ABOUT PROF. ELLIOT SOLOWAY:
Elliot Soloway is an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor, in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, College of Engineering, at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI. In 2001, the UMich undergraduates selected him to receive the “Golden Apple Award” as the Outstanding Teacher of the Year at the University of Michigan. In 2004 and in 2011, students in the College of Engineering HKN Honor Society selected Dr. Soloway to receive the “Distinguished Teacher of the Year Award.”
40 years ago as an artificial intelligence researcher, Dr. Elliot Soloway was drawn to the challenge of how to make computers learn. But, after the birth of his first child, he had an epiphany: Making children smarter would be a much better use of his time than making computers smarter. This inspired him to stop doing AI research altogether and start working on educational technology. But as a college professor with little experience in education technology, he needed someone who really understood K-12.
Dr. Cathie Norris, a math and Spanish teacher for 14+ years was the ideal partner. In the days when technology was just taking off in the classroom, the duo founded a company to give teachers mobile learning tools. However, they quickly learned that tools are not enough—teachers need curricula that can guide them in effectively using the tech tools with their students.
RESOURCES:
U-M Center for Digital Curricula
"Digital-learning platform improves reading growth by 9 percentile points, bridging learning gaps"
TRANSCRIPTION:
Caroline MacGregor: I'm speaking today with Professor Elliot Soloway. He's the co-director of U of M's Center for Digital Curricula, where the digital learning platform roadmaps was first developed. Thank you for joining me today, Professor!
Prof. Elliot Soloway: My pleasure! Absolutely! Thank you!
Caroline MacGregor: If you would tell me about this platform, how it came about and who designed it.
Prof. Elliot Soloway: Absolutely! The kids today in school are called the Alpha Generation. They're the digital first--the screen first generation. For better or for worse, one can make all kinds of interesting arguments, but that's what the kids are expecting. You hand them a piece of paper and a pencil. They kind of look at you like, "Well, what am I supposed to do with this?" So, the Roadmaps are colorful. They're graphical. They're interactive. It's a visual map. And the kids click on a node. It opens up. They do an activity--a learning activity. They go to the next node. They do a learning activity. The kids are engaged. Again, you could argue that they shouldn't be doing this, but they come to school with an expectation. And what we found was when you put the curriculum in a format like Roadmaps, which is colorful and engaging and collaborative and interactive, their growth in reading went up 9%. I mean, that was huge in one year to get that kind of performance out of the children and especially in the community. In the Ypsilanti community, it's a low SES community, there's all kinds of challenges these kids have, and it's wonderful to see. While the nation's report card, NATE, was going down in reading, Ypsilanti is going up!
Caroline MacGregor: This is such good news! Tell me about what the platform involves and how it engages children, if you would.
Prof. Elliot Soloway: Certainly! Kids today in classrooms have what's typically called a Chromebook, a laptop computer. And so, it is a big screen. And on that colorful screen, they'll have literally squares, rectangles, triangles in big colors. There'll be pictures inside the nodes. And they'll click on a node, and it'll open up. And there'll be a learning activity, like read this paragraph and answer these questions. Turn and talk to your neighbor about this video that you just watched. Those are the kinds of learning activities that, yes, we used to do that on paper/pencil. But that's not what these kids find engaging. They will spend more time on the curriculum when it's in that format than they will if you just give them a piece of paper and a pencil. They enjoy it. They're smiling. They're laughing. They're enjoying themselves. And their test scores are improving.
Caroline MacGregor: So, they are able to actually interact with other students during this?
Prof. Elliot Soloway: Oh, absolutely!
Caroline MacGregor: Okay.
Prof. Elliot Soloway: Absolutely! And there literally is a turn and talk to your elbow partner. And they turn and talk and they engage and they work together on the same learning activity. They can do that too. And they love it! And if the child was at home with COVID or sick or a snow day, they talk through the computer to each other and they work together.
Caroline MacGregor: So, tell me a little bit more about how students actually access this platform.
Prof. Elliot Soloway: Yes. At the University of Michigan, I'm in the College of Engineering. And we built this platform in 2018, and we let it out during COVID in 2019/20, right, and what we found was that the teachers--we had a small number, about 500--who used the platform. During COVID, they had 100% attendance by the by the kids. When they closed the schools down, the kids just moved over to an online format and talked to their teacher and they all attended. Whereas with paper and pencil, the teachers were driving around and delivering curriculum to kids' houses. What an insane situation, right? And then, they got the Chromebooks, etc., etc., but it engages this Alpha Generation children. It's specifically designed for who they are and what they want to be. And we make it easy on the teacher. We can't break the teacher's backs on this. Oh my God, right! So, for the teacher, it's easy. They send it out to the kids. If they don't like something in the Roadmap lesson, they delete it and put something else in. It's really easy! So, what you find is teachers customizing the lessons and doing what's called differentiated instruction. You know, some children need it a little slower. Some children need more advanced work. teachers could tweak these Roadmaps, send them out to different kids, and they had a whole classroom doing different things that are appropriate to those kids. It's really personalized instruction.
