Innovative Ecosystems

Last reviewed: February 2017

Abstract

Applying methodologies borrowed from cutting edge software developers, education systems (school districts, private schools, universities, and even graduate programs) have begun to partner with a wide variety of community resources (high-tech developers, investors, marketing representatives, and computer research divisions of companies) to help realize ideas that progressive and forward-thinking educators have for using such technology. While education had long prided itself on tradition, maintaining the dynamic of instructor and student as a necessary foundational assumption of how information can be passed on, the new goal is to improve efficiency and workability in the classroom.

Overview

Beginning in the 1990s, the emerging revolution in digital technology—with its re-imagination of communication networks, information retrieval systems, informational presentation platforms, and the reach and reality of globalization—laid the foundation for rethinking a classroom, Digital technology rendered obsolete basic assumptions about a classroom, including space (the classroom now could reach around the globe), time (students could now be helped individually, with digital technologies helping to monitor individual progress and ensuring individual attention keyed to the student’s competencies), achievement (student progress, teacher effectiveness, and administrative competencies could all be measured against those in school districts worldwide), and the imperative of change.

With the advent of new technologies, and as teachers were becoming acclimated to the logic and basic protocols of computers, these teachers could see the potential for computers to be applied to the classroom. Their ideas pretty much stayed ideas, however, as these teachers simply did not have the access to the computer competencies that might realize an actual working app or software program. Meanwhile the high tech ed-tech industry, teeming with computer science engineers with newly minted degrees and an interest in making classrooms more efficient and more effective using computer technology, struggled to come up with educational programs that might have real-world use in classrooms. They had the technology but not the ideas. The teachers had the ideas but not the technology. Meanwhile there were investors eager to find projects that required financing, promising projects whose widest applications might include global markets and would, in turn, guarantee lucrative profits for their investment. And there were tech-savvy entrepreneurs waiting for an idea that could launch their new company. The reality was inevitable: the classroom lagged far behind the available technology.

Because there was no impactful communication among these elements, innovation in education was essentially at a standstill. Technology capabilities far exceeded the range of available ideas. New ideas, the product of think tanks in ed-tech businesses, were seldom grounded in any potentially useful application because there were no teachers on staff. Potential investment monies and promising web tech start-ups languished. Far more troubling, classrooms worked far below their potential, teachers relying on technologies that had been developed years earlier and that had grown obsolete. Students, for their part, came into a classroom confident in technology, a generation born surrounded by computers—but the classroom did not develop that familiarity or apply it directly to learning. The focus stayed stubbornly on teaching, not on learning.

The status quo was clearly not working. Beginning in the early years of the twenty-first century, the U.S. Department of Education, under the auspices of the Office of Education Technology, began to investigate the potential for developing innovative ecosystems to help advance classroom technology. Borrowing for its master metaphor the template of a natural ecosystem in which apparently disparate elements, flora and fauna, soil and water, cooperated, actually relied on each other to create a harmonious environment that sustained and nurtured its own continuity development, the government agency pioneered the concept of establishing communication networks among educators, investors, ed-tech developers, data researchers, and entrepreneurs. “Due to the context in which the term [innovative ecosystem] was developed—business, technology, and industry—it has only recently gained recognition and application in the education sphere” (Abdul-Jabbar & Kurshan, 2015). The challenge to the education environment was clear: really nothing less than total change was needed, “to face the risks that accompany the introduction of new ways of thinking, and to embrace the challenge of creating educational environments that enhance the innovative potential within . . . students” (Hulme et al., 2014).

The term “innovative ecosystem” was actually borrowed from computer field itself. High tech firms, responsible for developing the next generation of software, apps, and digital devices, had long seen the necessity of reaching out to those who would actually use these products, services, websites, platforms, and programs for input into directions to take in research and development and to help test prototypes before committing to a full-blown launch. Indeed, such ecosystems had been responsible for cutting edge tech developments in mass transportation systems, security and identify theft services, financial and investment recordkeeping, information storage reservoirs, as well as global office management. So-called stand-alone ventures, that is a computer software or device advancement that had been conceived, developed, marketed, tested, and then launched by a single company, were manifestly inefficient. Working together, these cooperative and collaborative elements were able to respond far more quickly to marketplace needs.

To date most of the innovative ecosystems in education are theoretical—although the concept of developing cooperative cells that would bring together educators with ed-tech companies as well as with investment and marketing strategists have been most successfully put in place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; in Rhode Island, statewide; and in select school districts in Baltimore.

