Thought Leaders in Online Education: Dror Ben Naim, CEO of Smart Sparrow (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Is it software or is it content that you’re delivering in a SaaS mode?

Dror Ben Naim: This is software. We’re talking about a tool for designers, developers, and subject matter experts.

Sramana Mitra: They are designing the content on your tool.

Dror Ben Naim: Correct.

Sramana Mitra: It’s a next-generation LMS.

Dror Ben Naim: We’re calling it courseware design and development system. In the previous generation of online learning, the model was that a professor needs to create the content by themselves. It’s a relic of the physical campus. In a physical campus, there is literally a physical classroom and a single instructor in charge. If you ask anyone to close their eyes and imagine a class, they will imagine a professor with a lot of students looking at the professor.

That model is evolving. The more universities are starting to compete digitally, the more they invest in making the digital learning experience much more engaging and attractive for students. The model where it’s a single professor doing it by themselves is evolving. Universities are hiring instruction designers, learning experience designers, and sometimes developers. Definitely multimedia producers.

In other words, universities are slowly changing their core business from just a physical building with lots of lecturers into a building with lots of lecturers but with a digital learning production studio. This is the audience that uses Smart Sparrow. We have a very innovative university in Australia called University of New South Wales. They have thousands of academics. They have a central unit of 60 plus instructional designers and courseware development teams.

These people work with their faculty members to create digitally-rich learning experiences for the students. They collaborate using Smart Sparrow. They design on Smart Sparrow. They create personalization and adaptive pathways using Smart Sparrow. Then they deploy it into the LMS, which in this case is Moodle.

Sramana Mitra: Can you talk a bit more about the personalization capabilities and the personalization angle of your software?

Dror Ben Naim: I’ll take extra special care not to use buzzwords but actually explain what is going on. I’m very critical to anyone who just throws the word AI and machine learning to explain what they do. There are a few ways to personalize the learning experience to individual learners.

First of all, you want to ask yourself what exactly is personalizing and what is it based on. Also there’s the word that we use a lot: adaptive. What adapts and based on what? In our case, we’re talking about the sequence of learning activities that the learners are doing. We often talk about adapting the feedback learners are getting while they are solving problems.

This segment is part 2 in the series : Thought Leaders in Online Education: Dror Ben Naim, CEO of Smart Sparrow
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