Microsoft's Chief Exec Satya Nadella has laid it out for us, when he said that the Metaverse means bringing together the physical and digital worlds. An article on 101 Blockchains dispelled the idea that the Metaverse is a single place, or that it can only be accessed via virtual reality, saying "The metaverse is not just any single virtual world you experience with VR. On the contrary, it will be a shared and persistent virtual world complementing the real world."
The physical embedded in the digital and the digital in the physical, accessible via laptops, smartphones, AR glasses and VR headsets to name a few. No matter how simply we parse the idea, it never seems to really sink in, but perhaps this is because the person writing this article grew up with a remote control connected to a VCR by an actual cable. Things have changed so quickly.
And yet, isn't it deeply intriguing? What might a day in this new reality look like? You have a chat with the 3D hologram of your relative on the other side of the planet, then stick on your Mesh Hololens for that morning meeting with the team, where you are actually "in" the meeting room in your company's Metaverse office. Yes, you still need a job, because how else will you afford your new digital avatar with those fresh NFT Nike sneakers? Yes, virtual sneakers. Remember to take them off as you enter your virtual house.
That cable-connected VCR remote is seeming increasingly remote. Welcome to a new world where we pay with digital cryptocurrencies for things we cannot touch, but which nevertheless exist. A new world where a machinist in Edmonton, Canada can work remotely on a physical production line in Rimini, Italy. A world where Lil Miquela can have 6 million social media followers and an illustrious modeling career with Calvin Klein and Prada, and even a music single release, despite only existing in the virtual world.
Does this world fill you with dread and foreboding, or excitement and anticipation? Or is it too much to just take in? The thing is, that there are very real and valid concerns about the Metaverse.
But isn't the title of the article a bit misleading? Well, to be fair, most things as complex and nuanced as the Metaverse will never really be 100% good or bad for anyone. There are upsides and downsides, and we need to explore some of the reasons why some might look at this new space and get the shivers.
First off is mental health. It's not science fiction to suggest that as the digital and virtual worlds merge, some individuals may have difficulty in distinguishing between their physical and virtual identity. When us remote control cable folks were kids, we watched the karate kid movie and imagined ourselves as Daniel; ready to stroll out into the street and challenge the neighborhood bully to a showdown. Two steps into that street and our illusions soon melted away, because we were only immersed in that reality in a moment of suspended connection with our own world. The Metaverse is a more persistent, multisensorial immersion, which simulates and sometimes even augments what we might do in the physical world.
We learned during the pandemic how much isolation affected us, and how Teams meetings just didn't cut it for many of us craving real human interaction. The Metaverse will offer opportunities for virtual work and study to be more immersive, but at what cost? The Hill put it very well in saying that "Even if the Metaverse is collaborative in the sense that there can be multiple user participants within a three-dimensional platform, we would have even less reason to physically interact. The implications would likely be even fewer in-person common meals, public ceremonies, celebrations, parties and so forth. The further removed from reality we become, the more emotional numbness and distance we feel. The less interactive. The less human. The highs are lower and the lows are higher. "
Statista found that nearly half of survey respondents were worried about becoming addicted to a simulated reality, as a form of escapism. As basic social media, email communication and cloud storage have all brought new challenges to society, it is fair to assume that the Metaverse will be no different, yet we have not done so well in supporting, for example, teenagers to become more resilient to body image anxiety, so why would we do any better with this? Time will surely tell.
Privacy is also an issue. As Brittan Heller and Avi-Bar Zeev wrote "Imagine five years from now, you’re walking down a street wearing your own mixed reality glasses. A virtual car drives by — it’s no coincidence that it’s the exact model you’ve been saving for". You are approached by avatars with no way of knowing that they are actually an advertisement. This ominous article in the Washington Post warned that VR headsets collect way more data about us than our phones, and "creepy companies" will love that, and that our bodies could be "a new data source".
Legal concerns like harassment and bullying, stalking and stealing others' intellectual property are all openly and often discussed in communities of law practice. The law is just catching up to cyber hate speech now, and will have to move far more quickly to offer protective frameworks in the Metaverse.
The opportunities in the Metaverse do not negate the concerns, and vice versa. The fact is that this is all unfolding right now, and it is happening whether we really like it or not. We can engage or opt out. We can get active and try to influence the shape of policy and regulation, or we can embrace its wild and unpredictable beginnings.
We cannot keep flying and driving around the world for conferences, meetings, site visits and all the rest of it. Fossil fuels are destroying our world, and we need to cut down drastically. Only 1% of the world actually travel by air, but an aspirational global population emerging from poverty will surely want their turn, and we must have more sustainable approaches in place.
Electric cars have not yet reached a tipping point, and planes are not about to fly on hydrogen fuel cells any time soon, so we need to change behaviors. The Metaverse helps us vastly reduce business travel, for everything from study groups to onboarding sessions, job interviews and open days. As electricity grids increasingly divest from fossil fuels to power our servers and devices more sustainably, we can turn attention to making those devices themselves more sustainable, not least by getting rid of planned obsolescence and bringing in right to repair. The Metaverse can facilitate this whole shift, imperfect though it is.
