In this episode of All Things Marketing and Education, we dive into the vital role that professional development and implementation play in EdTech success—two often overlooked aspects that can make or break the adoption of new technologies in K-12 education.

Elana sits down with Shelby Danks, founder and principal advisor of ARKEN RESEARCH, who has spent decades researching the efficacy of EdTech solutions in education. Shelby brings a wealth of knowledge about the importance of strategic implementation and the critical role professional development plays in ensuring that new tools truly benefit educators and students.

Together, they unpack the differences between implementation and professional development, discuss the common pitfalls that EdTech companies face, and explore best practices for rolling out new tools in a way that supports meaningful adoption in schools. Shelby also shares her insights on the “refrigerator vs. washer-dryer” metaphor, which helps companies understand the different levels of support their products require, and how they can partner with schools for long-term success.

If you’re an EdTech provider, education leader, or educator interested in understanding how to effectively implement new technology and provide professional development that truly supports teachers, this episode is for you. Tune in for practical takeaways and expert insights that will help you make thoughtful decisions when it comes to the adoption and integration of EdTech tools.

Full episode show notes here.

Elana Leoni:

Hello and welcome to All Things marketing and Education. My name is Elana Leoni and I've devoted my career to helping education brands build their brand awareness and engagement. Each week I sit down with educators, Ed Tech entrepreneurs, and experts in educational marketing and community building. All of them will share their successes and failures using social media, inbound marketing, or content marketing and community building. I'm excited to guide you on your journey to transform your marketing efforts into something that provides consistent value and ultimately improves the lives of your audience. And now, let's jump right into today's episode.

Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of All Things Marketing and Education. In this episode, I talked with Shelby Danks. Shelby is the founder and principal advisor and researcher at ARKEN RESEARCH. She has decades of experience in research and efficacy in K-12 education, and in this episode specifically, I get to pick her brain about the role of professional development and implementation in K-12 education. And if you don't know what that means, we are going to break it down to you.

But as I sat with Shelby, I first met her at ISTE, the biggest Ed Tech conference in the US. I just paused and said, "Wow, you have so much to talk about as it relates to the role that professional development plays uniquely in this space and what are the best practices around implementation and rollout of Ed Tech products and services." And she opened my eyes big and said, I just in my head said, gosh, people need to hear this. So here she is, this is episode not to be missed, and this is something that people don't talk enough about. So please enjoy this episode of Shelby Danks in All Things Marketing and Education. Enjoy.

All right, welcome, Shelby, to All Things Marketing and Education. I am so excited that you're here. When we talked briefly at ISTE, my eyes lit up because you're so authentic, we connected so quickly and the knowledge that you just selflessly shared, and your passion just shone through. I immediately said, you should come on the podcast because people need to learn. And I, personally, feel that we don't talk enough about evaluation, about research. And specifically what we're going to talk about in this show is the role of implementation and professional development in EdTech. So because there are also very few people and you're very passionate and knowledgeable, I was like, please come on, please, please, please share your knowledge with others. But welcome to the show.

Shelby Danks:

Thank you. Excited to be here.

Elana Leoni:

Yay. So why don't we talk about the difference between all of these things? Well, I guess before we get into the difference, we probably should define the role it plays because I think when people come into education in this field, whether it be K-12 or higher education, I think there's some assumptions about the role that professional development and implementation support plays. For example, I haven't seen this fully, this is a little bit more generalization, but hey, I have a product. I just need people to use the product and it'll be awesome. There, you're skipping the step of implementation and professional development. So can you talk to me a little bit about that unique role that those two things play, specifically in education?

Shelby Danks:

However, when the washer and dryer unit came out, most homes weren't necessarily configured to house a washer dryer unit. And so people had to do some different things. Some people would say, "Well just take the washer," or, "I'll just take the dryer," or I have to figure out, well, I could put them in my garage or I can stick it in the bathroom. And the homes weren't configured to really accommodate these solutions. And so over time, home builders slowly started to pick up on this, especially in the United States, and they started to build homes with laundry rooms. But it really wasn't until the laundry room was more ubiquitous that people really had a place to put it. And even now, in Europe, a lot of homes still don't have washer and dryer units for that exact purpose.

