Interview with Sandy Speicher: Use Design Thinking to Create the Most Innovative Private Schools in Peru

Transcription

1 Interview with Sandy Speicher: Use Design Thinking to Create the Most Innovative Private Schools in Peru By Xinlei Pan, CEIBS Business Review (this article is originally published on WeChat in Chinese on Sep. 18th, 2015) The notion of remodeling a school system from the ground up is a design issue in our view. The core is to deal with people. In other words, how many stakeholders should be taken into account as we build a better school system in Peru? Y ou must have heard of IDEO if you are in the design business. This design consulting firm founded in Silicon Valley is known for its design of great technological products in early days, including the world's first laptop computer and Apple's first mouse. Among the world's 25 most innovative companies by Fast Company magazine, IDEO ranked No.10, and all the top nine have been IDEO s clients. IDEO, blessed with commercial and technological talent, took over a case from the education industry in The client is a business tycoon in Peru, who charged IDEO with devising a school system that emphasized academic excellence and affordable price, so as to benefit more Peruvian children. However, the problem is that Peru routinely scores near the bottom of the global education survey of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

2 After six months of research work, IDEO introduced a school system called Innova across a few pilot schools. In four years, Innova Schools have grown into the largest private network of schools in Peru. The performance of their students is now three times the national average in math and two times the national average in communication. A design firm remodeled a school system from the ground up. But how? We had an exclusive interview with Sandy Speicher, Associate Partner and Managing Director of education practice at IDEO. She is also the lead of the Innova project. Sandy shared with us the secrets behind this cross-border innovation. Designers can also bring value to education CEIBS Business Review (hereinafter referred to as CBR): Could you first give us the latest update on the Innova project in Peru? Sandy Speicher: By this year so far, Innova has 29 schools in Peru, with about 20,000 students and more than 1,000 teachers. It is growing at the speed of 6-8 new schools per year. Our goal is to have 70 schools built in Peru by CBR: You spent six months on investigation before deciding on a plan. Is this considered as a relatively long preparation period compare to various other projects at IDEO? Sandy Speicher: Actually we don t have a standard preparation period for IDEO projects. Since Innova project involves the design of a whole school system, which is quite complex, more time will be spent during the early stage. Besides, the in-depth study on the design details prolonged the preparation phase. As you can imagine, the number of variables and stakeholders involved in redesigning a school is significant. After we spent six months on confirming the basic framework, we stayed in touch with Peru in the next eight months. Also we would fly to Peru every six weeks to respond to new issues as they arise. The Innova project is very interesting in that it "grows" in terms of manpower. During the initial stage of the project, our core team consisted of only five members, including a business designer, a system designer, a communication designer, an architect and a researcher. But at the end of the project, our entire team had expanded to 14 members, including six business designers. CBR: But your task was to rebuild a school system. Business designer, architect, communication designer and other members on your team seem to be less related to the field of education?

3 Sandy Speicher: You're right. The general perception is that an education program calls for professional personnel in education, while in our entire team no one has studied education, which seems unreasonable. But if you step back and look at it, the notion of remodeling a school system from the ground up is a design issue in our view. The core is to deal with people. In other words, how many stakeholders should be taken into account as we build a better school system in Peru? For example, students, parents, teachers, government, investors and so on. Education professionals may not know how to reconcile the interests of these groups, but designers with right ideas can achieve this. The Innova project not only depends on the design team, the account team on the Peruvian side is just as important. Innova's investors own large commercial projects in Peru. They have extensive experience in logistics, finance, services and other areas. A very important task of ours was to learn from their wisdom and help them see things with a new perspective. We need to keep learning and to better integrate our experience with their knowledge. Affordability, feasibility and scalability CBR: So after spending so much time on the task, what is something new you ve learned about the education issue in Peru? Sandy Speicher: The traditional teaching method in the Peruvian public education is like this. The teacher lectures at the podium while students take notes at their seats. Parents see their children coming home from school every day with a full notebook. However, this process does not mean "learning" has happened. Just look at Peru's ranking in the global educational testing. This "thoughtless" teaching approach is not conducive to the growth of students. On the other hand, there is a rapidly rising middle class in Peru. Many of these middle-class parents want their children to get a better education, because they never had that in their childhood. They know how important good education is for a child. But again, if they choose a private school that has relatively better education quality, it means a cost of 30%-50% of their income, which is clearly too expensive for the middle class. The tuition of Innova School is US$130 per student per month, while good private schools charge two to three times the price. When parents take their children to the Innova School, they will naturally find it stylish and outstanding in neighboring communities. Although they do not know what s taught at the school, deep down they would enjoy a sense of accomplishment, feeling that they ve made an effort for the children's education.