In the Metaverse, everyone can be a content creator, entrepreneur, innovator, reinvent themselves, create opportunities, educate themselves on their terms and bypass the traditional gatekeepers to opportunity. If marginalized communities are actively involved in creating this new world, and leading the design, we reduce the risk of encoding this world of privilege and prejudice into the new digital future. Of course, that means that we need to do better at supporting these communities to actually access these spaces in the first place.
As social media examines the racism of its current algorithms, we know that what we create is a reflection of who we are, and there is a danger there. Imagine the opportunity to make the digital world equitable for everyone while the physical world continues to struggle with such a shift in perspective. Could the equity of the new world reflect back into the old and illuminate it? Though the current internet is far from anti-racist, the opportunity to change this is too good to pass up.
Education can be greatly enhanced in the Metaverse. A whole new slew of career paths opening up, and the ability to innovate within those roles as the technology unfurls. This means new opportunities for institutions to prepare learners for this future, though not if they ignore it, which so many currently do. If institutions want to remain relevant, and they most certainly can, it is time to embrace the fact that the future is already here, and to focus on supporting us to develop the skills and knowledge we need to navigate it.
We are finding our own way through all of this, and though we are concerned about so many things in this new world, it is after all the creation of people who inhabit the current world, and so light and shadow are to be expected. The question is, which world is easier to change and make fairer in opportunity? That is why we can't help but feel positive about the Metaverse, and we will continue to explore it within our very real and present community.
How often do we hear adults – parents, caregivers, teachers – telling young people to put down whatever device is seemingly surgically attached to their hand and join them ‘in the real world’? What if we told you that, in some classrooms, young learners are being told to do the exact opposite? Welcome to the world of esports in education, where online gaming isn’t just being used to foster cooperation and creativity in the classroom; it’s opening doors to whole new careers for Gen Z and Gen Alpha.
If you hadn’t yet heard of esports (and you weren’t already reading this article), we bet you would soon. Esports (short for Electronic Sports) is competitive video gaming, where participants play games online in front of live and virtual audiences, often for money. While esports can trace its roots back to the 1970s and 80s, it’s been in the last twenty years that competitive gaming has really exploded. Today, it’s an industry that’s estimated to worth over $1 billion worldwide, with viewing figures overtaking that of other huge sporting events such as the Super Bowl and the NBA.
While the biggest earners are older teens and adults, Gen Z and Gen Alpha are big consumers of online gaming content. Around 15% of esports viewers in the US are between the ages of 13 and 17. The rising popularity of esports is undoubtedly having an impact on the cultural and social lives of the youngest generations, and educators are now looking at how esports might fit into the modern classroom. So what does esports bring to education, and how can we make sure its impact is a positive one?
Like many new things in EdTech, there is more to esports than first meets the eye. While gaming is a hobby that is often characterized as isolating and even addictive, the skills needed to engage with and enjoy it are exactly the key skills that schools are looking to develop in this newest generation of learners. In fact, many of the skills associated with more traditionally athletic team sports are identical to those that are important for gamers.
Perhaps the most obvious skill that esports can develop in learners is how to be a good teammate. Through playing with other students, working together to strategize and solve in-game puzzles, learners improve their communication, active listening skills and ability to compromise. Moreover, esports can help foster problem-solving, strategic thinking and creativity in young learners. The competitive element of esports shouldn’t be discounted either, helping students to manage the disappointment of losing and celebrate success in a respectful and sporting way.
By seeing the results of their collaboration in real time (rather than being continually reminded about that often vague and abstract term ‘teamwork’), learners can appreciate the value of working with others, especially in an online space. By offering esports as part of the curriculum, schools can help counteract any sense of isolation students may feel. Esports can give young people who might otherwise struggle to feel involved in the school community a way to feel part of something. Esports can be their ‘thing’ when the school band or football team might never have been.
In one school in California, the esports curriculum is already successfully up and running. Anaheim Elementary School District is home to the ‘Nurturing Positive Gamers’ programme, a nine-week curriculum for 9 to 12-year-olds that uses gaming to encourage positive social-emotional development. It has been created to plug an important gap in digital education, as the district’s Director of Technology, Cory Robertson explained in a recent interview.
“We have spent 20 years teaching kids how to be good digital citizens—how to hold online discussions, ignore rude/bullying posts, avoid chat rooms—yet, we don't have any formal instruction based in the gaming world. That's where our program comes in,” he explained. “We teach kids how to maintain positivity through tough gaming interactions, how to provide critical feedback, how to deal with confrontations, and more. The program culminates in a district-wide tournament, in which students get an opportunity to put to test all that they've learned.”
As well as developing certain skills, adopting esports into the school curriculum means that educators can have a degree of influence over the types of games that young people are engaging with – in and out of school. Think of video games, and you wouldn’t be blamed if the first thing that came to mind was a first-person shooter scenario, where wreaking violence and havoc is the aim of the game. Of course, there are games (wildly successful ones) just like that, but this doesn’t have to be the case for schools. Games that emulate existing sports tournaments, such as Rocket League (as played by the classes at Anaheim Elementary), or focus on puzzles and code-cracking, are engaging and enjoyable for young learners (and teachers!), while being classroom- and age-appropriate.
