Sophia.org – A Collaborative Learning Environment –“Teach What You Know, Learn What You Dont”
October 6, 2011
Project Part A – EdPA 5501
Procedures Used to Collect Information: Most of this information was gathered from the Sophia.org website as well as from a one hour meeting with Dr. Angie Eilers, the Vice-President for Academic Outcomes for Sophia.org. Additional information was obtained from listening to recorded interviews of Don Smithmier, founder and CEO of Sophia.org, as well as a number of press releases.
Program Rationale/Philosophy: Sophia.org emphasizes the need to instruct students taking into consideration students’ different learning modalities. Unlike previous generations, today’s youth have grown up in a more interrelated and interconnected world, having access to personal computers, mobile phones, and the Internet. Today’s “digital natives” are used to consuming, and sometimes producing, different types of media. Some of them prefer to learn through the use of audio visuals. As technology plays a greater role in society, students stand to benefit greatly from learning how to use technology effectively. By harnessing the improvements of information and communications technologies (ICTs) in recent years, such as the increased access to broadband Internet signals, individuals are now able to access quantities of information that were previously only available to individuals who lived near a library or another information repository.
Today, information is everywhere and, as such, appropriately setting and using filters is pivotal for reducing information overflow. Sophia.org aims to both harness the potential of the Internet for increasing connectivity and social learning, while at the same time developing a Learning Management System (LMS), a learning taxonomy, and an educational resource ranking system that permits users to sort resources according to their topic and quality. As access to information becomes more prevalent, the adequate classification and application of educational resources becomes increasingly relevant for harnessing the potential of the Internet in transforming education.
To ensure a high level of quality in their educational resources, the site believes in the importance of specializing in the development of educational packages. Sophia.org does not intend to be the place where a person can learn about any subject. Instead, it does encourage the publication of similar resources that explain or illustrate an educational topic in different ways by different instructors. A different instructor may contextualize a lesson in an alternative way that may be more appealing to a particular student or may be helpful for another instructor when searching for finding ideas to improve their own lessons. The social environment and exchange of multimedia files available through social digital networks represent new opportunities that education is now able to harness through technology.
Program Goals/Objectives/Outcomes: One of the long term goals of Sophia.org is to reduce the achievement gap by improving access to, and the quality of, education. To accomplish this goal, Sophia.org provides teachers or experts with an environment through which they can share their knowledge and experience with the Sophia.org community using either a PowerPoint presentation, a video, text and images or an audio file. The site also provides an organizational framework to facilitate the development of learning packets. A growth in the development of learning packets, the increased grouping of packets in collections, and the increased development of topic oriented user groups through its LMS are some of Sophia.org’s most quantifiable goals. Along with the desire to increase the number of resources accessible through the site, another of Sophia.org’s major aims is for individuals to increasingly use the site. Sophia.org tracks changes in all of these variables through its use of site analytics. A visitor to Sophia.org can easily browse through different resources and find out the number of visitors and followers every resource has obtained. Site analytics also provide Sophia.org with the demographics of the individuals that visit the site. This is important for its goal to increase the diversity of users over time.
Attempting to develop a vibrant culture in the organization, Sophia.org hopes to become a major player in ICT for education, and become one of the top educational websites. Sophia.org aims to be one of the major players in terms of personalized online education multimedia repositories. Unlike other fields in which there is a clear industry leader, no clear front runner has solidified its position within this category on the Internet. Because of the diversity and volatility of website businesses, while Sophia.org is growing at a rapid rate it is difficult to assess which companies will grow to account for a larger share of this market in the future.
To improve the quality of education, anyone who opens an account in Sophia.org can develop a learning packet and classify it according to Sophia’s educational taxonomy. After a packet is completed, individuals who access it are able to rate the packet from 1 to 5 in terms of quality. In addition, the package may also be evaluated by topic field experts to receive an “academically sound” badge. To increase a sense of community Sophia.org encourages members to invite their friends, and comment on other users’ videos and profiles. Users are encouraged to develop their profiles and receive badges for completing tasks within Sophia.org (Community Organizer, Aced Packet, Class President, Librarian, among many others). Tutorials have also been developed to guide the packet producer through the different stages of creating an educational packet. In addition, to encourage both the participation of producers and improvements in the quality of resources, individuals are able to decide whether or not to share their educational packet under a creative common license (CClicenses), and users are also reminded that the packets they develop will remain their independent intellectual property, even if they decide to remove it from the website and to no longer belong to Sophia.org. Sophia.org is currently focused on improving the user community by increasing its size and making changes according to community’s feedback. In a co-constructive fashion, Sophia.org developed a number of features that it hopes will be helpful for community members, yet it intends to continuously improve and modify its features based on community comments and requests. Over time, through suggestions and increased recognition for the transformative impact of its innovation on the online education landscape, Sophia.org hopes to encourage a macro-change for the broader educational sector, harnessing the new possibilities brought by modern ICTs.