I think in the Ed Tech industry, a lot of people think that they are refrigerator, but they are really a washer and dryer unit. And with how that comes to play is oftentimes, we design based around a problem statement. So I recognize the teacher has a problem and I had a heart to solve it. So identify my teacher persona, I document and validate my problem, and then I create an enabling technology to solve that problem. And then I assume it should be relatively easy for a teacher to implement, but not all teachers are going to have the same configuration in their campuses to make that solution configurable for what they're doing. So ultimately, getting really clear about whether or not your solution is a refrigerator or a washer and dryer unit as it relates to the context of your school really informs the design of what should training and professional development and implementation support and coaching look like to help schools to accommodate what you're offering them.

And I think a really, really good example of this is there's this organization that I love that they're a non-profit organization, they're really well funded and they have created this beautiful solution for better communication and engagement with parents. It better communicates what students are learning every single day, and then that information gets sent out to parents. What an incredible problem to solve. And so what they've done is they're trying to go directly to schools to sell that offering. Well, they're bumping into some stags because they recognize the schools already have to plan their professional development for that content area, and they already have professional days that set aside for their math or their literacy studies. They don't have additional professional development days available for your particular solution. And so it might almost be better for that solution to partner with curriculum companies and or find out where they go to inject themselves into that solution in such a way so that the professional development could be one and the same.

And so finding strategic ways to partner further upstream could be a really, really good way for them to think about professional learning to reduce the amount of information that the teachers need, that professional development and implementation play. There's so many limitations that you even brought up. So in terms of implementation and just having professional development days, there's limitation. How do you get your product or service in there? Because even if you have in your mind the most easy user-friendly tech tool, you're going to need to say, here are all of the different types of educators that potentially could use it with different levels of needs, how do I get them to use it? How do I get them to start using it, is really the beginning of the implementation.

Elana Leoni:

So why don't you talk to me a little bit about the difference between implementation and professional development, because those sometimes get a little bit interchanged, but they frankly mean quite different things and especially from a revenue perspective, we're thinking strategically down the road, too. Why don't I kick it to you and just, you can tell us the definitions first.

Shelby Danks:

Sure. Well, I don't know if there's any one way to define them, which is good, but ultimately an implementation is, and I've actually heard implementation more confused with adoption than with professional development. But I think you're right. I think people try to use them interchangeably, but ultimately, I think thinking about how do we support districts to use our thingy is hands down one of the most challenging and one of the most neglected attributes of planning to support educators. The challenge with education companies, I think, is that we oftentimes create something that's intended to solve a problem, but what we're creating is one input or resource that educators can use.

So for example, we might have one ingredient to the cookies like the chocolate chips, or we might have the dough or the eggs, and then we're handing them all the ingredients and asking them to go make the chocolate chips themselves and then bake it accordingly, and know how to do that. So planning for effective implementation involves getting really clear on what are the different things that an educator needs to know and be able to do to prepare, to deliver and to use the solution. But more important than that, professional development is often just one point or one part of that overall implementation planning. And Instruction Partners is actually an example of an organization who provides exceptional guidance to districts and schools to help them plan for an effective implementation. They've got a curriculum planning guide, they've got a science of learning, literacy planning guide, tons of really great resources that really helps think about and plan.

Elana Leoni:

So what I'm hearing is, and again, I even get confused, so I actually meant implementation and adoption get used interchangeably a lot, but then professional development is this umbrella that may or may not include, sometimes, implementation programs and there's all these limitations within them. And uniquely in Ed Tech, it sometimes can make or break decisions for people to purchase your product, as well. So it's never been enough to just say, I've got this great product. What I hear you saying, Shelby, is what are all the resources and support that we have to really make the purchase fee or the purchaser say, wow, okay, this is going to be easier implementation, and maybe there's some case studies to show how easy it was to implement, and here are all the resources, so I feel really confident.

So there's this really beautiful case that you can make around, I have this great product, it makes the great outcomes, but we also have these resources and we have this proven implementation plan. Then you talked a little bit about professional development, so as I'm talking, is there anything that comes up that you'd like to add on the differences between the two, and then maybe just add in some, if you can, some best practices around each stage.

Shelby Danks:

Sure. No, I think the way you summarize that is really great, Elana. I think obviously, planning for effective implementation required a lot of collaboration with the district. Very seldom can that be done in a cookie cutter capacity, and most educational technologies, again, going back to the metaphor of the refrigerator versus the washer dryer, because most ed technologies are actually washer and dryer units, they really do require a little bit of shift in thinking if the school is going to be able to implement effectively. And so in so far as whatever you're asking teachers to do is an increase in the cognitive load, or if you're handing them an ingredient to make the cookies themselves, basically, the teacher left holding the bag to create a streamlined and effective way to deliver instruction, then they're going to have an implementation gap and you're going to have to figure out how to collaborate with those educators to plan for that.