And the benefits? “We're seeing lots of positive results with student behaviour and confidence. Many participants who may not have been excelling in traditional ways in the classroom have become leaders of their Rocket League Team.”
We know already that a career playing video games can be lucrative. Winners of international esports tournaments can net rewards of multiple millions of dollars – more when sponsorship and appearance fees are counted in that total. But while cries of “I want to be a professional gamer!” might make some parents and teachers wince, a successful career in esports doesn’t just mean playing competitively. Other esports career paths include referees, coaches, recruiters and social media management, as well as the opportunity to study esports at degree level. The link between esports and the skills needed for STEM careers is also strong, as are other career paths including event management and graphic design.
“Games are a great place to express yourself,” says Cory Robertson. “Like to draw? Love music? Interested in the functions of technology and audio-video systems? There’s a career in gaming for you. It’s all about choice and options and making sure every child in our district knows they have a place in this world.”
With recent estimates suggesting that 97% of teenage boys and 83% of teenage girls play video games, we know that Gen Z and Gen Alpha are already well-versed in online gaming. Instead of fighting against young people’s passion for esports, educators should harness students’ interest and help ensure this pastime remains a positive one. It may just turn into their future career. Game on!
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We always start with letters, so let's switch up and start with numbers.
We could go on, but we suspect you know as well as we do that remote working is not going anywhere. The Covid-19 pandemic accelerated a trend that was already in motion. Digital infrastructure means WFH is increasingly accessible, so being more present for family, and avoiding the drudgery of the commute, is a clear advantage. Companies being able to hire from a wider pool of talent, not limited by geography, is also a huge competitive advantage (for the more forward-thinking organizations, at least).
The climate science is also clear. A study by the European Commission found that “non-residential buildings are on average 40% more energy intensive than residential buildings (250 kWh/m2 compared to 180 kWh/m2)”. It is for this reason that working from home is generally held to be more energy efficient than working from the office, though a number of other factors can affect this, such as the energy efficiency of the home versus the office building, and the method and distance of the commute to the office. In general, however, office environments use a lot of energy to run, and most of that energy ain't coming from low-carbon sources, unfortunately.
So that's where we're going, and it's all good....isn't it? But wait. What might we lose by working remotely? What about the isolation, disconnection, and the resulting mental health risks? What about people struggling to balance personal and professional lives in a WFH scenario, and ending up struggling in both?
Zooming in on education in particular, it's hard to really work out how things lie. Many of the studies done on how education professionals are coping with remote work, had the backdrop of a global pandemic to contextualize it, and so it will take some time to see the true picture of just how remote workers are coping.
That said, some things are pretty clear. A Yougov survey in 2021 found that the top 5 issues in remote working were:
While number (3) might be somewhat alleviated by a post-pandemic return to socializing for some, the other issues seem to transcend the lockdown period, and they are oh-so-relatable for so many of us.
How can you unplug when you work and relax in the same physical space, or even in the same room? Where can the mind find a partition between these two phases of the day, and how can you really truly disconnect?
If you've managed to avoid technology beyond emails and WhatsApp (congrats!), communication in remote working can certainly be stressful as a steep learning curve. On the tech side, getting invites to meetings through Teams, automatically added to your Outlook calendar in a different time zone, but your laptop microphone is not great, so you take it on the phone and have to download the app, and then someone calls you halfway through your sales pitch. Not good... And then there is all the etiquette of online meetings, and the total absence of the usual visual cues for turn taking and interrupting.
Distractions, oh yes. How easy it is to find yourself making another cup of tea, or chatting with the delivery driver. Or family who don't quite get that working at home is not the same as "being home" and interrupt you in mid-flow. Motivation is really hard when in the midst of all this, and that leads naturally to anxiety and yet more stress. It is far from easy.
We have already passed on as much insight as we can on how to actually tackle these issues as an employee in our article Working from Home-5 ways to be productive, but what about the responsibilities of the employer? Out of the social circle of the office or teacher's room, and away from the incidental and proximal interactions with colleagues (yep, now you have to schedule those!), how can institutions and organizations actually help to build and sustain a culture of wellbeing among their remote workers?
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This is critical. Leadership is what really sets a culture, and you can say all you want about wellbeing, but if the person in charge is not walking the talk, it falls flat. Remember that shifting to this way of working is something that a lot of people find difficult, and they need to know that's OK. Talk about it, be flexible, encourage rest, share experiences and insights.
If your employees feel like they are trusted and don't have to be "on" every second of the day, then that feeling will begin to pervade through the team. Don't just say it; model it and give it time for others to feel they can do the same. The tone you set will be the thing that makes it all work.
Starting at 9am and finishing at 5? What about the early risers that want to do a burst of work at 6am and take a long midday break before doing some low cognitive-load stuff in the late afternoon? Instead of hard and fast working hours, focus more on a shared expectation of what needs done each week or month, and let people manage their time in a way that suits them. Discuss expectations, times to keep free for possible meetings, but leave things as open as you can. Ultimately, if a goal is achieved, who cares if it was done at 6am or 6pm? Not us, that's for sure.
