Last week, Top Hat Monocle had the pleasure of hosting the “design thinking” station at the EdTech Meetup with our friends from Evernote! What is design thinking, and what does it have to do with education?

Design thinking is a human-centered approach to problem-solving, encouraging people to tackle the world’s messy problems with a collaborative, hands-on approach. Using its framework and the smorgasbord of tools associated with it, it cuts across disciplines and cohorts, proving effective for everyone from kindergartners to senior execs.

It offers a methodology for innovation, encouraging students from all fields to personalize, internalize and work through the process in order to uncover innovative solutions. The process is as follows:

1. Empathize: to create meaningful innovations, you need to know your users and care about their lives. Interview, observe and “dig deep.” Whether it’s spending a day as a kindergartner or going out and conducting field interviews, the idea is to really understand your audience.

2. Define: framing the problem is the only way to the right solution. Create an actionable, narrowly defined and meaningful problem statement.

3. Ideate: it’s not about coming up with the ‘right idea’, but rather generating a huge range of possibilities. Brainstorm, bodystorm, mindmap, sketch, you name it! Let your creativity run wild and embrace seemingly crazy ideas. The only rule is there are no rules in this stage.

4. Prototype: build to think and test to learn. Whether it’s a wall of post-its, a story board, a gadget or a role-playing activity, the idea is to start building, fail quickly and prototype rapidly.

5. Test: testing is an opportunity to learn about your solution and your users. Show, don’t tell and compare experiences and multiple prototypes.

Lather, rinse, repeat. Design thinkers are encouraged to go through as many cycles of this process as possible, each time uncovering new insights and even more innovative and unexpected solutions.

Then again, defining ‘design thinking‘ almost goes against its very essence, since it emphasizes a bias toward action, and the best way to learn what design thinking is all about is to get your hands dirty and try it firsthand! Which is exactly what we did.

We focused on the first step: empathy by walking attendees through the Gift-Giving Project. Students were paired up with total strangers and then were asked to interview one another about the last time their partner gave a gift. In cycling through the design thinking process, attendees came up with some crazy innovative solutions to real problems! Watch the video on how to facilitate the process here. Also, check out other cool activities specifically designed for the classroom here!

Design thinking actually shares a lot in common with the active learning approach to education that we care so much about here at Top Hat Monocle. Constant feedback, quick iterations, rapid prototyping & acting rather than passively ingesting material foster an environment that encourages taking some risks in learning and getting your hands dirty in the classroom.

Since the inception of Top Hat Monocle on University of Waterloo’s campus, we’ve prided ourselves on remaining incredibly professor-centric. In fact, most of the features on our platform today are based on professor feedback on features and tools they wished they had. Our 98% renewal rate among professors is testament to the fact that our tool makes instructors’ teaching more effective and is an easy way to inject active learning pedagogy into their courses.

But teachers are only half the equation. If students weren’t also feeling tremendous value-add, we wouldn’t be doing our jobs. Case studies have shown that using Top Hat Monocle increases grades by 5-7%, bolsters comprehension of complex concepts by 23% and boosts student engagement.

But what do students think? Do they actually like using Top Hat Monocle? According to a survey conducted at Middlebury, the answer seems to be a resounding “yes.”

Our mission is to leverage active learning pedagogy to make students more intrinsically motivated, which in turn increases student outcomes. Statistics on student outcomes are important, but ultimately they’re a byproduct of students feeling more confident with subject material and being able to have ownership over their classroom experiences.

As we’ve discussed before, one of the best things about working at Top Hat Monocle is meeting with and learning from the innovative professors who use our tool. This month, we were lucky enough to be invited to the beautiful and welcoming campus of University of Namibia’s School of Medicine to meet the professors who will be using our platform and help them utilize it to its max potential.

