"All you have to do is....R-U-N ! ! !"

I've heard it before. And the results were the same. In the education space companies make interesting technology, products or services that often require customers -- usually teachers -- to do something to fit the new thing into day-to-day operations. The story goes "All you have to do to use our new product is ____" (fill in the blank with things such enter students into the system, create questions, have students write things and post them into the computer, etc.).

The problem is that what you might think is a rather trivial number of steps to get the tremendous benefits of your product, may be something the typical user is just not willing (or capable given time, money and other resource constraints) to do.

Refer to the other blog post about giving away your product with the hope of winning over supporters and reference accounts. Users may be unwilling to do required steps whether the product is bought or free. It's best if you can anticipate the steps and eliminate them.

The Horrors Faced By the Little Shop (and Mega Store)

You know the story -- In You've Got Mail. The "Little Bookshop Around the Corner" is threatened by the Mega Bookstore. We see this today with tutoring. The respected guy or gal tutor around the corner competes with the larger tutoring center. And just as the Mega Bookstore is threatened today by the Internet Superstore -- a store without walls or limits -- the respected tutoring center seems threatened by online tutors. Online tutoring can come with all-you-can-eat fixed pricing, 24 by 7 access, no driving and a richer learning experience. Can the Mega Bookstore compete? Can the tutoring center compete?

I was intrigued by this article: Barnes and Noble...

How is Barnes and Noble competing in this era of online ordering, reviews and tips, low prices, fast shipping and social networking? B and N says it is using its physical locations and face to face customer interaction in the stores to educate and sell their own ebook device. They say they expect to capture over 25% of the market for eBooks, eTextbooks and Digital Newsstand by 2013, projecting over $1 billion in digital revenue by that time.

Can brick and mortar tutoring centers leverage their local presence to compete? Can they reinvent themselves and find new revenue sources and opportunities and not go the way of the little shop around the corner?

I give it away and like love, it's going to come back!

Several clients have tried an age-old strategy...but, sadly, one that doesn't work! They have given a few customers -- in this case, school districts -- free products and services in the hopes it will build overall awareness, produce outstanding "braggable" results, and compel sales from other customers.

The reason this doesn't usually work in the education space is too often these freebies go to (and are part of a deal with) the people who recommend, approve or buy products, but not to the people you need to make the trial a success. In education, you have BUYERS who make decisions and spend money on things and USERS who need to implement these things successfully in the classroom. Just because a principal or superintendent has decided to buy or accept a free product, it doesn't mean a teacher will want to use it, know how, or figure out how to incorporate the product in the typical school day.

If you give the product to the USER (e.g. teacher) and he or she is hot-to-trot to use it and knows how, you have a better than even chance something will come out of the trial. But then your user needs clear instructions and guidance to make it work. Results tend to be spotty at best and you lose a lot of time running studies and watching some teachers do things right and others barely trying to use the product.

ONE EXCEPTION! I happened upon a strategy which put the free trial in the category of a controversial but successful television event -- one that showcased the product in front of over 3,000,000 people as the solution to a large bi-partisan problem. With good positioning, credibility and timing, this produced startling measurable results.

Contact me at john@edumetrix.com and I'll be happy to discuss this example.

Face-to-face vs. Online Tutoring: A Rose Is A Rose

I recently presented at the Education Industry Investment Forum in Phoenix on the challenges and opportunities of online tutoring. An audience member asked if online tutoring is as effective as face-to-face tutoring. Jim Hermens, president of Educate Online (formerly eSylvan/Sylvan Online), said that Educate had determine that online tutoring was as effective as face-to-face as measured by post- vs. pre-test gains on standardized tests. I can vouch for that as I conducted the three year effectiveness study 1999-2002 at Sylvan Learning Centers (now Educate) which looked at the gains of over 500,000 students who took Sylvan center-based (face-to-face) tutoring in reading and math vs. online tutoring.

The good news is that online tutoring is as effective as face-to-face and the better news is that online tutoring is more convenient, flexible and affordable than face-to-face tutoring. It’s not surprising that online tutoring should be equally as effective when both face-to-face and online tutoring are conducted using the same instructional model.

Our goal now is to push the online environment further to go beyond what was possible in a face-to-face world. Rather than be tethered to books, worksheets and static problems, online tutoring makes it possible for students to use engaging electronic/eLearning tools such as simulations, animations, videos and virtual experiments. Soon we hope to demonstrate conclusively that online tutoring with its rich resources and tools is more effective than face-to-face tutoring.

Fix the Blame or Fix the Problem?

Elissa Gootmany in her NY Times article Passing Eighth Grade Gets a Little Harder describes how the Bloomberg administration won approval for a new policy that will not permit eighth graders to move to the next grade if they don’t have minimum basic skills in math and English. Parents were opposed to this new policy.

Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein defended the policy – “In the end, passing kids through the system without making sure they’re ready for the next grade level is not a formula for success,” he said. “Our job is not to move a kid out of middle school; our job is to move a kid from middle school to high school, prepared for high school.”

