Proof of Concept Testing for New Teaching Modes

More and more schools are announcing their intent to return to school with at least some of the schooling done remotely (or online). With the virus still spreading in many areas of the country and students, parents, and teachers reluctant to return to buildings under these conditions, the districts are designing a solution to the necessity to provide a high-quality education without meeting in-person (or meeting in-person less often to achieve physical distancing benchmarks). The remote learning solutions launched during the pandemic emergency this spring were rapidly rolled out and judged to be less effective with respect to learning outcomes (and other variables - remote learning survey results and virtual dropouts). Some models predict that the learning losses from COVID-induced changes to school structure could be significant. With all this in mind teachers and administrators are thinking about how to improve the quality of the remote experience this year to increase learning. I recommend that as they go, they run numerous fast-paced experiments starting with a proof of concept. 

What is a proof of concept?  In short, it is a technical feasibility test. A proof of concept tells you whether your idea is feasible given constraints, not whether the idea will solve the problem. The purpose of a proof of concept test is to reduce the risk that we will not be able to deliver the proposed solution. Among the reasons that we may not be able to deliver the solution: a shortage of needed resources (e.g. bandwidth for solutions delivered online), lacking an important capability (e.g. technical skills to stream content), or lack of scalability (e.g. solution is too labor-intensive to solve the problem efficiently). We use a proof of concept to check our assumptions about the feasibility of the idea before we scape to reduce the potential massive failure later. Below is an example. 

Let’s say that one of the central problems your team identified from the remote learning period this spring was that lots of secondary students stopped engaging in assignments and became virtual dropouts. After some root cause analysis, your team concludes that students that do not have daily contact with a teacher and other students in an academic setting lose connection to the school and value it less. To counter this process of losing a connection to the school, your school is planning to ensure that every student has contact with at least one teacher and one student per day through live classes (in this hypothetical daily live classes was optional in the spring and most teachers did not teach this way).  Before your team can launch the solution, a proof of concept should be run that tests the idea (e.g. quality of the video, quality of audio, devices, internet access, software, lighting).  The proof of concept does not show that the idea solves the problem (virtual dropouts), but sheds light on the feasibility of the idea and where gaps may exist.   Below is a Proof of Concept template that you can use to plan your test. Download a copy of the Proof of Concept template.