Our very own Dave was just the man for the job, as he globe trotted his way from Waterloo to Namibia for the 40th Annual Conference of the Anatomical Society. Once there, gave a presentation of Top Hat Monocle for professors from Namibia as well as other areas of Africa, Australia, The Netherlands and Finland. The professors, and even the Dean of the School of Medicine, were incredibly hands-on and very excited to be bringing the technology into the classrooms on the university’s campus in Windhoek. After seeing the demonstration and interacting with the product, they’re already thinking they’d like to expand the use of Top Hat into more of the faculty of medicine to include nursing, public health, etc. We’re excited to see Top Hat continue to spread to other institutions and countries around the world!

PS For extra credit, Dave got to go on a safari and proved his fearlessness, as he allowed  cheetahs to lick his hand!

You know what they say, “Where there’s heat, there’s funding.” This year’s Skysong Innovation Summit was testament to that. Of the 800 or so attendees (primarily education technologists, policymakers, thought leaders and VCs) who descended upon the Arizona conference, deals, introductions and innovation were in the desert air.

As Michael Horn of Forbes points out, this conference (now in its third year), is occurring under a much different climate than that of its inception. Thankfully, the 100+ degree Arizona weather has not increased, but the proverbial atmosphere has heated up.

There was some criticism surrounding the lack of actual pedagogical techniques and a dearth of educators present at the conference. While it’s undeniable that in order for these technologies to be able to change the face of education, they need to be data-driven and rooted in proven time-tested pedagogy. For us, that approach is at the heart of our product development, as we use hard data and professor feedback to inform Top Hat Monocle’s roadmap.

That being said, we Top Hat Monoclers left the conference feeling more invigorated and optimistic about the future of education. An industry that has historically been stagnant and lacking in both innovation and funding is finally starting to get the attention it deserves. We’re not suggesting that dollar signs should be flashing in education technologists’ eyes, but a growing presence in the private sector shows promise for experimentation and resources to support innovation in education.

And in true Top Hat Monocle form, we were happy to help fuel the fire. We were excited to be asked to power the audience voting and participation at the event’s ‘Venture Throwdown,’ where 7 finalists were selected  from over 80 presenting companies. (Congrats to finalists American EdTV, Eye Power Games, Fingerprint Play, Voxy, MotionMath, and Wowzers and biiig ups to winner Presence Learning!)

A good pitch does not a game-changing technology make, but in our humble opinion we’re at least happy the heat is on.

If you could guarantee with 100% accuracy that a person will commit a crime, should you arrest them before they do it?

This was a question posted yesterday by Harvard Professor of Government Michael Sandel as he piloted Top Hat Monocle’s new “Comparison” features in his BioEthics course.

(“Comparison” allows professors to compare how students respond to given questions. Profs can compare responses from different data sessions or even from different questions in order to stimulate debate, track performance, find correlations, etc.)

First as a homework assignment, the students met in an auditorium to watch the movie Minority Report. (In the movie, cops from the future have technology to predict crimes before they are committed.) Prof. Sandel then incorporated the theme of the movie into his Bioethics course, by asking students if it was “right to arrest criminals before they’ve committed a crime, if there can be 100% accuracy that they will commit the crime otherwise?”

Given the nebulous ethical nature of the question, the class was fairly split in their opinions (60% pro-arrest, 40% against). Strong points were brought up on either side. “How can a criminal truly reflect and rehabilitate, if he/she never actually commits the act?” “What about the victims, aren’t they more important to protect than the criminals?”

After a lengthy debate, Sandel then posted another question to the class: “Should you let a convicted rapist out of jail once his sentence was complete, if you could predict with 100% accuracy that he was going to strike again?”

After a short debate on this fairly one-sided argument (72% in favor of jailing the rapist), things got really interesting: Prof. Sandel then compared ALL the data he collected from the first question against the responses he collected from the second question, and displayed the results onscreen in a graph. As the submissions filled up in real-time, the students were astounded by the contradiction that 50% of those who voted to keep the rapist in jail voted earlier NOT to imprison pre-crime!