Micromanaging your team never ends well, and this only amplifies in the WFH scenario. Focus on deliverables, not how many hours people spend at their laptop, because when has the latter ever had a causative relationship with productivity?
Try to schedule meetings with notice and not just expect someone to be in front of their laptop at all times. The presenteeism culture is just not going to work here- the idea that someone has to be "there" at all times and that they are somehow, magically, proving themselves to be an asset. Your growth hacker is out hacking at the hedgerow in the garden at 2 in the afternoon? Good! They're getting a bit of sun (unless they live in Scotland), and when they do come back to the desk they'll likely be in a better frame of mind.
The only time you see your colleagues is in the Zoom Mosaic at the weekly meeting? Not cool. Back in the physical space, you may have attended that same weekly meeting, but remember the chat before and after? That was the best bit. The small talk, the jokes, the pulling one person aside for a quick recount of how unspeakably good your weekend was. All of it. Trying that on Zoom reminds us of those fake fires that people put on their TV screens to make the room look cosy.
The social stuff has to be given space, encouraged, ring fenced. A morning chat just because. Virtual coffee meetings might sound a bit of a stretch, but they can really help to create a space where colleagues might actually share how they are feeling, and hear how others are doing. Or just talk about that unspeakably good weekend with someone. It matters.
What about the hybrid teams? When there is a group in the workplace, and others at home, it is easy for the latter to feel left out. Think about the team as a whole, and include them in training, meetings, catch-ups and all the rest of it. Make time for it, even if it's a quick message or just a 5-minute call to ask for feedback on an idea someone put to you today, because isolation is a real issue, and it can build quickly.
You can go further, of course, from the virtual lunch to remote bingo, but the basic foundations of personal and social interaction should first be in place.
Mental health days are a good thing, and if they didn't exist, they would still happen under the guise of "feeling sick". Creating an environment where your team don't feel they can bow out early one day or take a day off because they just can't cope, well that serves nobody.
But read that last sentence again. People ask for a mental health day often as a reaction to what is going on. They may have reached a crisis point, and it may well be a precursor to full burnout or worsening long-term mental health issues. With this in mind, it is important to see mental health days as simply a resource that can be made available, but it is not a cure. This Forbes article puts it very well, but the crux is that the effect of a day off disappears quickly, and if we haven't addressed why the time off was needed in the first place, then we are back to square one.
Access to support, a culture of communication, flexibility, Helping others to feel connected and seen; all of this is the backbone of a culture that prioritizes wellbeing, and there is no quick fix here. Be intentional, show you care, share how you are feeling with others (yes the "boss" can be vulnerable-it is a strength) and remember to take time for yourself too. You are equally deserving of that time and space.
We don't have all the answers, but this is the approach that has worked well for us. geNEOus (formerly NEO Academy) is a fully remote team, and we have our ups and downs too. We have also worked with many clients and caught glimpses of their culture and dynamics, so we have a picture of what is out there. We would love to hear more from you about your own experiences and insights to add to this picture, so please do reach out and tell us if you have something we can share with others.
That's how we succeed together.
Manifesto is a big word for a small consultancy, but geNEOus (formerly NEO Academy) has never been shy. We are five years old this month and, like many, we get a little reflective on birthdays, and that's as good a time to be reflective as any.
You see, 5 years ago we started out with a different idea. The whole reason "Academy" is in the name is that, at the outset, we wanted to be part of the education revolution by actually providing nano-sized learning content that learners could really use and apply in their lives. This Netflix-style approach to easily digestible and accessible content in education was something our friend and colleague Dr Steve Mallon was once horrified about, but came round to be a fan in the end. We all did, because it's part of a non-traditional approach to education on the learner's terms, and so it must be a good thing.
Good it may have been, but affordable for a new startup it was not. We kept the name but shifted focus. If we couldn't actually provide learning content that was fit for a 21st century learner, then we would focus on supporting others who did. We wanted to be part of the conversation about what education could and should look like, and we could make sure our voice was heard in other ways (like our amazing blog and geNEOuschats series!) and by elevating the voices of those we aligned with.
It has been a 5-year journey and though much has changed, we find ourselves only more committed than ever to key principles that guide us. As we wandered last week around the education area at the Expo 2020 in Dubai (still going in 2022 after the pandemic!), we found ourselves inspired. Sometimes we need that reminder that there are many others out there that feel the way we do, and though change happens slowly, it happens nonetheless. We want to be there as it does.
5 years on, we give you the 5 precepts of the geNEOus (formerly NEO Academy) Manifesto.
The year is 2022 and yet, some of us are still considered less than others. Though the uneven playing field is often subtle to those it favors, the people it disadvantages are more than aware that the game is rigged.
Diversity is a strength, and building a diverse team matters, but inclusion is where much of the hard work needs to be done. We need a world where everyone can thrive, regardless of gender, race, culture, religion, neurology, and all of the weaving intersections which make up the beauty of the human species. That means actively examining and dismantling our prejudices, and supporting the amazing work of people in our network who make things better. We can all do better, every day, to make sure every voice is valued.
