Has a line been crossed? Yes!

An online tutoring company, Smarthinking.com recently announced it's offering a new service called Straighterline. Per their website, Straighterline offers "high quality, better supported, and lower cost required college courses - online, on your schedule."

As I understand it, what they have done is bundled their online tutor access with a reputable text book publisher and course management software so students can study independently for required courses and earn college credit.

Has Straighterline crossed the line or has it pushed back a boundary?

I think it is too early to tell. But I'm optimistic about it.

All students should get high quality education. But when it comes to required courses...(I'm thinking back to my Finite math course in college, or my Micro Economics course for my MBA.). Did those classes really need to be with a group in a physical classroom at a set hour? Did I need to pay thousands of extra dollars for these credits?

My intuition and my personal experience say, "No".

Of course this would be taking a bite out of the pie of traditional providers of these courses..the private/public colleges and universities. I think what gives these schools the heebie jeebies is that private tutoring is supposed to be a complement to public school education, not a replacement for it. What Straigherline is trying to do is move the boundary back a few feet on traditional public and private colleges. And for that, I'm sure they will get a lot of push back.

But if colleges and universities are going to look for people to blame...they should be pointing to themselves. The price of tuition, fees, room and board have risen over 35% in the last 5 years. It is the lucky few who do not need to worry about how they are going to pay for a tertiary education.

Of course, the out of pocket expense of higher education is not the only cost. There is also the "opportunity cost" or the income you forego by choosing to study instead of work. These are tough decisions one must make and many times life makes those decisions for you.

Flexibility is also a major perk. I started my MBA in the part-time program because my employer paid for a number of classes per semester, but boy...what I wouldn't have given for more flexibility on when and how I could have attended class...even if just for the required classes. In the end, after calculating how many years it would take to finish my degree and how little of a life I was able to have between school and work, I decided to leave my job and I eventually ended up finished my degree full-time and of course back then...off-line.

In my opinion, Straighterline is filling a need and, if executed well, I think they are on to something.

Do you think Straighterline has crossed the line... for better or for worse?

When online tutoring evolves.

I'm a die hard Boston Red Sox fan, but when you heard Harry Caray, the legendary baseball announcer yell "Holy Cow!", you knew it was a Chicago Cub's home run. When Guy Kawasaki says it, you know something VERY cool is just a click away.

In Guy's blog post titled, "I'll never get on a plane again", he links to the Cisco/Musion Systems TelePresence holographic video conference with the "World’s first Live Holographic Video Feed from California, USA to Bangalore, India". It is simply amazing.

With oil predicted to be $150-$200 a barrel in the near future, beaming yourself to faraway lands, and having others beam themselves to you, becomes all the more economically attractive and environmentally friendly. Instead of hopping a flight, walk to a conference room.

It's potential application to online, personal tutoring is equally mind bending. Instead of driving to a tutoring center or making your poor tutor drive to you, you can "beam over".

But wait...online tutoring already accomplishes this, doesn't it?

Well...it does... Just not so Star Trek-like. In fact, according to Dr. John Stuppy, President of Tutorvista, "online tutoring is as effective as face-to-face" already. His presentation at the United States Distance Learning Association (USDLA) 2008 National Conference points out "..(in) a study of over 300,000 students who received face-to-face tutoring versus online tutoring, there was no statistically significant difference in pre- versus post-test gains on third party norm-referenced assessments." Additional benefits sited were, an "increase in their children’s grades, sometimes after just a few weeks." and " some students are more likely to ask questions and admit when they still don’t understand something".

I can't say I have seen a similar study of 300,000 students in Spain , which is the market Tutor Amigos offers it's service. But I can tell you from first-hand experience that increases in our student's grades have been achieved after just a few weeks and parents have commented how their generally shy sons and daughters are much more active and engaged when working with an online tutor, as opposed to an in-home tutor which is a popular model in Spain.

Now there are differences in how some companies deliver today's online tutoring service, which I will address in a future post. The take away is this: online tutoring, as it exists today, is just as effective as having a tutor sit next to you and do the tutoring. You don't need to wait for this amazing Cisco/Musion systems holographic technology to go mainstream in order to benefit from online tutoring, however someday this amazing technology will go mainstream. And when it does, online tutoring will be poised to be not only as effective, it may even be better.

How do you think online tutoring can be improved? Now? In the future?

Starbucks in Buenos Aires

I have a confession..I'm one of those people who loves to hate Starbucks. It's more passive in nature which takes the form of a try to avoid if possible attitude. For example, in Central Square, Cambridge near where I used to live, I would never think twice before ducking into the 1369 Coffee house as opposed to the Starbucks on the corner. I just liked 1369 better. They had good coffee and a killer carrot cake. However, I am not a hardcore anti-Starbuck-er. I would never go so far as to avoid getting a coffee just because Starbucks was my only choice.

Here in BA, it's been easy to avoid this hypocrisy because there were no Starbucks... until now. Argentina is the latest to roll out the welcome mat to Starbucks and judging from the pre-hype and the long lines at the opening, they will be here for a while. I haven't (and won't likely) make any special effort to visit Starbucks here, but I have to admit I'm curious.