Very few solutions today, there's a lot of solutions today that are on the market that they just offer what we call, traditionally, training, which is helping people just to come to some webinars to learn about how to use. And again, that will work if your solution is non-prescriptive, but in so far as you actually have a theory of impact as to how it should be used, it's going to require shift. And so being patient with educators and creating ways to collaborate with them is critical.

Elana Leoni:

That is really helpful. It leads me to the beautiful question that I've been wanting to ask you is if you could design your own implementation, let's put professional development on its own table for right now, but your own implementation program, you've seen a lot, you've advised a lot in ed tech, what are maybe even just the critical elements they need, but what's the Shelby Danks's version of a great implementation program for an ed tech company?

Shelby Danks:

The typical way that we think about long-term implementation support for teachers is year one, we're going to build their knowledge and awareness and help them experiment with youth. Year two, we're going to focus on consistency and lessons learned. And year three, we're going to focus on creative adaptations for meaningful, local, culturally responsive use. And so regardless of whether you're implementing a big curriculum or just a small solution that shouldn't take too much of a learning curve to implement, I think teachers will typically go through that same progression of practice.

And so for example, one of the tools I've created in the past is called the implementation checkup. And the purpose of getting really, really clear with an implementation rubric early on is it communicates what that teacher's journey looks like over time. I think a lot of curriculum organizations and tech organizations will communicate what the vision is, they put together professional development plan, they give a lot of information and they give a lot of examples for how it could be used, but they failed to talk about what the expected journey should look like over time for a teacher as they're trying to learn these new, either structural models or habits of practice, et cetera. And so getting really clear at the beginning with that is helpful.

So the design of an implementation rubric can be a really powerful tool that drives not only the professional learning roadmap that the provider will offer to districts, that it also drives the content of the professional learning, it drives the coaching and support that the coaches use to follow up and provide feedback to teachers as they're going through, throughout the years, and ultimately, it provides a really great way to measure the impact of not only that curriculum or technology, but ultimately the impact the teacher's having on student learning.

And so the typical professional practice that teachers go through involves an installing stage. We start off with what are the things the teacher needs to simply even install this? And so there's some specific simple resources we can do to support that. The second one is usually a low-level implementation where we're experimenting again, we're practicing new habits, we're making mistakes, we're trying new things, and so the different ways that we interact with teachers has to accommodate that. Level three is a full implementation where we're striving to be more consistent, we're now understanding the resources of how it can be used. And then implementation integrity, which is very different, by the way, than implementation fidelity. But implementation integrity is that the teacher is able to meaningfully leverage the tools, the resources that they have, and make culturally relevant adaptations in a way that's going to really leverage the spirit and the intent of the curriculum, not just that they're following it as they're told in trainings.

And so creating resources to support that typical progression of practice throughout a teacher's growth is a better way to set up any PL roadmap or any other implementation plan with coaching than just assuming that all teachers are going to start from the same starting point. And it also dignifies the educator because a lot of them will already come ready to learn those different levels based upon their past experiences, so it really helps build upon what they already know in a really great way.

Elana Leoni:

Shelby Danks:

Yeah, I love that you said it like that, Elana, because I think we call those the readiness condition. So when we start to plan a professional learning, and this is why it really has to be customized to the particular context, and that is different schools and different districts are going to have different readiness conditions in place. And in so far as I come and all offer a standard model, there's certain things that we know all teachers need to know and be able to do with our solution, probably in year one. So year one has a tendency to be a little bit more lockstep in its delivery mechanism, however, there's so many teachers who come with very different expectations and readiness, and even schools have different readiness conditions.

An example is mathematics. If we're going to implement a problem-based curriculum in mathematics, I come to one school who has been shifted from a very traditional instructional model in mathematics, they're going to need a lot more focus on other things. And it might make sense to do one or two years of a book study talking about the why and building rationale and understanding how the academic literature, in terms of mathematics learning instruction has shifted for a couple years before I come in and adopt a new curriculum that's going to be rooted in problem-based learning. Whereas another school, they might have, they might be in a community and they have might have received, already, professional development that really talk a lot about students making connections in mathematics and talking a lot in class and having a culture where they feel comfortable to make mistakes and engage a productive struggle. Well, that school is certainly more ready to adopt a problem-based curriculum than the previous school.

So every school, we have to figure out where they are and how we craft the way to help them get there. And sometimes some schools are not necessarily ready for us, and being honest and open and transparent with those schools and say, "Oh, they're not ready for us, but this is what we'd recommend that you start with first, and then come back in a year that we'll be ready to work together." Sometimes that's the best way we can partner with schools to make sure that they're getting the best use out of us and not wasting their resources or hours to make that implementation come alive.