The geNEOus (formerly NEO Academy) team, currently 80% women, have seen first hand what our world of marketing and recruitment looks like, the challenges it brings, and the opportunities it presents, and we know there is much work to do. We want to see more women in leadership roles and to challenge the stereotypes about who can succeed in our industry. By setting an example for others, we want to inspire other women to know that they can walk their own paths in this industry too.
That goes for the institutions and organizations we support too. We want to support the people who are stepping up, such as our friends at CodeOp in Barcelona, who are the first international tech school for women, transgender, and non-binary individuals (women+) who want to transition to, or upskill in tech. We value this open and frank discussion with peers, colleagues, clients and friends, and invite you to join us.
UN SDGs: 5 (gender equality), 10 (reduced inequalities)
After hundreds of geNEOuschats and articles, you've probably guessed: we don't think traditional education has a future. The industrial-era model, where people learn in lockstep within assessment-driven structures, is not what learning can truly be.
We are now in a time, where information can be accessed at the touch of a button, and yet so many learners sit in rows facing one person, expected to passively internalize this knowledge without voice, choice, play, experimentation and all the other good stuff. Not good enough.
This model was understandable when things were more or less linear. We got a job in an industry that likely existed when we started school, so we knew how to prepare for it. We might have even stayed there for 40 years and built a career. That world is gone.
Volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous is the world of tomorrow, and generation Z and Alpha already know this. Technology, climate change, globalization; everything is changing so fast, and learners don't want to spend years in a room learning things they have no choice over, only to emerge and find out the world has already moved on.
Today, a school or college is just one of many available resources, as we learn online, with AI supported adaptive or liquid learning, or teach ourselves any skill we choose through MOOCs, peer to peer learning, community organizations, open studios and so many more. We can learn while traveling, working, raising or supporting a family, across times zones, synchronous or asynchronous. Everyone in at 8am when the bell rings will be a concept we look back on as a time gone by.
We can also find many other ways to evidence this learning that is not a degree or masters. We can collect micro credentials and build a learning portfolio to present to an employer, or go directly to the company we want to work with and take their own course offering. Companies understand the degree is not the golden ticket it once was, and are looking increasingly for skills like critical thinking and creativity, which are not always prioritized in traditional models.
Of course, the way we work is changing too, and more and more of us are reskilling, upskilling, downshifting, homeworking, project hopping and all the rest. It's exciting, but it can be challenging too. Tomorrow's learners need to know how to follow their purpose and passion, adapt, change, collaborate and innovate.
How we learn, where and when we learn, what we learn and how we demonstrate it- these are all changing quickly. Education institutions need to work hard to stay relevant in this future, and they have an important role to play. We support those that are striving to offer a dynamic, purposeful, learner-directed, transdisciplinary model, flexible and open, to focus on the skills we need to thrive.
We need to support others to become and be the best version of themselves in a world that needs all hands on deck. We support those institutions that are reimagining and humanizing learning, and we will continue to champion them and to help them grow.
UN SDGs: 4 (quality education), 8 (decent work and economic growth)
There was a world once, where we learned to compete not against ourselves, but against others, in order to define who and what we are. There was a world where we aimed to consume, accumulate, discard and repeat. The linear economy of take-make-waste is not sustainable. The business model of stepping on others to get ahead, so that only the few can climb, is not our best look as a species.
We do not want to belong to that world. We need to think differently. Collaboration and cooperation, empowerment and equity, integrity and ikigai.
geNEOus (formerly NEO Academy) is not an agency. We do not drip feed services to a client, and keep them dependent on us long term. Withholding know-how, hoarding expertise and creating a captive client is not what we are about. We are happiest when we are no longer needed, because we know our work is done. When the client feels empowered to take things forward on their own, we're over the moon.
That does not fit the old model, but here's the thing- relationships are healthier when we lift each other up. geNEOus (formerly NEO Academy) is a consultancy, which is about sharing our expertise with others, pure and simple. If we truly believe that making a positive impact on education is our top priority (and we do), then why would we give anything less than our best to those who play a part in that?
Another mindset is possible, and by sharing expertise, bringing in others as equals to support in projects, using our network to lift others up, our community is enriched. This is something at the heart of the geNEOus (formerly NEO Academy) community, where we introduce our network each week to new people, new ideas and new collaborative possibilities through our geNEOuschats series.
By helping clients work efficiently, to streamline resources and work smarter, we can help the environment too. Less energy in, more energy out.
UN SDGs: 11 (sustainable cities and communities), 12 (responsible consumption and production)
Those bumps in the road during our first five years? Quite a few of them came from saying "no" to opportunities when we really could have used the income for growth. The reason we said "no", however, is the reason our clients trust us today, and we will never regret these moments, difficult though they were!
Values are everything. Trust, integrity, creativity. These are easy words to say, or to put on a website, but there are moments when you have to stand in them, and that is the real test.
These values are interlinked. When we do not believe the values of a potential client or partner are aligned with ours, we say no to working together. When we do not feel that we can genuinely provide a client with the best support and expertise, we say no. We know who we are and we know what we are good at. That means we have to be creative, finding a path forward that is quite different from most others in our field.
Because of this, people trust us. We may not be rocketing to the NASDAQ any time soon, but we like who we are, and our clients tell us that they feel taken care of, and feel that we have their best interests at heart. That means we're on the right track, wouldn't you say?