Applications

The foundational assumption behind innovative ecosystems for education was that the teacher understood best what worked and what did not work in classroom presentation. The teacher is at the center of the ecosystem. “A teacher is placed at the centre [sic] because the teacher is the keystone species in education, which is defined as the species with the most influence on the ecosystem so that when that species is removed, or overridden by other keystone species, the ecosystem becomes unstable and changes” (Davis et al., 2013). Whatever the curriculum subject, teachers brought to any conversation on computer developments in education a wealth of hands-on experience, if not the know-how. Say a fifth-grade social studies teacher in a school district in Missouri has a problem: her students complain that having to learn the presidents is too hard. She has the idea that teaching her students the presidents of the United States would work best if there were some sort of computer program able to show each president’s face and then having the face morph, almost magically, into the face of the next president. Each face would be animated—eyes would open and close, the heads could tilt, the presidents could seem alive without resorting to cartoonish animations. The visual enhancement of the presidents would help trigger better memorization—and seeing the presidents would help create a kind of cultural timeline as styles and dress change across nearly 250 years. If the school district had an ecosystem in place, that teacher can become part of the application process, putting the idea into an application. From there the idea can be developed either by an established computer software firm or by a start-up ed-tech company into a program, with the help of investors. Meanwhile, a marketing firm, also part of the innovative ecosystem, comes up with a clever name for the app and lays out an ambitious local and national web-based campaign to promote the new software, while data researchers test and retest upgraded systems in actual classrooms or with focal groups as the idea develops into its final form.

Such possibilities for computer technologies in the classroom occur regularly to instructors actually in the classroom. In all fields—the sciences, literature, writing, world languages, mathematics, even physical education—computer technology can enhance and improve the ability of students to respond far more aggressively to the education process. Classrooms enhanced by technology make up a more productive environment for instruction. Innovative ecosystems make that far more likely. Business, ed-tech developers, educators, entrepreneurs, and students cooperate to bring to market a computer advance that will help make classrooms more efficient and more responsive to the newest generation of both teachers and students. That cooperative endeavor hastens the process of innovation itself—ideas do not need to stay ideas. Development costs are minimized as potential ideas are actually forwarded by those infield, investors are given a far greater range of opportunities, and entrepreneurs find new possibilities for expanding their companies.

It becomes a free zone of ideas and collisions of perspectives. Each of the stakeholders contributes to the eventual final product—this clustering of talent and vision and creativity forges a partnership in which not the status quo but rather innovation, that is the development of new ideas into reality, directs the process as professionals from different fields circulate and communicate. “Common approaches include developing formal vehicles for collaboration, such as nondisclosure agreements and memoranda of understanding, or creating opportunities for actors to circulate among different entities through visiting-scientist or postdoctoral programs, sabbaticals, or consultant arrangement” (Jackson, 2011).

Advocates of the system-approach to creativity and innovation point out that with the development of innovative ecosystems in education, the pipeline between business and schools does not flow just one way. Indeed, with universities getting involved in developing these ecosystems, promising ideas with actual plans and computer programs generated by undergraduates and graduates in the computer science field give the same developmental network promising models for research, development, and testing. Ideas that come from the classroom are designed into usable computer programs, services, and devices that create working capital for ed-tech companies. Technology arrives in the classroom better able to meet the specific real-time demands of student learning. The metaphor of the ecosystem is evident—disparate parts working together, interacting, to sustain the greater whole.

Viewpoints

Of course, innovative ecosystems in education are more theoretical than actual. Given that the application of innovative ecosystems is barely a generation into its evolution, significant concerns have been raised over how best to define profits from ideas generated by, at least theoretically, the innovation community at large—who or what is to receive the financial dividends from any computer advancement? If the reward is significant, and patents for computer apps have been known to fetch in the millions of dollars for those who create and launch the working model, will it not distract educators from their commitment to their students, preferring to work out proposals for computer applications in the digital classroom than actually prepare for the day-to-day teaching regimen? How would this not encourage self-serving educators to use their experience for private gain?

That is far from the only concern. The model of an innovative ecosystem necessarily involves multiple levels of bureaucracy, as it involves not only businesses but also education systems and often government agencies. In addition, access to computer technology is hardly universal; many school districts would struggle with the costs of outfitting entire schools to take advantage of computer advancements. And many school educators are still understandably wary of too much technology in the classroom, how, with its bells and whistles, graphics and animation, it caters to limited attention spans and essentially makes harder any personal communications between teachers and their students, long seen as the most productive method for improvement and long-term confidence in struggling students. Does technology in the classroom come to replace the centuries-old tradition of the human factor in education?

