white rectangular)
- Sharpies (writing material)
- Rolling easel
- Personal mat to place Post-its
- Sticker dots for voting
- Virtual and physical timer
Outcomes
- Teams are familiar with each other
- Teams understand the exercise and materials they will be using
FACILITATOR AND NOTE-TAKER GUIDELINES Total time available: 10 min - Overview: 5 min - Ice breaker: 5 min Icebreaker format: - State your name - What do you do for work / where do you work?
Procedures
- Within 5 minutes, each Advisor writes down as many problems or challenges they perceive:
- INSIDE OF THE HIGH SCHOOL CLASSROOM or IN HIGH SCHOOLÂ EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM
- Example: “High schools are failing our students in math, they can’t relate and it is boring for them.”
Notes:
- Use one Post-it for each problem/challenge
- You will select up to 5 problems/challenges to share with the Team
Timer [seated]
Materials
- AV for Note-taker to share Notion on screen
- Post-its (plain rectangular)
- Sharpies (writing material)
- Rolling easel
- Personal mat to place Post-its
- Virtual and physical timer
Outcomes
- Each Advisor has at least five problems/challenges written down on Post-its
FACILITATOR AND NOTE-TAKER GUIDELINES Total time available: 5 min Note-taker will take a photo of each advisor’s board of post-its 📷 and upload all of them to this section of the Notion section.
Notes
This is merely a placeholder. Please edit to personalize what was pertinent to YOUR TEAM. Delete if Nothing to add.
Procedures
- Each Advisor selects up to 2-3 problems/challenges to share with the Team, spending ~30 seconds on each problem/challenge (3 mins max per Advisor)
- After each Advisor shares, Facilitator takes the Post-its and attaches them to the rolling easel, grouping common problems/challenges together
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Timer [seated]
Materials
- AV for Note-taker to share Notion on screen
- Post-its (plain rectangular)
- Sharpies (writing material)
- Rolling easel
- Personal mat to place Post-its
- Virtual and physical timer
Outcomes
- The team has an idea of all problems/challenges inside high school classrooms or the high school educational system
- Problems/challenges are grouped by commonality
FACILITATOR AND NOTE-TAKER GUIDELINES Total time available: 30 min - Each Advisor: 3 min max Reminders Facilitator should: - Remind others to respect the time constraint and to listen to the shared problems/challenges - Track the time for each Advisor - Collect the Post-its from each Advisor - Group common post-its together Note-taker should: Summarize each Advisor’s conversation on the shared problems/challenges
- Unintended AI consequences of tools and systems
- Students need to be intellectually engaged to develop skills needed for life. What happens when all of these tools remove the cognitive load to develop critical thinking?
- AI signals to high school students that learning to think is futile
- (e.g., what would be the point of learning how to write an essay or doing research on a time period in history if AI can do it for me?)
- Do AI tools contribute to decreased attention spans? How can we refocus tool to buy back their attention on what matters?
- Poverty and other conditions are more likely to predict student outcomes than grades on a high school diploma. Kids no longer understand the value of school, especially when they know it doesn’t guarantee economic mobility.
- Universities don’t have a way to translate “innovative” schools and practices, so it can become a barrier for scaling new pedagogy if attention and energy is focused on meeting standards
- Balancing urgency to scale and meeting systems/teachers/students where they are today. How do we do this when system incentives don’t encourage innovative solutions? (e.g., school labs not meeting infrastructure code)
- Teamwork and student powers aren’t valued. There’s missed opportunity in working in a community and pulling from strengths of students for systemic change
- Teacher support across domains and no standard practices in professional development. It’s a very typical scenario that a teacher with a history background finds themselves having to teach math. How can we expect a certain quality of teaching in this use case?
- Need clearer use cases of AI between students and teachers. We can assume a teacher has some level of foundational knowledge and judgement to understand what’s helpful and what’s garbage, but we cannot think students have developed the ability to make those distinctions. Again, that connects back to an earlier point made if AI replaces the intellectual development required than is it more harmful to learning?
- Point of tension — does PBL shortcut foundational learning (assuming found in more traditional methods of teaching)? The response: if coursework is disconnected to student experience, then yes. If coursework is authentic and relevant, then no. In other words, when it works, it really works, but when it doesn’t there’s potential downfall that a student may be worse off.
- There’s a need to refocus on the delivery of learning experiences, regardless of the learning science to find students on platforms they already engage on. Polymath is a great example of someone who’s delivering content in a more traditional way, but in short-form video on tiktok even when it’s content that’s not typically appealing (e.g., nonlinear algebra)
- Creative Hustle with Stanford D Lab is one example proving that distribution models matter. This may signal that the distribution may be more important than the design in transforming learning
- Teacher to student ratio. Clarification that this means the number of relationships per teacher, and not just having more teachers per student. So, if the ratio is 1 teacher to 100 students, can that teacher have the same 100 students all day versus 100 different students for each class?
