The Learning Counsel is a research institute and news media hub headquartered in Sacramento. Its membership includes approximately 215,000 superintendents and assistant superintendents, technology and instructional administrators, curriculum specialists, education publishers and educational leaders from pre-k through higher ed.

As the Learning Counsel helps guide education professionals through the shift to digital curriculum, they have become an intermediary between schools and technology companies, helping educators navigate the $23 Billion curriculum industry to find positive outcomes for their learners.

Schools and districts work with The Learning Counsel to find help transitioning to digital curriculum, gain awareness of new resources and write their goals and policies.

One of the benefits for Learning Counsel members is KnowStory, an agnostic sharing and recommendations platform designed to help schools with needed discovery and analysis related to digital content and curriculum. KnowStory Learning Groups explore vital topics and catalyze the curriculum industry. Each group has a sponsored (industry) chairmanship role as well as an education-side chairperson, live meetings online, and an in-person working meeting at the Learning Counsel National Gathering each year. 

One of the most effective Learning Groups this year is the Instructional Digital Design/Academic Models – UX (User Experience) Group, co-chaired by Robin Gonzales, founder and president of Zia Learning, a company that designs, develops and implements personalized learning programs in schools. UX Group members are tasked with defining a good user experience for teachers, students, parents and administrators. The group examines the user experience at the teacher and student levels, as well as new classroom models, discussing how software structures, systems, curriculum maps and new frameworks are designed and the implications to education and the digital transition.

In a recent live online meeting, Learning Counsel Founder LeiLani Cauthen illustrated how the user experience was changing education in America. “Seven percent of American students have left the building for unschooling or homeschooling,” said Cauthen. “This is about 1.1 million greater than the charter school population, and it is the fastest growing movement in America. It accelerated in 2017, due in part to fear of violence and bullying, problems with curriculum, and desire for family. That's what the data is showing. But that is only part of the story. Families are also being pried from public education roles by the promise of a better education user experience.

“If you're in California like me, you saw constant advertising over the summer from k-12 and private online education institutions like Laurel Springs and others. They're convincing people that they don't have to go anywhere to get an education. We should pay attention to this in terms of the user experience. It has to do with all those things that I was just talking about. A sense of family, the ability to be entirely mobile and the buildout of a fully digital pathway with the insertion of teachers at interception points, like chat-box windows with live teachers if you need them or a teacher that automatically gets online if they see that you're stuck. Here in Sacramento, there are mall storefronts that feature Fuel Education or Innovations in Learning and they have science labs in them as part of their ‘online program.’ UX just took a new dimension. It's been doing that for a little while. But, the dimension of those elements, I think, are really critical to this conversation.”

According to Chris McMurray, Assistant Superintendent at Evergreen Public School District in Washington, “As we have considered reasons for this shift toward an alternative hybrid off-campus on-campus experience, we paid careful attention to the loss of relationships. We're really working hard to build a relationship-based service in the school district. It's easier for someone to say, ‘You know, I think I'm going to homeschool or I'm going to go with this alternative hybrid experience when I really don't connect with the other humans in the building, and more specifically the people who are teaching me and guiding the experience.’ That's problematic in my view because as soon as we remove the humans, the experience begins to degrade.

“We have a hybrid program as well. We were bouncing between which sorts of platforms would support people most effectively and still remain true to our philosophy of what the user experience should be, not just technically but what the learning experience should be in the district. Ultimately what it comes down to is the design of the experience. And we've challenged our professionals to be designers and our experienced designers to think about designing an experience versus designing lessons, because there's a difference. We haven't, I believe, as a business been successful in adapting to a world that is very different. We've fallen asleep at the switch a little bit. I feel like some of the relationship loss has instigated some of the migration away from the school building.”

Jonathan Decker, Educational Technology Integration Specialist from Palm Beach County in Florida asked about the impact of participation at the superintendent level in districts and what effect that might have on user experience. “It would be really great if you asked the district to participate in a questionnaire to see if there's consideration done at the institutional level about these things. I'd be very interested to know how much is actually part of the conversation with those folks that are going to be making the direction for the district in the UX.”

I feel like there's a marketing perspective to this,” said McMurray. “There's an opportunity to establish ourselves as an organization that strengthens our ability to work with and be understood by the community that pays our bills, essentially. So that when hard questions are asked in the world, our constituents know who we are and what we stand for and can stand with us. Then, the part of the brand is the User Experience. I feel like that is some guidance that districts could use in terms of how they brand themselves and how they create the ultimate experience for the user consumer. And people don't talk about that. People don't talk about marketing and we're getting beat up by organizations who do, and that's what they do really well.”

“They're starting to,” said Cauthen, “We had a Superintendent from Denton ISD come and speak in Houston this last year. He talked about just the redesign of their logo, what an impact it had and how he started to pay a lot of attention to brand. This is a new arena for public education in a really big way, but it is part of the user experience.”

Public education is getting stiff competition from the consumer sector, and it is driving quality and enhancing learning. It is all part of the Consumerization of Learning, which in many ways is leading the way for an enhanced user experience in public education. Learners are demanding it, and UX professionals in both the industry and school sides of the equation are creating a greater opportunity for our learners. Groups like The Learning Counsel’s Instructional Digital Design/Academic Models – UX (User Experience) Group are playing a role in this enhanced opportunity.