Under the conceptual model of innovative ecosystems, is the classroom itself becomes an unwitting marketing focus group, essentially serving computer software developers by providing both original ideas as well as a testing facility to refine and develop those ideas? Advocates of such cooperative partnering argue that by working together, without falling back on outmoded concepts of hierarchy and sponsorship, the classroom can more quickly realize technology that has actual value and addresses real concerns.

By embracing the potential for technology to recreate the education dynamic, these same advocates stress that if students are not trained in school to be comfortable around technology, that will ultimately put them at a disadvantage in an increasingly competitive job market that is designed to service and develop digital technologies. The classroom invites input from students and encourages, even enhances, their creativity and their ability to solve problems. As Frank Shushok, editor of About Campus, challenged teachers in 2014, “We educators must do all we can to create conditions that unearth the innate curiosity of students.” Virtually no career does not assume that level of competence.

Because of the virtually unlimited potential for cutting-edge computer systems to manage and maintain significantly larger and larger masses of data (called Big Data), computer technology can be made both accessible and effective for individual schools and even individual teachers. Given how significantly mobile devices have defined a market, and given their unprecedented power, the partnership among educators, investors, software developers, and the vast network of foundations and special interest think tanks with money and expertise in the computer field seems not only logical but practical. Indeed, defenders argue, the ecosystem template enhances, even accelerates, innovation.

In the end, an innovative ecosystem is perhaps best approached as a construct, a way to actually construct ideas into practice. In the early generations of application, the innovative ecosystem offers a strategy for deliberately deconstructing the status quo. By actively listening to educators, who in turn are responding to their students’ reactions, ideas, dissatisfactions, and notions of possibilities, the technology industry can provide meaningful change in the classroom not within a generation but within months. So-called siloed ventures, that is computer software development done in isolation, done essentially within the resource network of an ed-tech firm, would become increasingly counterproductive as schools, government, industry, and the private sector cooperate into a single functioning system of collaboration and innovation. As Richard Culatta, who has headed up the Department of Education’s agency that develops innovation ecosystems, explained in a 2014 interview with Remake Learning, “When these groups work together … both the products and quality of the educational experience and the validity of the research are improved.”

Terms & Concepts

Big Data: A huge reservoir of computer-gathered information that can be used to spot trends or patterns and analyze problem situations as a way to project solutions and even simulate test solutions.

Innovation Architecture: In computer science, the term given to deliberately creating communication and information networks with firms and agencies not directly tied to computer development as a way to solicit valuable ideas and necessary investment.

Paradigm: A working model that defines a process.

Platform: In the virtual world of mass information, an organized system of related information designed to make that information accessible to a wide market.

Siloed Venture: In business, a innovation in services or products in which the entire process, from concept to working model to launch, is performed by a single business or enterprise.

Stakeholder: In partnership ventures, the individual entities (persons or groups) with specific investments (time or money) in a particular short- or long-term project.

Test Marketing: An organized system for testing, by using selected people, the reliability and efficacy of a proposed new service, product, idea, or program before launching that service or product, most often undertaken by a firm outside the company that developed the idea.

Bibliography

Abdul-Jabbar, M., & Kurshan, B. (2015). Educational ecosystems: A trend in urban education innovation. PennGSE Perspectives on Urban Education, 12(1), 7–13. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=102054723&site=ehost-live

Davis, N., Eickelmann, B., & Zaka, P. (2013). Restructuring of educational systems in the digital age from a co-evolutionary perspective. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 29(5), 438–450. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=90133324&site=ehost-live

Hulme, E., Thomas, B., & DeLaRosby, H. (2014). Developing creativity ecosystems: preparing college students for tomorrow's innovation challenge. About Campus, 19(1), 14–23. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=95425597&site=ehost-live

Jackson, D. (2011). Innovation needs a push. ASEE Prism, 21(2), 72. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=70134776&site=ehost-live

Shushok, F. (2014). Are you bold enough to reinvent the field? About Campus, 19(1), 1. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=95425599&site=ehost-live

Suggested Reading

Chameau, J. (2013). Innovation is in the air—and everywhere else, too. Times Higher Education, 38–39. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=91251504&site=ehost-live

Crosling, G., Nair, M., & Vaithilingam, S. (2015). A creative learning ecosystem, quality of education and innovative capacity: A perspective from higher education. Studies in Higher Education, 40(7), 1147–1163. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=103342891&site=ehost-live

Davis, N., Eickelmann, B., & Zaka, P. (2013). Restructuring of educational systems in the digital age from a co-evolutionary perspective. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 29(5), 438–450. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=90133324&site=ehost-live

Leifer, L., Plattner, H., & Meinel, C. (Eds.). (2014). Designing thinking research: Building innovative eco-systems. New York, NY: Springer.