Elana Leoni:

That is so important. So anybody listening, rewind to that. Because sometimes we have this pressure to sell, sell, sell, but what we really need to do, especially in the beginning, and really throughout your life cycle of selling to schools, if every school is on their different journey and they have different readiness factors based on your technology or service, and just like me, as an agency, I assess clients and go, are they ready for us? And really thinking holistically and authentically and saying, you need these things to be in place before you start working with us. And what I don't want to do is sell you something and then you have bad results. It's going to just waste all of our times, too. And I love that. So I think that if you are listening and you're an Ed Tech provider, what are those readiness factors? Do you have a checklist? Does your sales team understand them and are they prodding them in discovery calls? And when they're doing sales demonstrations, too.

Why don't we shift really quickly to professional development? So we talked a lot about implementation and structuring that to really effectively get people to use the product and actively use the product as the way it intended. But professional development is a whole other beast. Educators are lifelong learners and each state within the United States has different professional development guidelines, and flexibility, and inflexibility, on how they can continue with their professional development. So for example, you might be in a state where you have to really say, I need to do this many professional development hours or credit every year. And every state has different guidelines on what is considered professional development and what is mandatory versus what they can flexibly choose within professional development.

So I know that's all a mouthful, but do you want to add a little bit, Shelby, on a state of professional development and how it might complement implementation. Butt the state of PD is a hard one, but how do we see professional development knowing that it is a priority, it is mandatory within educators in their day to day? How can we effectively complement it with implementation?

Shelby Danks:

That's exciting question, and whenever you get the answer, will you please call me and let me know what it is, because I have to know. No, I think it's so funny, and I'm probably not the person to speak to the general state of the industry, as it relates to professional learning. I know that there's some major trends that are really driving the professional learning landscape right now, some of which I am super enthusiastic about because it really shows not only in alignment with some of the literature and the academic research coming out about the importance of it, but just because I think it's better for educators.

So one of the major trends that are happening is that the majority of professional learning hours really needs to be curriculum aligned. We understand that, that's been the case for some time, not necessarily that you can't come with an enabling technology and provide professional development, but it's better if all that professional development is done within the context of the teacher's curriculum. And so that really, to be honest, causes education providers to step back and say, okay, what is our role in the ecosystem? How do we partner in such a way that we can reduce the cognitive load of educators so that they're not holding the bag trying to figure out how to integrate these all on the back end.

We also see an increase in the standards that professional learning authors have to consider. And so for example, there's a really great organization called Rivet Education who is working with districts to help them understand exactly what providers are best suited to address their needs, and they have a professional learning partner guide that is similar to ED reports and the fact that it read reviews professional learning providers and gives you guidance on the extent to which they're aligned to the curriculum, they verify that they're aligned to the curriculum and everything else, and it's just a really great way to help districts be able to think about and plan for their effective professional learning. So that's a really great trend that we're seeing happening.

Another trend that I think is happening quite a bit that's affecting education technology companies is the fact that the last 10 years has had a pretty hit-and-miss, in terms of our successes and virtual professional learning environments, as you probably can relate. So there, a lot of people try to do a lot of virtual offerings. And of course with the pandemic, we saw an increase in the amount of virtual offerings, but then we saw districts immediately after pandemic was over just wanting everything face-to-face again, and I think a lot of that was interesting for us thinking about, as a curriculum company. But as we saw that shift, we recognized that as everybody tried out these experiments and virtual learning, very few of them took hold`and we're trying to understand why.

So I think ultimately if there is a huge opportunity in Ed Tech to create a way to more meaningfully scale virtual professional learning solutions that are; A, customizable; B, a lot more focused on teachers professional practice than more personalized, but at the same time, again, still staying aligned to that curriculum, that's the challenge. And so how do we provide teachers with curriculum embedded professional learning that teaches them how to use our technology, but at the same time helps them understand how they can use it directly and not just guessing? So I think those are some interesting things to think about as we're planning professional learning.

Elana Leoni:

So really good thing, I think. Just to sub up, because sometimes when people say so many good things, okay, there's that and there's that. You said, "How can we effectively align it to standards?" And those are changing. And then there's curriculum providers, there's also great resources that will connect with you and put in our show notes, too, to make sure that there's checklists and think that you can look at to really make sure that if you are considering professional development partners, the bit that they had a certain standard.