As you can imagine, these results sparked some fantastical debate. The students remained wholly engaged in the discussion since they were able to change their responses at will as new perspectives were introduced, and could then see the results live on the classroom as a whole. What was particularly compelling to Prof. Sandel was the ability to see whose particular points were able to have an influence on the class as a whole, and if any students were “up for the challenge” of changing the minds of their fellow classmates.

As we’ve said before, we are constantly inspired by the new and innovative ways our Professors use Top Hat Monocle in their classroom, and watching the legendary Michael Sandel in action yesterday was truly a special experience. Prof Sandel’s creative use of Top Hat Monocle encouraged students to examine a complex issue within the foundation of similar issue that potentially strengthened or challenged opinions. Students were able to critically evaluate the perspectives of others, actively confront their own world-views and explore them in a collaborative environment that gave each and every individual a voice. In our humble minds, this is how classroom experiences should be.

(Editor’s Note: We recognize this post liberally employed the use of exclamation points and some language that could be considered hyperbolic, but it’s examples like these that make us so proud of the tool we’ve created and privileged to work with the professors that we do.) (!!)

Harvard's Prof Sandel Using THM to spark debate

Written by: John Jakutis

I have eyes in the back of my head

Ok, so that phrase sounds pretty creepy out of context. But most people who have attended elementary school have probably heard this response from teachers at some point in their academic careers. You know exactly what I’m talking about. The teacher is busily scribbling on the chalkboard, back turned to the class, and the class clown is doing something (silently) but distracting to the class. Without missing a beat, the teacher whips around and BOOM. Timmy is busted.

As effective as this skill is at managing a class, there is a limit to the superhuman strengths of teachers. They aren’t psychics, but we often expect them to be, as if they should intuitively know when students are confused or don’t like a given lecture style.

Students will walk out of lecture, griping about how the professor was speaking at a rapid-fire pace, how one of the concepts made no sense, or how they are “totally lost.” Professors say, “Please, ask questions if you don’t understand” or, “My door is always open, and I’d love to see you in office hours.” But let’s be honest. Are students really going to approach a professor and say, “Your lecture style is awful. You talk way too fast, skip from concept-to-concept too quickly and don’t pause for questions in the middle.” Probably not. Furthermore, students are often so lost, they don’t know what specific questions to ask. A combination of apathy, general confusion and fear of hurting a professor’s feelings often prevent professors from hearing what students really think.

Granted, most schools do have ‘course evaluations’ at the end of each term, asking students general questions about a professor’s strengths and weaknesses. But by the end of the quarter, it’s too late. Students have taken the course, and what’s done is done. The best case scenario is that students will devote the time to write thoughtful and critical evaluations of the course and that the professors will use it to inform their next teaching experience. But by the end of the semester with finals approaching, what is the likelihood students are going to sit down and detail everything that they disliked about a course that is already over? Student feedback is immensely important, and in the current university system is a completely missed opportunity.

A recent article in the New York Times highlights innovative ways professors are culling feedback on a more regular basis from students. One biomedical engineering professor asks students to rate him anonymously on a biweekly basis and solicits feedback that way. He then takes it a step further and graphs the results to discuss in the next class period. Others use Patricia Cross’s ‘One Minute Paper’ approach, where they write down the most important thing they’ve learned for the day and also questions they still have. While examples like this are becoming more common, they are far from commonplace.

In addition to presenting lecture material, mentoring grad students, writing grant proposals, peer-reviewing articles and conducting their own research, it’s no surprise that most professors don’t take the time to collect regular feedback from students. Let alone graph the results.

What if professors could solicit feedback from students not only on a biweekly basis, but also multiple times throughout a lecture? And what if they could get those responses immediately so they could iterate in real-time? Well, it turns out they can. Mobile devices students already have with them in class have the ability to completely transform this process and facilitate a dialogue between professors and students. Whether it’s through multiple choice questions to see if they understand a given concept, using our ‘Feedback’ module, or simply by keeping a ‘Discussion’ open that crowdsources questions from students, it can actually make the lives of both professors and students easier. Classroom response systems can be as much of a learning tool for professors as they are for their students.