A couple of things I've read are the long lines are mostly made up of the 25 and under crowd, and their basic cup of coffee is a competitively priced 5.50 pesos. Having been through the MBA case study gauntlet, I'd love to get a first hand look at how this global giant tries to fit into an ingrained local coffee culture- that doesn't include to-go cups.

Another reason is to see if it really is all that special. There have been sightings of new flavors like their Mate-Coffee...that alone maybe worth a look - I'm guessing the kinda look people do when they slow down and stare at car accidents.. But you never know..it could be the next greatest coffee innovation!

One thing Starbucks has done right is contracting Sugar&Spice as a supplier. Sugar & Spice is a local cookie company and after meeting Frank, it's founder, a few weeks ago, I went and bought some of his cookies at the local Disco Supermarket. I tried the Cantucci. They were super. So obviously Starbucks already knows their way around local cookies. If they figure out the coffee culture, as well as they have the cookies, local coffee shops beware!

Do you think Starbucks will put the local coffee shops out of business?

A different tack

I recently got to meet and hang out with some folks who are, or are connected with some of the movers and shakers of the blogosphere here in Buenos Aires. What I've quickly realized is how boring my blog is. So boring that I don't even want to read it. So to take a new tack and make this blog less of a yawner.. I'm expanding the subjects to include an expat perspective on the hustle and bustle of Buenos Aires and thoughts on the ups and downs of international, entrepreneurial start-ups. (mine and shameless plugs of others) Of course latest happenings with TutorAmigos, bilingual education in the US and now obviously education in Spain will be hot topics. I'm looking forward to writing about these additions and hope you will be too.

Our first blog post from a parent in Spain!

I'm very excited that Tutor Amigos (http://www.tutoramigos.com) got it's first post in a blog from a parent of one of our students in Spain! An excerpt from the blog post, is copied below but go to the original post to see a couple of videos from their side of the Atlantic.

La profesora invisible

"Nunca había contratado un profesor particular, principalmente porque no le hacia falta, sus notas no eran excelentes pero tampoco suspendía, yo misma podía ayudarla si lo necesitaba, y aunque en ocasiones me hubiese gustado contratar un profesor particular, representaba un gasto económico que no podía asumir.

Pero la niña va creciendo y las tareas se van complicando, había suspendido un par de exámenes parciales. Se lo importante que son los estudios, así que preferí cambiar mi mentalidad: pagar en educación no es gastar, sino invertir.

Llamé a un par de estudiantes universitarios que habían dejado su teléfono en el instituto, bueno…, para nuestra economía representaría un esfuerzo...

Casi sin querer encontré en internet una publicidad que me llamó la atención: www.tutoramigos.com: clases particulares online en vivo y ayuda con tareas escolares.

¿Era posible recibir clases particulares a través de internet?"

The full blog post is available here

What the research does and doesn't say: a nice summary

Cruising through my google web alerts this week I came across an article that I wish I (or my google alerts) had found last year when it was written. "Teaching Math to English Language Learners: Can Research Help?" by Suzanne Irujo, ELL Outlook™ Contributing Writer, does a nice job of summarizing much of the same research I came across while developing the concept of Tutor Amigos. Even better is that she puts it in historical context and gives many examples of the English and English-speaking situations that tend to confuse ELL Math learners. If you are just starting to research this field or looking to connect some of the dots, check out this article.

"Too" Early Exit programs

Imagine yourself as a kid. Now imagine yourself as a kid who has just moved to a foreign country...let's call it Hopelandia. You don't speak, read or write Hopeland-ish...but you want to. You get pulled out of your regular classes for a few hours everyday to learn basic Hopeland-ish while everyone else is learning math, science, social studies etc.. After 2-3 years, you are declared proficient in Hopeland-ish and mainstreamed to the regular classes. Unfortunately for you, that conversational Hopeland-ish you learned isn't enough to understand the academic Hopeland-ish that is being used in class, in the text books and on the state exams. Your grades suffer, you get frustrated....oh by the way... you are poor, so there is very little help...sorry.

Early-Exit transitional models for English Language Learning (ELL) students focus on the “speed at which students are mainstreamed than content-area learning.” (Brisk, 1998) When I started researching the need for an online tutoring service for Spanish-speakers, I found this as a program model used in many school systems that promote a "learn English first, then learn academics", mentality. Supported by many as the "American" thing to do...it almost makes logical sense. Almost.

What research shows is this "learn English first" model is a tough row. Why? Because for the most part, the teaching of English and the teaching of academic content are separated. There is a big difference between conversational English..the English you use in social, context rich settings, and academic English. Conversational English usually takes only 1-2 years to attain where academic English can take anywhere from 4-7 years. So what happens in this 2-5 year window? That's what we call the Academic Achievement gap where only 21% of 8th grade ELL students passed Reading and Math in 2005.

What research says is that continuing the teaching of academic content in the student's native language over a longer period of time, while they are learning English, is the way to go. The student can continue to develop cognitive skills appropriate for their grade level and not fall behind the English-speakers.

Seventy-five percent of all ELL's in the US speak Spanish in the home. What Tutor Amigos does by working with non-profit organizations and tutoring Math in Spanish is fill a gap where Early Exit programs, or lack of qualified Hispanic teachers, leave Latino English Language Learners in a void.

In the end, many of us never had to go to school in Hopelandia. But there are 2.7 million others that do now and need to have access to tutoring resources that are readily available.