- How can teachers personalize learning at the breadth and depth that’s required to maximize student interest and engagement?
- How can AI be used for teacher training via avatars? Could avatars mimic particular teaching styles, skill levels, or ability? Innovation of this nature can cause a point of tension because it comes at a cost of the student or teacher guinea pigs.
- Teacher pipeline, workforce talent, barriers to entry and pay
- Interesting POV: in Germany, barrier to entry is really high
- In California, teacher turnover rate is a major concern. New teachers leave the profession within the first five years.
- Important to note the types of teachers that are the majority of the workforce, which tell us that there’s a need to design for an inexperienced teaching pool
- Teacher pay is incredibly low
- How do we truly democratize the resources and materials that are coming into the world to transform learning?
- It’s clear there have been more investments in highjacking student attention than investments in student education
- How do we give students choice as we balance the natural consequence of over compliance and data collection with the ownership and individuality students need on their learning?
- There’s a need for trusted teachers and school leaders to be stewards of this data. How do we make it clear to students how its going to be used and give them real choices in this process?
- People become teachers because they enjoy working with youth or because their intellectuals of their domain
- Allocation of funds in school systems. What do we do when resource allocation is driven by political agenda and greed?
- There’s a need for better school leaders, who have had experience in the classroom, who listen to teachers in their schools.
- Trusted advisors in the school systems is key for student support and development beyond high school. When a trusted teacher or leader cares about a student and can tell them the reality they face in pursuing their ambitions, that can make a world of a difference. If they can help model conflict resolution, that’s even better.
- What is the value prop of the diploma? Does innovation in schools on the coasts really cover the problems faced by the challenges of schools in middle America?
- Systemic failures — how do we nurture curiosity and continue to innovate in the face of so many environmental challenges (e.g., gang violence, student safety, over/under policing in schools, student hunger, raising siblings). It’s tough to innovate and build solutions for education when a lot of the issues are tied to systemic issues related to poverty and safety.
- Comparison of high school transformation to Amazon Go and the need for sidewalks. List of twelve reasons why sidewalks are a game changer in student outcomes starting with obvious reasons like not getting hit by a bus, but then very quickly become specific and real to the likelihood of a student taking a wrong turn in an unfamiliar and potentially risky area.
- Teacher labor markets — geared towards keeping high quality teachers and removing poor quality teachers.
- Should we be talking about removing democratic control of an entire school system? Allocation of funds are dictated by board members and school leaders, and their motivations are to serve the interest of the broad community. This is a feature and not a bug of the system.
- A need to be very real and transparent about career opportunities and life beyond high school. Great example shared about students wanting to become NFL players, which statistically speaking, is quite low. How do we support student ambitions, prepare them for the real world and giving them skills to have options later on? This connects to the value proposition of school — if students/parents/communities believed that school was actually interesting and cool, the downstream effect would be that students can uncover the number of possibilities for their futures
- High school students feel so connected to Gary V because he teaches in a way that starts with self-awareness, social-emotional skills, personal goal setting, happiness, optimism, which is SO attractive to young people because school doesn’t do that.
- Need a balance between meeting students where they are (via social media platforms) and using it as a place to capture student interest versus completely innovating in isolation outside of those forces. (e.g., encouraging use of social media in student-led projects to teach responsibility)
Procedures
- Each Advisor receives two red dots to vote on the most pressing problems, doing so silently
- Facilitator moves the top 3 problems/challenges based on the number of votes to the middle of the easel
Notes:
- If there is a tie-breaker, Advisors will vote for the top problem/challenge by using their hand
Timer [standing]
Materials
- AV for Note-taker to share Notion on screen
- Post-its (plain rectangular)
- Rolling easel
- Virtual and physical timer
- ÂĽ inch dot stickers (round and red color)
Outcomes
- Advisors vote
- Top 3 problems/challenges are identified
FACILITATOR AND NOTE-TAKER GUIDELINES Total time available: 5 min Facilitator reminds Advisors to vote silently
Can systemic failures be grouped with innovation constraints at scale?
Does teacher pay and teacher/student ratio fall under the same category? Decision to keep separate.
Learning experiences are not authentic and relevant for students can be connected to student empowerment.
Trusted adults in schools is connected with environmental factors, school safety, and surveillance.
Can a focus for urban schooling constraints be an additional theme? There becomes a risk of being too specific here. It’s likely when you focus on just “urban schooling” it will end up touching upon all of the themes, thus being insufficiently specific to design for.