As the sage Paul Revere once said, “The gamers are coming! The gamers are coming!” Ok, so maybe that’s not exactly the phrase he used, but it’s close enough. Gamification, or the use of game mechanics in non-game contexts, has been seen everywhere from ecommerce to social networking. Whether it’s unlocking badges on foursquare, racing against the clock on Gilt or making sure that bar on your LinkedIn profile is completely filled up, gamification is taking hold. And for good reason. It works.

While achieving the coveted title of Mayor at your favorite burrito joint may not seem like the most compelling motivation, the truth is gamification is solidly grounded in psychological mechanisms.

Badges, countdown clocks, broadcasting check-ins, and competitions increase both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, capitalizing on human emotions like pleasure and anticipation and desires like social esteem and approval.

People naturally look to those around them to define their own abilities by comparing themselves with others through Festinger’s social comparison theory. With explicit scores, titles and badges, gamification makes this these comparisons for you.

And think about your favorite game at the arcade when you were a kid, how you watched that metal crane dangle dangerously close to that stuffed animal or high quality plastic watch you just had to have. Why did you spend the equivalent of $20 in quarters for a low quality stuffed animal that you were most likely never going to get?  You’re not crazy. You’re just falling victim to sunk costs bias. We humans are pretty loss averse, so when we lose we act irrationally and pull an Energizer bunny and keep going and going and going and going and going and going.

Well, Top Hat Monocle  is thrilled to announce our new tournament module! It’s been in private beta for 2 months, but the results so far have been remarkable. Leading up to the tournament, students practice with a question bank. Then, when the tournament goes live, students are intelligently paired with others at their skill level for several rounds. Students win points, race against the clock and at the end of the tournament each student receives their ranking among their classmates. The top 5 students in the class are publicly visible.

Racing against the clock and desire to win are strong principles on their own. Adding a social layer facilitates competition and strongly increases persistence and performance.

The science is there. Social facilitation, comparison theory, sunk costs, loss aversion are not just buzzwords. They’re deeply rooted in human nature and motivation. Gamification is here to stay, and we’re excited to use these principles to motivate and incentivize students to learn, collaborate, and think critically.

Unlocking the prestigious badge of Mayor of Filiberto’s holds a special place in our hearts, but we know we’re about to unlock some serious student potential.

PS Want to set up a Tournament for your class? Schedule a demo to learn how!

We don’t care about the iPad 3. Ok, so maybe that’s not entirely true. Don’t get us wrong: if you want to throw some iPad 3′s our way, we’re not going to go around complaining. What we mean is that  there was an announcement made by Apple that is considerably more important than the fancy new iPad with the Retina display. All right, so the newest breed of iPad has some sweet bells and whistles. However, as TheNextWeb has explained, the more important announcement was the notion that the iPad 2 has dropped $100, costing $399.

When Apple made its big iBooks Author/iBooks2/iTunesU app announcement on January 19th, the responses were mixed. Some proclaimed that the future is here and that the iPad will revolutionize the classroom, while others stated that Apple’s move was harmful and myopic considering how costly iPads still are. Granted, the tools Apple announced do carry with them tremendous potential. With the ability to create their own textbooks, teachers will no longer be slaves to the publishing industry. They would have considerable flexibility and limitless potential in terms of designing course content. Further, it offered the opportunity for teachers to share content and strategies with one another with ease.

The crux of the problem, however, is the notion that all of these tools making teaching and learning more accessible still rely on a technology that is far from accessible for all: the iPad. What’s the point of a $15 textbook if a student can’t afford a $500 iPad? Some schools have the funding to adopt a one-to-one iPad program for students, but those are few and far between, especially given recent funding cuts.

Even if Apple isn’t your cup of tea, this price cut also puts serious pressure on other tablet producers–namely Samsung and Microsoft–who are in no league to compete with this competitive pricing.

