Thought Leaders in Online Education: Stephen Spahn, Dwight Schools Group (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What is the level of adoption and penetration into this particular marketplace? How big is the market? How many kinds in that age group are there in America? What percentage of that have you been able to crack?

Stephen Spahn: What you really have is quite a large market which would include students with special interests. You also have students who have been ill and are at home. You have homeschooling.

What we have done is slowly grow it so that we know that we can provide the quality education that we would like to see them have. It’s a very small part of a large potential group.

Sramana Mitra: This is because they are not aware of your kind of offering or you haven’t quite gotten to the partnership channels through which you’re going to market?

Stephen Spahn: We’re very happy with the growth we’ve had. Again, we’re doing it so that the quality is maintained. If you want to look at the large market and how that can be approached, that is different. Much of what we’re learning can be employed widely. 

Sramana Mitra: When you look around, what are some open problems that you see that new entrepreneurs could look at filling? 

Stephen Spahn: Today, every school is engaged in distance learning. Right now, this is an emergency education where everybody is being forced into this. The interesting thing is what we’ve learned through this process. We’ve had weekly surveys of teachers, students, and parents to stay on top of what’s happening.

What we’re learning is, there are a group of teachers who think that this is advantageous. They don’t have interruptions and fooling around that middle and upper school students might have. Also they’re able to use examples of applying it. They’re listening. They’re actually being educated in how to use different skills and methods. Then they’re able to apply it. That’s one particular side of it.

What we’re finding is that there are some youngsters who are distracted in school and need to have breaks. What we’re learning is how to improve not only online but also brick-and-mortar. That’s a very valuable element.

The other thing is, we started by training our teachers on what we call the Frontier Method, which is how you create an idea. How do you create an accelerator? We had the teachers work with each other so they could create their own innovative ideas.

We now have a large cohort of the faculty thinking that way so that students can begin to think that way. To me, that has been one of the major shifts that’s going on. Education, itself, has got to change dramatically.

Sramana Mitra: That doesn’t really answer my question about where entrepreneurs could start ventures in online education. 

Stephen Spahn: I think there are opportunities at all grade levels to demonstrate their innovative thinking. Kids like to create ideas.

This segment is part 5 in the series : Thought Leaders in Online Education: Stephen Spahn, Dwight Schools Group
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