Student empowerment ties into the idea of refocusing student attention.
PD is extremely broad in that it can touch on specific domain areas, student safety, different learning sciences, etc.
How do we design things that still get at great UX design and intuitive interactions without creating too much noise and cognitive overload?
Short-term value of using AI is to potentially use it as a tool to detect student interest (e.g., youtube search history). Acknowledged that there are ethical concerns here.
Every learning experience gets at teaching how to do something, but should also help students understand who they are.
Aligning the engines of scale with the engines of innovation.
Top key themes:
- How do we develop learning experiences that students care about?
- How do we rightly steward the attention of students?
- How do we make high school innovation more attractive to districts (scale)?
Procedure
- The top 3 problems/challenges are rephrased by the original author outloud to the Team. The team works to reframe the problem into a "How might we...?" statement.
Example:
Problem: “We have no means of measuring the efficacy of these AI tools my students are using."
Reframed: "How might we create means of measurement and efficacy of AI products?"
Timer [standing]
Materials
- AV for Note-taker to share Notion on screen
- Post-its (plain rectangular)
- Rolling easel
- Virtual and physical timer
Outcomes
- There are 3 “How might we…” statements and they are captured in the Team Notes section
FACILITATOR AND NOTE-TAKER GUIDELINES Total time available: 5 min Note-taker captures the “How might we...” statements
- HMW develop “standards” aligned learning experiences that are relevant to students? Naming here that the group decided this could mean standards in a traditional sense or newly created ones. Concerns raised that adoption of new competencies is still fairly new and emerging.
- If we can throw out the standards, it’s possible we can create a marketing funnel to pull people away from a system that’s not working for them.
- Should we trust that innovative schools will invent such great learning experiences that people will adopt them without traditional standard alignment and then the system will catch up?
- Interesting note about parent involvement in creating new standards and current disconnect and awareness of today’s traditional standards
- Market growth constraints — just because a learning experience is great doesn’t mean that drives adoption. If learning experiences do meet standards, its more likely they will be adopted by choice. Coincidentally, if you can create great learning experiences, students may not know or care if you’re actually meeting some state requirement.
- Experience mentioned building schools without school boards and academic standards tied to successful student outcomes.
- HMW take the cultural artifacts that matter to kids and use them as an engine for intellectual engagement?
- How do we save kids from the platforms that have been selling their attention with much greater efficacy than schools have been in building their ability to even attend? Can we motivate the system to gauge potential consolidation?
- HMW rightly steward the attention of students?
- HMW keep student motivation at the forefront of designing tools? There’s a real concern that consequentially AI does perpetuate and feed the systems that steal student attention if AI is replacing foundational moments of intellectual growth.
- Revisited the idea that AI needs to be introduced with students in a different way if they don’t yet have the judgment or skills.
- HMW scale innovative high schools? Does this overlap into the learning experiences theme?
- HMW decrease the school scale model size? HMW adjust how schools are authorized, funded, and operated? Micro-school model versus district model? Ensure that micro-schooling doesn’t destroy identity. Tough to balance scaling even innovative schools because we need to take a closer look at what’s still propelling that school to succeed, and if it’s via just another form of governance.
Procedure
- Brainstorm. Allowing 5 mins for each of the top problems/challenges, each Advisor writes down as many solutions they have for the specific problem/challenge
- The format for Solutions on a Post-it should be no more than 3 sentences, which sounds similar to an “elevator pitch”
- Given the current landscape of companies and AI products, hold space for how technology may play a role in each solution Post-it
- Example solution: “Build the most dynamic curriculum on becoming an Entrepreneur; using AI co-pilot trained on insights from world-famous business leaders.”
- This process will be repeated for the problem/challenge, totaling 15 mins
- Shareout. Each Advisor selects up to 2 solutions to share with the Team, spending 1:30 min max per advisor on sharing solutions (~30 secs on each solution). Limit to three sentences “elevator pitch.”
- Sorting. After each Advisor shares, Facilitator takes all solution Post-its from the Advisor and attaches them to the rolling easel. Team reads all solutions and [if applicable] Team supports in sorting common solutions under each problem/challenge
Timer [seated]
Materials
- AV for Note-taker to share Notion on screen
- Post-its (plain blue rectangular)
- Sharpies (writing material)
- Rolling easel
- Personal mat to place Post-its
- Virtual and physical timer
Outcomes
- All solutions are sorted and presented under each of the top 3 problems/challenges
FACILITATOR AND NOTE-TAKER GUIDELINES Reminders Facilitator should: - Encourage as many solutions to be written. No pressure on “over” designing - Reminder others to respect the time constraint and to listen to the shared problems/challenges - Track the time for each Advisor - Collect the Post-its from each Advisor Note-taker should: Summarize each Advisor’s conversation on the solutions
- Today there exists a national system of labs for physics and other sciences. Can we have a new national system of lab schools where people incubate new tools, content, materials — needs to be open source research that’s accessible to all
- Identify funds and knowledge of communities with students to integrate them into creating learning experiences/curriculum. How do we leverage community knowledge to inform curriculum design?
