Thought Leaders in Online Education: Dror Ben Naim, CEO of Smart Sparrow (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What are you seeing in terms of adoption in the school systems?

Dror Ben Naim: Everywhere we look, we’re seeing great interest in the area of personalized learning. It’s not just a buzzword. It’s a reality. What we also see is that certain schools are ahead of others. The classic example is to talk about ASU which is truly leading the pack in terms of their institutional adoption of innovative learning and teaching technologies and practices. It’s not just about adopting technologies; it’s mainly about changing your practice as an organization.

On the other side of the spectrum, we will see laggards who still don’t believe in digital learning. Professors are still upset that they’re expected to teach on both classroom as well as on a different medium. In between them, you’ve got a spectrum of institutions that are somewhere on the evolution curve. Some of them are still on the first wave of digital learning. Some of them are fully second wave. They’ve got institutional teams of learning designers and courseware developers who are working with subject matter experts.

Sramana Mitra: If you were to put a number on how many schools in America are delivering personalized learning to their student body, what would that number be.

Dror Ben Naim: We’d have to go back to the definition of what it means to deliver it. Are we talking about delivering it to everyone? Are we talking about a high degree or a medium degree of personalization? There are very few institutions that are delivering a high degree of personalization to all their students. It’s hard to even think about five.

But there are many that are delivering some degree to some of the students. It’s also fair to say that there are just as many who are just waking up to the whole space. There’s a very famous tool by Gartner called Hype Cycle. A lot of entrepreneurs know it. They track where certain technologies are.

Adaptive learning was at the height of the hype in 2012. Then in 2016, it was at the lowest. Then the nice part is that the model of Gartner suggests that after it hit the trough of disillusionment, then the plateau of productivity starts. Only then, only 5% of the market is adapting. There’s a lot of people who are over-promising and under-delivering. Everyone is interested in the new innovation. There’s a bit of disillusionment. Then over time, there is some emergence of solutions and go-to market strategies.

We are now at the beginning of the wave towards the plateau of productivity. That means that there’s another 95% of the market in terms of market opportunity for us. We are very bullish and excited about that.

Sramana Mitra: You have a lot of headroom to grow.

Dror Ben Naim: Exactly.

This segment is part 4 in the series : Thought Leaders in Online Education: Dror Ben Naim, CEO of Smart Sparrow
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