Caroline MacGregor: And how many times a week do they actually use this platform or access it?
Prof. Elliot Soloway: Right. From the data, it's at least two, three times a week. They're doing, let's say, reading. They're doing math, etc.. So, 2 or 3 times a week. At least, they're using that platform. Probably, they're doing it every day, 4 or 5 times a week.
Caroline MacGregor: I'm speaking today with Professor Elliot Soloway. He's the co-director of U of M's Center for Digital Curricula, where the Roadmaps platform was developed. And we've just been talking about how this digital learning platform has improved reading growth by nine percentile points, bridging learning gaps. So, this digital learning platform appears to be, would you say, working better than conventional pen-and-paper lessons, or is that exaggerating a bit?
Prof. Elliot Soloway: I would like to say, based on the data, that, yes, this digital interactive platform--this colorful, engaging platform--is better for the children today than their paper and pencil correlates.
Caroline MacGregor: What did your study reveal about the actual reading skills of elementary school students where this platform is applied?
Prof. Elliot Soloway: We have to be careful here. The NWEA is the test that the children take. They take it at the beginning of the year, the middle of the year and the end of the year. And it looks at their growth--how much better are they at the reading. And so, it's a very specific kind of test normed across the country. This is a huge test! But when we look at what the children are doing behind the scenes with their curriculum, they're spending more time on task. And we know, in learning, if you spend more time on task and you're more engaged, you're going to do better.
Caroline MacGregor: Now, your study also showed--or this study showed--that when Ypsilanti Community Schools elementary students accessed their curriculum through the Roadmap learning platform on their laptops, their scores averaged quite high.
Prof. Elliot Soloway: The children who used what we call the Roadmap formatted curriculum scored 48%, which is about average for the country, okay? And the children who didn't use that who used the paper and pencil conventional curriculum scored 39. So, it was lower. And so, there was a nine percentile points difference. And that, for one year, is huge. Typically, they're getting 2-3% growth in a year. The classes--like 5 or 600 children--got a 9% growth in one year.
Caroline MacGregor: Those are pretty substantial figures of improvement!
Prof. Elliot Soloway: Yes. That's why we're so excited in that in a community that has all kinds of other things. They have truancy issues, right? There's all kinds of issues that go on. And, bingo, they're scoring high. And the rest of the country is going down in reading.
Caroline MacGregor: That brings me to my next point. Literacy levels continue to decline in this country. Why is that?
Prof. Elliot Soloway: Well, we did a little looking at some numbers, and it actually started way before COVID. And what we think it has to do with is that the amount of money given to schools didn't keep up with the inflation--so the teachers' salaries, the teacher support. And if you plot the kinds of money that was given to the schools versus their test scores, you're going to see in 2015/2016, that the scores are starting to come down. Again, before COVID.
Caroline MacGregor: The teaching environment today from all reports in this country has become very stressful for teachers. Therefore, it would seem that it's harder for kids to get as much attention as they need. And then, there's all these other distractions and the teachers responsible for so much more now than just teaching. Has that impacted the decline in the reading ability that we're seeing?
Prof. Elliot Soloway: I can't even tell you the stories we hear from the teachers about the children who are disturbed or who have challenges. So, it is. What you just said is absolutely right. But what we're seeing in the classrooms that use this Roadmap digital platform, the teachers work with the kids in small groups. So, the kids could be working independently. It's called self-regulated learning, SRL, or self-directed learning. And while those children are working by themselves, the teacher can work in small groups with the kids who need a little extra attention. And it's a much more harmonious classroom. Differentiated instruction, self-regulated learning, and then you worked in the small groups. The teachers work. It works!
Caroline MacGregor: And it appears that it's quite accessible too.
Prof. Elliot Soloway: Yes, yes. We have virtually 99% teacher retention. Once teachers start using Roadmaps, they don't give it up. So sometimes, the school district says, "Oh, you can't use that curriculum." Okay, okay. But if they can use it, they stick with it. That's incredible to get almost 99% teacher retention!
Caroline MacGregor: What does the future hold?
Prof. Elliot Soloway: The Roadmap platform is ahead. It is the next gen. It is what the kids in schools are needing. We're teaching Gen Alpha children with Gen-Z methods. And it doesn't work. It works for the Gen Z, but it's not working for the Gen Alphas. And I want to point out. 2025 is when the Gen Beta children are born. Can you imagine five years from now when these children are in kindergarten, what they're going to expect from school after their experiences over the next five years with the AI and the software and the interfaces. Schools are not prepared for the Gen Betas. We are helping them with the Gen Alphas, and it's working. With some energy, we can bring this platform to virtually all the elementary schools. That's where we're focused: K-5, pilot one schools in the state of Michigan. And we're talking to different school districts around the state. We need some support. Once the teachers see it, it's fascinating! When the teachers see this, in literally two minutes, they say, "Yep, that's it!" And they start. So, we just got to get in front of more people and show them what the future is.
Caroline MacGregor: Well, thank you so much for joining me today, Professor Soloway!
Prof. Elliot Soloway: Thank you very much! I appreciate it! Thank you!
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