Being selective about who we work with is a cornerstone of our internal culture, and our team know that this is something solid underneath them. That is vital to us as geNEOus (formerly NEO Academy) is fundamentally about people. If our team doesn't feel good about what they're doing, then we're not doing the right thing.
Wellbeing and mental health are always going to be a priority for us, but before reaching for the gym memberships, we prefer to get the foundations right. Trust, honesty, communication, support, growth and development. In the end, what people want more than anything is to know their personal and professional selves are not distinct, and that they don't have to leave their sense of purpose at the office door. We don't have an office, but you know what we mean.
UN SDGs: 3 (good health and wellbeing) , 8 (decent work and economic growth)
Mandarin Chinese does not have a future tense. Yes they can indicate the future through temporal phrases, but the language is spoken with a sense of the future and the present being far closer than they are in future based languages like English.
Is that why the future is always talked about with such distance in English and Spanish? We're not certain, but we need to change our mindset quickly. Things that are massively changing the way we work and live are already in motion. Climate breakdown, cryptocurrency, Web3, decentralization of trade and finance, diminishing raw resources and increasing population.
We are seeing this unfold right in front of us, but so many institutions are waiting for change to happen to them, rather than being part of it. Learners are looking at education now with different eyes.
The promise that life will be better for children than it was for their parents is clearly fragile. The stable future, the easy access mortgage, the reasonably predictable career paths; gone. The ability to engineer our own learning, demonstrate it to employers, build our own businesses online, work remotely with different income streams, socialize in the metaverse doing things that we can't quite even imagine right now; it's all happening in front of us.
We must be part of that, because this is the future, and it is happening now. NEO Academy is committed to helping institutions and fellow education marketing professionals to not only demystify the world of Web3, tokenomics, decentralisation and the metaverse, but to learn how to make the most of the opportunities it presents. And who says we can't have fun while we do it?
Learners have a right to feel supported and prepared for the world ahead, but to do so we have to step back from the idea that we are in control. Educators and institutions can no longer claim to meet this need, if they are still carving out the path to a future, which is based on the principles of a world that no longer exists. We must all become learners together, focus on preparing for uncertainty and on the skills and technologies that will help us to do that. It is time to let go of certainty.
We are ready, because we have long embraced the fact that change is the only constant in this new world. We are lifelong learners and constantly curious, and we can't wait to see what comes next. We want to work with others, to learn and share the best way forward; doing our best to make sure that learners have access to education that feeds and fuels their passions, and contributes to a better world for all of us.
UN SDGs: 8 (decent work and economic growth) 17 (partnerships for the goals),
geNEOus (formerly NEO Academy) is here to support institutions, professionals, colleagues and friends in any way we can. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose say the French, and they might be right. Whatever comes next, one thing remains the same for us at geNEOus - values, passion, dedication, and a shared vision of a world where we all succeed together.
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As early as March 2020, the phrase ‘new normal’ was being used to describe the uncertain phase of the near future we were inching towards. It’s a phrase we’ve come to know as a vague blanket term that attempts to soothe fears and transition us from the ‘old way’ of doing things and into the world as we find it now – even if no one knows exactly what that ‘new’ world is quite going to look like yet. But what if you weren’t around during the old way of doing things? What if this ‘new normal’ is simply your ‘normal’? This is exactly what millions of young learners around the globe are experiencing right now.
One month into the pandemic, 1.2 billion children had been taken out of the classroom. While some were learning from home, many more had their education effectively put on ice. The OECD reported that up to 8% of French students fell off their teachers’ radar in the first two weeks of the national lockdown there, while in Los Angeles (the second-largest school district in the US) more than a tenth of high school students had had no contact with teaching staff after three weeks. By the time the new school year began in late summer 2020, just 40% of K-12 students in the US were being offered any degree of face-to-face learning.
For students already at school, this shift to remote or hybrid learning had a huge impact on their learning. In the US, recent data shows us that students in grades 1 to 6 are now on average 4 months behind in reading and 5 months behind in maths. It’s an effect that has been dubbed ‘unfinished learning’. For students already facing the challenges of an inequitable education system, things have been even tougher. Students from low-income households, Black and Hispanic students, have been left even further behind than some of their peers. But what about those young people who started their school lives right in the middle of the pandemic? What has been the impact for those students whose learning is ‘unfinished’ before it’s even begun?
A recent study on how prepared pre-school aged children in England were for the transition to school shows us just how significantly our youngest learners have been impacted. Over three quarters of the schools surveyed said that children starting school in 2020 needed more support than in previous years. Literacy skills, communication and language skills, and social and emotional development were highlighted as the areas that concerned teachers the most. Around 90% of those surveyed were ‘concerned’ or ‘very concerned’ about how children were coping with each of these areas. Other findings from the UK tell us that nearly half (46%) of all young people who started school in 2020 were not ‘school ready’. This is a huge portion of young people who are already behind, only increasing the pressure felt by teaching staff who were juggling with the new demands of at-home and hybrid learning – much of which continues today.