4 CBR: In addition to an affordable price, what other elements should be considered in this project? Sandy Speicher: Setting an affordable price to the middle class is just the first step, the sustainability of Innova depends on two other key factors. The first is replicability and scalability. The second is feasibility, meaning that it can effectively solve the existing education problem. Because if the newly-designed school system cannot be efficiently replicated, the one or two model schools will be of little practical value no matter how perfect they are proved to be. Equally important is whether the system we designed can actually provide a better education to the students in the end. CBR: How do you prioritize the three core objectives: affordability, feasibility and scalability? Sandy Speicher: To be honest, these essential factors need to be considered altogether, as they develop in a nonlinear way. Our whole idea was not to design a perfect school system from the beginning, but first completely break the inherent thinking and start from scratch. For instance, since our goal is to establish 200 such schools in Peru, we will measure the number of teachers needed. And we will ask, can these teachers be introduced all at once? If not, should we build a reserve teacher training system? Another example. Land constitutes a great part of the cost of building schools. How should we respond to the real estate market trends in the next few years? If real estate price keeps rising, we will make sure to get all the land first, instead of purchasing land for one school and then later another. So redesigning a school requires a perspective of the whole eco-system rather than a static view at each variable. CBR: Can you give us a few examples of design and innovation in the Innova project? Sandy Speicher: We ve adopted a blended-learning model based on two learning scenarios: solo learning and group learning. It is a digitally-based, personalized and data-driven model. Parents can view their children s progress online, and learning can be fun.

5 A blended learning approach combines self-directed and group time With this blended-learning model, teachers can work more efficiently. In "group learning," one teacher is assigned to 30 students on average, but in "solo learning", one teacher can take care of 60 students. In addition, the classroom walls are movable. This way, the scarce resource of teachers had suddenly become more available, which brought down the school's operating costs. A rendering of a multi-modal classroom Secondly, I said before that land is just as important and scarce as the teachers, so we were thinking about how to maximize the use of space. In Peru, school buildings are

6 limited to a maximum of only three floors, so we thought why not design a learning space on the rooftop? The results turned out quite surprising. When you went up to the roof seeing the children using computers sitting at a picnic table, it felt like a university campus where the students are free. For the first time they had control over study and had a sense of autonomy. Outdoor spaces are used in flexible ways. Another innovation is to make full use of the teaching resources. In Peru where quality teachers are lacking, how to make teachers recognize the uniqueness of Innova is crucial. We provided an online teacher resource center, which is in fact a database, which carries more than 18,000 custom curricula based on the latest teaching methods. Teachers can also interact with each other, which will improve their enthusiasm of teaching. We also worked with relevant universities in the training of reserve teaching forces. CBR: You mentioned several times the role of technology in the school remodeling process. However, the Peruvian children may be less exposed to the Internet, computers and various software applications. Was there need for an adaptation period in the beginning? Sandy Speicher: Technology is an important part of the whole design. In the Innova project, it means more than a tool. For the parents, the fact that private schools in this price range can be equipped with a variety of technical means of teaching is in itself symbolic.

7 In fact, in the beginning we were also worried that the students cannot successfully use these techniques to assist their learning. Therefore, we made various predictions and identified which parts to explain to them, how to guide the specific operation and so on. Then we carried out a two-month experiment, the purpose of which is to let students learn how to use an English learning application, while their mother tongue is Spanish. Anxious as we were, we suddenly realized that these students actually were skilled with the software within one day. They actually used Google translation, which we did not expect. Later this method became viral. Even more amazing is that our data show that 85% of the students have access record outside campus. Therefore a variety of projections we made did not happen. Actually, the use of technology is a very natural process for children. They will use a variety of creative ways to get what they want. We are learning from them in this case. CBR: I m curious what the process of forming a design idea looks like? Sandy Speicher: I ve mentioned before that we are not proficient in education, but we have a process for addressing such issue, which is to care about people and understand people. Education is not just relevant to students. It involves many stakeholders. In the initial research, we spent 6 weeks on "immersion" in Peru, to understand the needs of the people related to this issue. We then put forward various assumptions and took these ifs to discuss with the customers. Sometimes the discussion got very intense, "it is this, not that." And finally we put into detail design ideas most appealing to all. Implication to China CBR: In the end let s talk about China. Although the situation here is different from Peru, China also faces huge educational challenges, of which the most critical is the allocation of educational resources. In your opinion, what can China learn from the Innova experience? Sandy Speicher: I treat any question as a design question. So what you're asking is actually an excellent design question. Although I m not that familiar with China's education landscape, I know the general situation. For example, in rural areas, they lack teachers, lots of the parents are migrant workers and the supporting infrastructure is out of date. Hence the design ideas should focus on these aspects. In fact, you should ask your readers to answer this question, because one significance of the Innova case is that business can play a very important role in education. The founder of Innova, the Peru business tycoon as is mentioned before, felt that he had already engaged in a variety of services for the Peruvian middle class, and it was time to

8 do education. In fact, the education industry is also a service industry, and he increasingly realized that in order for Peru to achieve long-term development, a channel to provide talents is indispensable. Investment in education means social significance, profitability and support from the people. So the reference for China might be: is it likely for China's business leaders to be more involved in the field of education? We have seen that the private education sector in India, Africa and Latin America is increasingly serving the middle class. Is it also possible for China to reach the stage where affordable and high-quality private education become increasingly accessible to make up for the shortcomings of public education? -End-