Setting: Sophia.org’s central office is based in located in Minneapolis, Minnesota yet their community is everywhere. Sophia.org is available to anyone in the world with access to the Internet. Sophia.org is currently not accessible in other languages aside from English, therefore limiting its current possible global impact. Being a globally accessible website, contributors to Sophia.org can be living anywhere in the world, and currently a considerable percentage of them live outside of Minnesota. As it is still in project in beta development, most of its users live in the Twin-Cities greater city. While Sophia.org is a beta project, it is common for Internet start ups to stay in a “beta” stage for years, despite being fully functional and active. Because of this, evaluating them in the beta stage is not only acceptable but could be highly beneficial.
Resources at Sophia.org are developed for students of any age. These resources are of different quality levels, and they use different types of media to teach different topics. The educational packets are classified using a complex taxonomy which includes: applied sciences, English/literature, humanities, learning strategies, mathematics, sciences, social and behavioral sciences, visual and performing arts, world languages. Within every one of these categories there are many sub-categories. For example, humanities includes: history, philosophy, and religion or sciences includes: biology, chemistry, earth sciences, physics, and space sciences. There are currently 9295 resources within Sophia.org (October 5, 2011). Since anyone can develop a resource, the setting of Sophia is both Minneapolis and everywhere.
Sophia.org Staff: While anyone can collaborate in the growth of Sophia.org, the website itself is hosted, and administered by a small number of individuals.
– Don Smithmier – Founder and Chief Executive Officer: Don Smithmier worked 14 years for Capella University, eventually rising to the job of Vice President. Capella was the first fully online accredited university (NSDQ:CPLA). During his years at Capella Smithmier was involved in marketing, business and technology leadership roles. He was the founder of Matter Worldwide, GoKartLabs, Rumble, and Sophia.org.
– Steve Anastasi – Chief Operating Officer: With over 25 years of experience as a software industry executive, Steve Anastasi joined the company in 2009 to help develop the Sophia platform. He is the head of the engineering and operations teams. He previously helped to develop various web applications including Best Buy’s e-commerce platform.
– Allison Gage – Senior Vice President, Business Development: Allison Gage is responsible for business development, market research, client services, and product strategy. Having arrived in the United States in first grade, she is interested in increasing students’ access to the tools that will help them realize their objectives. She was previously the Executive Vice President with Living Independently Group which she helped to grow nearly 600 percent in sales.
– Dr. Angie Eilers – Vice President, Academic Outcomes: With over 20 years of working in the field of education, Dr. Angie Eilers has observed the impact of technological changes on education and the capabilities of the Internet to extend and improve learning. Dr. Eilers is responsible for overseeing Sophia’s academic content to ensure its standards and integrity. Dr. Eilers’ research has focused on policy implementation and effectiveness, and educational reform.
– George Tattersfield -Vice President, Program Management: George Tattersfield has worked for over 30 years of experience with education and technology across the world. George was the co-founder of Guaranteach.com, an online adaptive learning company that was acquired by Sophia.org in May 2011. George works in the customization of Sophia.org and Sophia Pathways to meet the needs of teachers and students from different partner institutions.
Program Participants: The participants in Sophia.org include both volunteer instructors and students. Encouraging students and other community members to interact with the different educational packet producers, Sophia.org hopes to foster the improvement of resources over time. The importance of feedback is not only relevant for the larger organization, but also for the educational packet contributors and the students. After an educational packet is published, the author can obtain feedback from students and use it if they wish to upgrade the educational packet. The community hopes to increase the quality of the packages over time. Students and instructors can both create “collections” to further personalize learning for themselves or a group of students. By creating “collections” individuals can create a sequence of packets that can then be used to illustrate a point during a class module or help a student follow a sequence of activities during a week, a month, or a semester. Over time as the student spends more of his or her time in the community; he may encourage his friends, other students or educators to join the site. That student may also eventually consider developing his or her own educational packets for the rest of the community to use. Packet developers are also encouraged to borrow from other packets that have been created under an open license such as CC and its derivatives. To summarise, a Sophia.org participant is anyone who visits the website and uses the resources for whatever educational purpose suits them. Currently there are 7029 registered users, however, without a statistical analysis and access to the site analytics, it is difficult to gauge how many users are active. Also, individuals who are only visiting the site to use a resource are not currently required to register and would not be included in the total number of registered users.