We know just how much the COVID-19 pandemic kicked up the rate at which technology was being adopted into the classroom. This trend doesn’t show any signs of slowing down. The World Economic Forum predicts that by 2025, the global market for online education tools, software and platforms will be somewhere around $350 billion. Of course, the use of ‘ed tech’ as it’s known was a huge help in the middle of national lockdowns, but there is evidence that it could be a way to help support learners post-pandemic, too.
Some research has shown that learning online helps children learn faster, retaining up to 60% more material than through more traditional teaching methods. There are lots of reasons why this might be, not least because learning through apps and online tools allows children to work at their own pace. The ability to re-read exercises, re-do activities or skip through to areas that engage them most means that children can also learn faster with the help of ed tech tools. This statistic would certainly see some educators breathe a sigh of relief in the face of the huge ‘catch up’ operation many countries are now implementing.
That said, technology might not be the cure-all it is sometimes sold to be, particularly for the youngest students. While the independence offered by ed tech can be helpful, children in early years' education also require a structured environment that engages all the senses, not just a flattened, copy-and-paste digital classroom. Without proper teacher training and, crucially, greater equity across who has access to ed tech, not much will change.
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Even if these structures are put in place to support digital learning, there is still a huge question mark over how to best foster good mental health and emotional wellbeing in the new normal. Concerns about their own education, social distancing measures and fear for their own health and their loved ones has increased feelings of anxiety, depression, loneliness and isolation amongst young people. For the youngest students, their lack of social-emotional skills will make it even harder to process and deal with these stressors. Education must go beyond literacy and numeracy if the youngest learners are to have a fighting chance of healing from the events of the last couple of years.
This focus on social-emotional learning, which encompasses skills and habits including self-awareness, relationship building and self-management, is integral to young peoples’ development. Organizations such as the Education Endowment Fund in the UK and the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL) in the US offer programs and support to educators so that they can better support their young people.
While results may be difficult to measure overnight, adopting a social-emotional-focused approach can start today. It could be about creating time and space for young people to discuss their concerns or sharing thoughts on current events in a safe way. Social-emotional learning might look like flipping a task on its head, asking learners how they want to learn, rather than sticking to the tried and tested but tired methods. This child-centred approach doesn’t just help to shift things in the short term; CASEL found that the positive impact of an education system that prioritized social-emotional learning was still being felt over 18 years on. This approach might not be a quick fix, but it seems to be a long-lasting one.
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It’s clear that we adults need to take a fresh look at how our education systems support young learners in the new normal. Speaking on the UN’s International Day of Education, Dr Anantha Duraiappah, Director at UNESCO’s Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development (MGIEP) made the case for ‘an education system designed for human flourishing’, not just meeting targets and playing catch-up.
“…any educational system in the future should align curricula, teaching practices and learning evaluations with a ‘whole brain’ notion of neural interconnectedness and combined cognitive, social and emotional learning” Dr Duraiappah says. Recognizing the scale of this challenge, he is calling for governments and educational bodies to looks at the evidence of the impact of the pandemic and act accordingly. “Policy not grounded in science and evidence is likely to perpetuate existing insufficient education systems” he concludes. It is not enough to continue as normal. We must look to something new to support our young people as they start to engage – and, hopefully, flourish – in a post-pandemic world.
Is there, as the head of Eton College feels, a gap between standards of teaching at secondary and Further / Higher Education? Sure, the environment is different, expectations are different and perhaps, in the traditional system at least, the "higher" we go in education the more emphasis there is on what the learner does, than on the educator themselves. Perhaps.
We're not convinced about all that. Aside from the fact that education should see the learner in the driving seat all the way through, it is easy to see why there might be a notable difference in the standards and the approach of teaching when you move from secondary to FE or HE. This is not to demonize the hard working professionals who do everything they can to enrich the experience of further education, or the institutions themselves, but let's at least dive into why we might have an issue. We will come back to what we might need to do to address it, but we would love to hear your thoughts as well, so please do reach out.
Teacher training varies so much around the world but one thing remains relatively constant, which is that teachers of K12 education must generally do a standardized and government recognized course to prepare, and teachers at FE and HE have a wide variety of options, from institutional learning programs to self-development, and even just strolling into the classroom with a whiteboard pen and saying "let's do this".
In K12 education, the formal pathways are generally rigorous, extensive, and prepare teachers to do well within the education system that exists around them. They learn about safeguarding, methodology, inclusion, Special Educational Needs and a host of other important things that help them to get the best out of a traditional classroom environment. This training is the beginning, and not the end of their journey, and many go on to regular Professional Development in formal and informal settings.
In Further and higher Education, however, as one UK recruiter put it "Many FE employers are willing to overlook the absence of a teaching qualification provided you have considerable expertise in your chosen field". This industry expertise is not simply left at the door when taking up a teaching job, and a great many professionals continue to do both at the same time. Why? To remain current, in touch and, let's face it, solvent. Education is often quite the pay cut for those coming in from the corporate or private sector, but the desire to teach is one we should always listen to, and practical experience is extremely valuable in academia.