We’re not saying that this recent announcement is going to transform the classroom overnight or that every student’s backpack will be replaced with an iPad and a single notebook. But, as we’ve argued before, the classroom is here to stay, and it is in dire need of a transformation. We think technology, when done right and not simply for its own sake, is a big part of how we’re going to get there. This is a step in the right direction for making more sophisticated mobile technology even more ubiquitous in education.

After an inspiring 3 days at SXSWedu, we Top Hat Monoclers are still riding a very geeky, totally awesome, edtech high.

To use the verbiage of LeVar, whose keynote we talked about here, we were surrounded by “our people.” Teachers, hackers, students, tech enthusiasts, journalists, and policymakers all came together believing 2 things:

1) the current education system demands change

2) we have to be the ones to do it

The conference featured some amazing speakers perpetuating some incredibly forward-thinking ideas. From US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan discussing how education is not only a moral obligation but also an economic imperative to virtual reality queen Jane McGonigal waxing poetic about how alternate reality games are compelling teaching instruments, tweetable takeaways were coming a mile a minute.

The responses from attendees regarding the conference were overwhelmingly positive, but after speaking with “our people,” it was clear that there were a few standout performers among the 50+ speakers.

But that’s just the nature of public speaking and sitting in on presentations, right? Some people are compelling speakers, while others aren’t. That’s definitely a part of it. But there’s more to the story than that. Interestingly enough, when we spoke with attendees the presentations they found most engaging weren’t necessarily the presenters with the biggest stage presence. In fact, the big “hits” were those that had more of a dialogue with the audience and that actively incorporated them into their presentations. The most common complaints we heard following presentations surrounded the fact that the speaker dodged a question. Another frequently expressed sentiment was that an attendee wished the speaker would’ve talked more about one element of their presentation.

To us, this sounds a lot like the classroom and is illustrative of a lot of the issues with teaching today, especially in higher ed. With incentive systems where profs are rewarded for innovative research rather than phenomenal teaching, lectures can feel one-sided regardless of how amazing the content is. This is where active learning comes in. Take Jane McGonigal’s quirky approach, for example. She had attendees engage in some thumb wars to stimulate conversation and get them involved and talking to one another.

Whether it’s classroom response systems like Top Hat Monocle, think-pair-share, or thumb wars, active learning is the way to go. Teaching–whether at a conference, in the classroom, or out and about in our everyday lives–has to be a conversation not a monologue. Learning never stops, and engagement is key. One, two, three four. We declare a thumb war.

What are 2 of the most important words in the English language? At yesterday’s keynote here at SXSWedu, LeVar Burton–the beloved host of PBS show ‘Reading Rainbow’ and/or Geordi depending on your generation–offered his answer. According to the children’s book-loving trekkie, those two words are: what if?

As Burton delivered his keynote, the educators and education technologists in the audience were spellbound. Nodding their heads in agreement as he called for a re-alignment of private and institutional goals and leveraging technology to further education. “Of course you get it; you’re my people,” he’d say.

According to Burton, one of the fundamental flaws with the education system today is that it stifles creativity. Storytelling, which humans are hardwired for, is becoming a thing of the past. With current emphasis on test scores and other objective forms of assessment, LeVar emphasized that many children are, contrary to the policy, “left behind.”

Burton’s talk was solidly grounded in the potential for technology to transform education. As he sees it, the “iPad will be the biggest educational tool since the invention of chalk.” Burton didn’t emphasize technology for technology’s sake, but rather advocated using technology to re-ignite the curiosity for learning. ‘Reading Rainbow’ did that by helping literature to come alive for children through television. And, his recent RRKidz will help do the same thing through apps.

Here at Top Hat Monocle, we’re inspired by bringing curiosity, imagination, and engagement back into learning. Our first day at SXSWedu was an inspirational and invigorating one. We tip our (top) hat to you, Levar.