In this series, we highlight four edtech solution providers who are building an evidence base for their solutions in alignment with the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) and in partnership with educators and students. In this edition, we talked with Gladeo Co-Founder and COO Grace Cho about what’s behind Gladeo’s evidence-building efforts.
Gladeo, which offers an inclusive career navigation platform, is both a mission-driven, for-benefit corporation and an early-stage tech startup founded with the goal of democratizing access to dreams and opportunity.
Grace Cho, who founded Gladeo with sister Michelle and now serves as COO, acknowledges the complexity of the problem Gladeo wants to address, especially in light of a world of work that is rapidly changing. “The problem is multifactorial, added by a complex set of factors such as ability, experience, socioeconomic factors, gender, race and social capital,” says Cho. With this challenge in mind, Cho and the rest of the Gladeo team, knew it would be essential to ground their product development in research, informing the design of their technology and content with the best learner outcomes in mind. Gladeo’s approach to research-based content and product design strategy combines academic research in career development theory, sociology, psychology and learning science, in-house empirical research (from observed user data, design-thinking research and interviews) and lived experience.
The LearnPlatform by Instructure research team has been a match for Gladeo, says Cho because unlike traditional researchers who often focus on learning and exploring, “they are a research partner that brings all of that academic rigor and expertise, and a passionate commitment to outcomes while also fully understanding what our needs are as an early stage startup, to launch products fast, test, research, iterate, and repeat, and achieve commercial growth.” As a result of their work with LearnPlatform, Gladeo has met the evidence requirements for ESSA Level IV, “demonstrates a rationale” and has a logic model which identifies how a program aims to impact learners.
This foundational work has offered other benefits, including giving them a competitive edge by building trust and confidence with their customers and partners, and helping them identify new product ideas. According to Cho, sharing their logic model with educators and school administrators during the sales process, “helps ensure our partners that our goals truly are aligned with theirs and also helps to demonstrate our company’s deep understanding of the problems they are facing.”
Cho is optimistic about the growing trend of evidence work in education technology, and is hopeful that it will become a requirement for any company seeking to do work with districts to show evidence of achieving real outcomes for students, “I think that edtech companies that are already practicing evidence work today are going to be way ahead of the curve.”
Visit Gladeo to learn more about its offerings for education organizations.
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