So now we have professional experts in the lecture theaters and in tutorials who, as the OECD tells us "face barriers to participating in training due to lack of support or incentives and conflicts with their work schedule". Yet we mostly agree that we need these self-same practical experts in education, so that we are not divorced from what happens in the "real" world. Not an easy fix.
We also have the culture of research in HE, which attracts a lot of PhD students who really want to be part of this world. Yet, often as a condition of that PhD, they are asked to teach some classes, and this often happens with only rudimentary support, such as an introductory course in teaching. Some doctoral candidates love the opportunity to teach, but there are many who just want to be getting on with their research, and to whom teaching is an added stress they don't need. If you are anxious about public speaking, for example, teaching is even more of a challenge; especially with 50 lab hours on top every week.
In some European countries such as the UK and in (most) parts of Germany, institutions will hire a teacher if they are willing to "work towards" a teaching qualification, but that can be open ended and often does not apply to those who only do a small number of class hours. Professional development in education and teaching might be "encouraged" but it is not always required. In other countries, there are many institutions who have no official policy on this at all and hire according to shifting internal criteria.
Yes, there are many great HE or FE teaching programs out there, and institutions which oblige or at least support their teaching staff to undertake training, but in may parts of the world, especially in private institutions, this is not the norm. Does this matter? And why should learners, institutions and educators start to think about addressing this? What are the obstacles in our way?
We didn't say qualification, and we won't. Some of the most amazing and inspiring teachers we have ever seen have not gone through formal teacher training. They were, however, experienced in mentoring, encouraging, reformulating, and knowing when to support and when to step back. This is really what we are talking about here, and whether this skill is formally or informally gained is not the point. There are teachers out there like Claudia Tridapalli who experiment, reflect, learn and iterate every single class, in pursuit of the best learning experience for their students, but there are also some who are teaching as they themselves were taught, and not going further.
We need to tackle the basics. The idea that a passive or even semi-active lecture is actually "education" is frankly outdated in a world where simple information transfer is now a wholly digital affair. Reading PowerPoints to Generation Z and then giving them a quiz belongs to the 1970s and is just asking for trouble. Look how angry this one student is in a scathing review of her (nameless) institution (and read the full discussion in the comments; it's really quite entertaining).
The understanding of how to create positive conditions for learning, how to help learners exercise more control over how they construct their knowledge, and knowing how understanding is built, tested and internalized. This is all critical stuff, and yet so many learners are still being talked at for two hours, taking furious notes and doing the actual "learning" at home as they make sense of their scribblings and start to actually construct the knowledge on their own terms.
Is anyone happy in that situation? Is it reasonable to assume that educators and learners want to finish a session feeling positive, and knowing that they grew and developed? We think so. Yet, we also know so many teachers in FE and HE who are really struggling to engage their students, and who are losing sleep at night over how to do better. But this is not an easy thing to address, and this is not the only story out there.
The first obstacle we encounter in this journey is the self perception of university and college teachers. Many lean into the idea of being an educator or a professor, and they even get a cardigan with elbow patches and a cluttered desk in a dimly lit office. That is a stereotype, but it did the trick. You see, here we are talking instead about the teacher who breezes in from a day in the office to deliver a lecture in Financial Accounting, or a tutorial in Drone Engineering.
If you ask them what their profession is, they'll answer "accountant" or "engineer" but not "teacher". They are here to impart their professional knowledge and experience, but encourage them to undertake some professional development in education and you get a very perplexed response. "Why?".
Aside from not even perceiving ourselves as teachers or educators, the conflation of professional spheres gives rise to another obstacle, and that is the idea of just what teaching is. Many professional coming to teach in HE and FE are skilled communicators, but communication is multifaceted. Polished presentation skills might be finely tuned to an outcome such as persuasion or impact, but the skills to help listeners engage with and internalize new knowledge can be really quite different. And even then, is a presentation really the best we can offer in an age where neuroscience and psychology tell us so much more about optimal learning environments?
The issue of communication is equally acute for the research side of academic institutions. A PhD candidate in cellular biology who, despite having been alone in her laboratory for several years with sheets of data and little need to communicate anything until that data reveals something, suddenly finds herself in front of a lecture theatre with 200 young minds. They look at her from uncomfortable seats, mobile phones in hand, wondering what she has to tell them that is more important than doom scrolling .
And the institution. Who runs it? In the business school, is it more business or more school? You will almost always find that institutions measure teaching quality; usually in the form of student questionnaires, but there are not always mechanisms in place to support the teacher who is struggling. You present a teacher with their 5/10 score and scathing commentary, but the real question is- where do we go from here?
How do we meet this challenge? Well, we need your ideas here, and we also need to dive into a few geNEOusChats to gather some insight from our amazing community of extraordinary experts, passionate professionals and boundary-pushing...erm...buddies. Let's pause, reflect and come back to this in part two to see what solutions might be out there.
We have said this before, but one more time for those in the back row: being an expert in a subject does not mean we know how to communicate it to others. Loving what we do does not mean we know how to inspire others. Learners are growing up in an age where they can micro-credential their way through a variety of episodic learning as and and when they need it, crowdsource solutions, bypass the need for formal qualifications and so much more. If we do not place more value on the craft of education and on a learning environment that is more human than humdrum, we will lose them.