Four years ago the Mayor announced tougher new promotion criteria for the third grade to end social promotion (moving a child from grade to grade with his or her peers regardless of their mastery of the current grade’s material or readiness for the next). That and subsequent policies for fifth and seventh graders resulted in fewer students being held back than before. Some students took and passed summer school.

Opponents of tougher policies claim that tougher hold-back policies is can frustrate and embarrass students so they more likely to drop out. Some parents believe this might be especially true for eighth graders who are not allowed to advance to high school. Others suggest that some students need the extra year to master the appropriate material.

We’re all into blame these days, aren’t we? The kids don’t know their stuff so who should we blame…the teachers? The administrators? How about we fix the problem and not the blame. Educators believe all kids can learn. What this policy rightfully proposes is that it can take some students longer to learn things than other students and they should be given that chance before moving on to the next grade where they are unprepared and start off the year behind and frustrated.

Dr. John Stuppy, john@tutorvista.com

Neither Rain, Nor Snow, Nor Ship Anchor…

You know the tale. A butterfly flaps its wings in China and it affects political events in the USA. We are definitely part of a global economy. Events there affect us here. In the article “Internet outage in Mideast, Asia felt in NJ” by Kelly Heyboer inThe Star-Ledger (http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2008/01/internet_outage_in_mideast_asi.html) it describes how a ship’s anchor dragging across the sea floor damaged two underwater cables carrying vital internet traffic to parts of Bangladesh, Pakistan, Egypt, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Bahrain.

The Internet disruption affected the Dubai stock exchange and posed a challenge for companies in India that rely on internet connectivity. At TutorVista we noticed it right away. On any given day, a particular tutor’s internet, power or computer can be down. You know how it is when you have a power failure or your cable TV connection is down because of a storm. These things can happen.

If we don’t see a tutor in place and ready to go shortly before they are scheduled to do a tutoring session, we automatically activate an alternate tutor so the session goes off without a hitch. It’s part of the redundancies we build into our business. What else do we do? Our tutors come from 23 major cities across India and a half dozen other countries so a storm or other problem affecting one city or a group doesn’t affect all our tutors. We can easily transfer traffic from tutors in Mumbai, for example, to ones in the Philippines.

We’re definitely part of a connected, global supply chain. Things that happen in one part of the world do affect people in another. But this isn’t a new concept. We know that freezing weather in Florida can affect orange juice prices and availability across the US. I remember years ago when there was a peanut butter shortage for some reason.

We are one week into this internet disruption from the anchor. We continue to reassign tutoring sessions to tutors with good connectivity out of our vast workforce. But that’s consistent really with the power and design of the internet in the first place. There’s a zillion paths an internet packet or message can take. Disruptions and roadblocks along the way are a fact of life and the beauty of the internet is it’s designed to deal with that.

Today it’s a boat anchor. Tomorrow it might be a storm, a strike…who knows. But just like the mailman’s creed, “Neither rain, nor snow, nor dark of night shall keep me from my appointed rounds” the tutoring will happen!

Dr. John Stuppy, john@tutorvista.com

Doing Something Different

In her article “The Call for Epochal Leadership” in Business Week, Shoshana Zuboff, retired professor of the Harvard Business School, describes how it takes new, industry-shifting leaders to enlighten and inspire us to adopt new beliefs and ways of looking at and doing things. Those new ways open up incredible possibilities. She mentioned that education is an area where consumers want to experience – need to experience – a new kind of renaissance or redefinition of how things are done, what they should cost, and where you get them.

To set the stage for this kind of transformation, Zuboff cites the example of the iPod and iTunes and the impact they had on the mass consumption of music….how they redefined a new model that completely shifts the relationship each of us has with music as a result.

In education, we at TutorVista.com have embarked on a journey to redefine where and how education services are delivered, and how much they should cost. Just like the Model T challenged notions of how vehicles should be made and that in turn led to a radical fractioning of the price resulting in affordable transportation for the masses, TutorVista believes that if you use technology to connect experienced, passionate tutors from around the world with students who need them, we can deliver better quality education, personalized service and convenience at a mass market price. Students talk naturally to a tutor a half-a-world away and write, draw and work on a shared virtual whiteboard – a kind of electronic piece of paper student and tutor share. We can provide unlimited tutoring, homework help, remediation and quiz preparation for a low, fixed price. This fundamentally changes education. It’s now more personal, available, accessible, convenient, affordable and timely.

But it isn’t enough that the light has been shined on a powerfully enabling global system of new possibilities. There are old, entrenched systems in place that are out to assert the status quo at every turn and undermine innovation and a more efficient new order. Look at supplemental education services. Instead of encouraging new models that will bring more and better help to students where and when they need it most, rules designed to ensure the same people are the only ones in the game doing the same things they always have serve to stifle innovation and lash us to the mast of the past, long after that ship has sunk.

It’s essential we break the molds that doom us to the ways of the past. Repeating that past isn’t going to do us any good. We need to do something different!

Dr. John Stuppy, john@tutorvista.com