Instructors: A person does not need to be an official expert to develop a Sophia.org educational packet, rather Sophia.org hopes that the best packets will gradually rise to the top of their search engine as a result of resource ratings.
Students: Students of any age are encouraged to visit and learn from using the resources located on Sophia.org. A resource can be recommended for a particular audience, (middle school, high school, college or post-graduate).
Reviewers: A registered member is encouraged to review others’ resources. To do so, a reviewer must specify his or her area of expertise in the different areas of study previously mentioned (humanities: history, religion, etc… or mathematics: calculus, statistics, etc…). A reviewer must select the fields he has experience in and describe the type of experience they have. They must also accept that they understand the importance and responsibility of being an academic reviewer.
Organization/Structure/Administration: While Sophia.org is an open learning environment where everyone can contribute, Sophia.org is not a wiki. By having closed packets instead of open collaborative packets the author can retain rights over his/her intellectual property. By having packets made by single individuals, a packet is not aiming to become the definitive source of the most comprehensive information, instead they are just one way of explaining a particular academic subject. Sophia encourages different resources to be created that teach the same subject but contextualize it in different ways. This individualization of resources could allow for the development of brand names or for the resources of one particular instructor to be followed by students. Students could potentially find their favorite instructor. A student could eventually develop a short list of instructors that best align with that student’s learning modality.
Sophia.org has a non-advertising structure. Because of this, unlike YouTube EDU, a contributor or an instructor is currently unable to benefit financially for having more students use or view his/her resources. However, since Sophia.org is currently in a beta stage, it is likely that some of these positions may change over time. At the heart of Sophia.org is an innovative leadership that challenges the status quo, promoting innovation to find the best ways in which technology can improve education and, by doing so, improve society.
Sophia.org Activities and Events: Learning in Sophia.org is asynchronous as learners are able to listen to a video and an explanation when it is most suitable for them. Feedback and its response are also asynchronous. The main activities which Sophia.org members are engaged in are the use of educational packets, and the creation of new educational packets. However, because these packets are openly available, the way in which they are used can vary substantially. These packets can be used by any learner during any time of the year. A teacher could create a collection of packets or provide a link for students to use particular resources. Students could also be assigned to create packets. Packets could be used by teachers to improve their lesson plans by adding additional exciting activities. Packets could also be useful for home schooled children. Since they can be accessed any time of the day, they can be used by students who are trying to review for an exam, or to better understand an equation before completing the science homework, among many other activities. These activities are not directly organized by Sophia.org, but are rather a repercussion of its open online environment.
Budget: As a non-profit, Sophia.org does not benefit from advertising revenues generated by its popularity and its number of visitors. Sophia.org is concerned about its financial sustainability but other successful websites have found ways to finance themselves through the sale of advertisements or the marketing of premium features. Sophia.org uses its own servers to store the educational packets. Sophia.org currently offers two for profit initiatives including access to thousands of math videos that were obtained from the acquisition of Gauranteach.com as well the use of its automated and personalized learning assessment software. Sophia.org is also marketing their platform for companies and educational institutions that wish to use it as their LMS. As a beta project, the income they currently generate through these ventures is currently marginal. As with other education related technology start-ups, Sophia.org is currently working towards securing their financial sustainability and future growth, because of this, the non-profit element of Sophia.org currently depends on grant funding. (All the following figures are estimates) Personnel costs account for most of Sophia.org budget, with over 250,000 dollars in yearly wages spent between its top five administrators and other employees. The servers and their maintenance have a yearly cost of 30,000 dollars. The rental space, which is shared with other Don Smithmier companies, costs 15,000 dollars a year. Another 15,000 dollars are spent in advertising. The overall estimated operation cost of Sophia.org is 310,000 dollars a year.