- As a student, if I pass a test and gain credit for it, can the creators/makers of the learning experience be paid for that? Will that help stimulate a market for better learning experiences?
- To create more grass roots thinking in communities, can there be community hackathons with students at the forefront so help stimulate an entrepreneurial community of innovators.
- TFA has service core — can we have domain experts from universities partner with university presses to make tools and materials.
- Can the structure of learning experience be reversed? Should learning experiences just be started, created and completed within the walls of school. How can we encourage this type of learning to go beyond the school context? Is there an opportunity to create a blue apron like service as a method of distribution? Could this be similar to the supreme store or the way Nike builds sneakers?
- AI tutor to document knowledge students accumulated knowledge (your scribe rather than your co-pilot) and then gives feedback on student ideas as an after thought to allow for foundational learning
- Can AI tools help mimic or extend social connection rather than take away from it? For example, fornite is a piece of software in a virtual world that stimulates this universe with others. Should XQ only fund things that are facilitating social connection between student-to-student or teacher-to-student rather than individualized learning experiences.
- How do we change the output of what AI does to help students? How can we use AI to just give topical information instead of answers about the activities?
- Adaptive AI challenge creator — if AI can adapt to your baseline measurement and then progresses as a student progresses, it could help present challenges rather than answers. Choose your own adventure. AI tools to help students curate and be the drivers of the tool
- Build accessible technical solutions (APIs for school systems) that come out of innovative schools. There’s a need to fit into and talk to larger systems. How do we not build siloed and closed model tools?
- Potential opportunities for scaling change happen because…
- You’re a beacon of good practice and professional norms exist so best practices disseminate good practice
- There’s natural competition created for high quality best practice schooling to compete with low quality schooling, which forces low quality schools to adapt
- Embedded measures for innovative schools on reporting against traditional measures
Procedure
- Each Advisor receives 5 red dots to vote on the most appealing solutions, doing so silently
Notes:
- If there is a tie-breaker, Advisors will vote for the top problem/challenge by using their hand
- Only 1 vote per solution
Timer [standing]
Materials
- AV for Note-taker to share Notion on screen
- Post-its (plain rectangular)
- Rolling easel
- Virtual and physical timer
- ÂĽ inch dot stickers (round and red color)
Outcomes
- At least 3 solutions are identified via votes
FACILITATOR AND NOTE-TAKER GUIDELINES Total time available: 5 min
Procedures
- Facilitator selects at least 3 and at most 5 of the most voted-on solutions and moves them to the top of the matrix side of the easel
- Advisors discuss each of the solutions to determine the feasibility and place the solution on the “Effort vs. Impact” matrix
- Vertical axis: level of impact of the solution
- Horizontal axis: level of effort required to create the solution
- Each Advisor receives 1 green dot to vote on the most appealing solution from the matrix, doing so silently
- By the end of this session, the team has landed on one idea to build a roadmap for.
Notes:
- The objective of this exercise is to gather consensus, if not a majority, on where to place each solution on the matrix
Timer [standing]
Materials
- AV for Note-taker to share Notion on screen
- Rolling easel
- Virtual and physical timer
- ÂĽ inch dot stickers (round and green color)
Outcomes
- Top solutions are on the effort vs. impact matrix with their votes
FACILITATOR AND NOTE-TAKER GUIDELINES Total time available: 20 min - Placing solutions on matrix: 15 mins - Vote on matrix: 5 mins
Procedures
- The facilitator rolls the Team’s easel to the general area for viewing.
Side 1: Problems/challenges & solutions
- Grouped problems/challenges
- Voted on top 3 problems/challenges
- All possible solutions under each of the Top 3 problems/challenges
Side 2: Mapped matrix
- Quadrant with at least the top 3 solutions plotted based on effort vs. impact
Timer [walk]
Materials
- Rolling easel
- General area for a break
- Coffee, tea, biscuits break
Outcomes
- Advisors have scanned the problems/challenges, solutions, and mapped matrices from the other Teams
FACILITATOR AND NOTE-TAKER GUIDELINES Total time available: 15 min Facilitator should guide the Team back to workspaces Note-takers should take a photo of all easels
Green team! Now go Build your Final Team Reports!