Really quickly, Shelby, I want to talk about some misses because you have been on the ground when you think about implementation, or if you want to talk about professional development, but can you share some examples on a high level of people are embarking, like you obviously if you have a product or service an ed tech, you have to have an implementation plan. You have to have complimentary professional development ongoing to make sure that your users maintain to be active users. So then the district ultimately, or the teacher, if you have a freemium model, renew and keep using your product and actually making the outcome that you were designed for. But can you talk about they started out this way and these were the assumption, but unfortunately, they met the mark, or maybe there are some things that you should look out for or pitfalls to avoid?

Shelby Danks:

I think one of the biggest mixed steps that education technology companies can do is particularly if they are a supplemental offering. So in the world of edge tech supplements, we see a huge variety of solutions, some of which are more complicated and require a lot more professional development than others. And others are simple and easy to plug and play. So sometimes an education company will think, okay, we're a supplement so we should be simpler to just plug and play. But unfortunately, in order to figure out how to best understand and use that supplement, teachers are still left holding the bag trying to have to reconfigure it in their own instance.

So for example, if a supplemental literacy curriculum had a really great cutting edge way of increasing student understanding, whether it's in a tier one or a tier two setting, they would have to come and not only sell what they're offering, but they'd have to communicate, this is how it can be used within your context. And of course every single school has its own configuration for that literacy block and how they're using that and what their core curriculum will be. And so it's not just that your tool aligns the standards, because they're all aligned standards. I don't think someone could be on the market if your literacy tool, for example, isn't aligned with standards, but it's also how does it reach the objectives and how does the teacher leverage your tool meaningfully to be able to get the outcomes that they want to see? And I think that's where we see a lot of problems.

So a lot of ed tech companies will come in, they'll have a professional learning plan that basically is almost as rigorous as what a core adoption plan would be. And they fail to recognize that the district doesn't have the capacity to resources, not because of the budgetary constraints, although that's going to be that as well, but mostly because they don't have the time to figure out how to do that. So insofar as you, as a provider, can figure out how to configure that solution, how to do that and how to solve that problem, it's going to basically make it a lot easier for them to use and to sustain over time. So that definitely has an impact on renewals and things like that.

Elana Leoni:

You mentioned some resources, as well, Shelby. So we will put everything that you give us in the show notes of this episode. And for all of you listeners at the end, we always give you the URL that you can go to, but you can also go to our website, leoniconsultinggroup.com hit our show notes from our podcast chat. So thank you so much, Shelby, for jumping in, for giving your wisdom and your passion to this space. I'd love to end this episode with one question because I know you're a reader. What are some books that are inspiring you right now? I know educators are readers, if they have time to, sometimes they're like, yeah, right during the school year, but I know they are lifelong learners, and I know people in ed tech are constantly trying to figure out what are the resources they can align myself with to do better and get inspired. So what are some things that you're reading right now?

Shelby Danks:

Alrighty. Well, I am excited that I just picked up a new book called The Slow Lane by Sascha Haselmayer. It's called The Slow Lane, Why Quick Fixes Fail and How to Achieve Real Change. I am fascinated with some of the shifts that we're hearing. The mantra used to be 10 years ago, move fast and break things, and now we're hearing, move slowly and get it right. And that just makes me very excited. I think there's a lot of folks who are ready to start thinking about what it looks like, and they, to effectively implement something, and so the idea of... And I have a couple of colleagues who have been talking about slow math movement for many, many years and how we take our time and slow down in mathematics, and I think a lot of those guiding principles are just as effective for thinking about planning for an implementation, supporting educators as they grow in their practices, and I think ultimately, there's a lot to learn in this book. So I'm excited to find out how we can basically take the slow path to get it right the first time.

Elana Leoni:

Right last, I actually went to ASU GSD and I met Alice Waters, who's all about the slow food movement.

Shelby Danks:

That's right.

Elana Leoni:

And she had a slow food manifesto that I got the book for free, she signed it. And then within social media educators, we talk about maybe we need to slow down and do more with, I hate that, do more with less, but say no to more, but do what we do really well. And I've seen it transform to slow chats on Twitter and things like that. So I love that you brought that up.

Shelby, thank you so much again, and everyone, will put all of Shelby's contact information in the show notes, as well as all the resources. But thank you so much for your time, Shelby, we really appreciate you.

Shelby Danks:

Thanks for having me. It was a lot of fun to hear from you.

Elana Leoni:

Yay. All right, take care everyone. We'll see you next time on All Things Marketing and Education.