Little Rock-based education technology company ZUNI Learning Tree has received a $199,856 Phase I award through the Department of Education and Institute of Education Sciences’ Small Business Innovation Research program. This award will be used to develop an innovative digital tool, the CatchIt App.
The CatchIt App will inform fifth grade educators’ decisions about using free and open educational resources (OERs) to improve student math skills. The company will be integrating the CatchIt App into its existing K-12 online platform, ZUNI.
This is the first DoED SBIR award made to an Arkansas company since 2003.
The Market Need
Strong math skills are important for the science, engineering, and technology jobs that play powerful roles in the U.S. economy. Math scores have been steadily declining from 2013-2018, with ACT scores dropping from an average 20.9 to 20.5. In the fall of 2019, the National Center for Education Statistics reported that over the past decade there has been no progress in either mathematics or reading performance, and the lowest performing students are doing worse.
Many students who have difficulty acquiring math concepts and skills at a proficient level need additional instruction followed by engagement in quality educational resources that supplement traditional curriculum. To ensure that today’s students will have the ability to contribute to the technology workforce, the educational community recognizes the need for new solutions that support math literacy.
The COVID-19 pandemic has made the urgency for a platform like ZUNI acutely apparent for districts, schools, students, and families.
“We have always known that to improve and inspire student learning, easy access to quality educational resources needed to be at the fingertips of educators, students, and families,” said Tina McCord, founder and president of ZUNI Learning Tree. “Pre-COVID-19, schools were taking steps to prepare for online learning. Due to COVID-19 school closures, the need for online content, learning management systems, and ways to monitor student progress is paramount and necessary for next year.”
The Challenge with Open Educational Resources
Open educational resources are materials for teaching or learning that are either in the public domain or have been released under a license that allows them to be freely shared and used.
OERs can be educational lesson ideas, videos, games, and interactive tools that individuals, organizations, and businesses create to support learning in all topic areas.
“Although multiple OERs exist, the top challenge with their use is that teachers don’t have the time to locate, identify, evaluate, and plan for differentiated instructional integration,” McCord said.
“We collected data in previous ZUNI early-adopter implementations from 2016-2019 and found that many teachers spent 10 hours each week outside of the school day searching the internet for supplemental resources to support student learning. This means that teachers are putting in 360 hours of uncompensated time each school year to support their students,” said McCord.
“Current OER platforms don’t automatically align OERs with standards-based assessment data that allows teachers to effectively and efficiently use that data to drive instruction, provide supplemental practice, personalize learning, or remediate students’ needs. These OER platforms also lack a feedback and collaboration loop that incorporates student voice into the educator’s decision-making process about effective OERs.”
ZUNI CatchIt App Solution
In this SBIR Phase I project, ZUNI Learning Tree will build on the success of its existing ZUNI K-12 online platform.
ZUNI is an online content management, learning management, and collaboration platform pre-populated with over 100,000 vetted, free OERS. “ZUNI’s unique student and family interface provides access in one click to thousands of OER games, videos, and interactive tools,” McCord said.
“This SBIR award will allow us to take the next step in automating the selection and alignment of OERs to individual students based on end-of-year standards-based assessment data. Teachers and students will be able to collaborate on each OER that the system selects to rate and review its effectiveness on learning and student achievement. Once fully developed, the CatchIt App will assist educators, students, and families with using OERs to increase student achievement and support the learning process. This is cutting edge work in the field of OERs,” said McCord.
ZUNI will engage fifth grade teachers and students from Baseline and Forest Park elementary schools. ZUNI’s content curators Cheryl McCord and Brenda Aycock will work alongside the teachers to assist in curating the educational OERs. “We are lucky to be working with these passionate and brilliant educators,” said Tina McCord.
ZUNI Learning Tree Team
ZUNI Learning Tree’s development team has over 50 years of experience, and the research team has over 60 years of talent.
Tina McCord will serve as principal investigator on the SBIR project. She has 15 years of experience in business and holds a Master’s of Education in K-12 special education. McCord has coordinated implementation of ZUNI in schools and has systematically collected user data related to ongoing refinement of ZUNI to improve the user experience.
Dr. Keith Lenz will serve as the research director for this project and has served as a senior research scientist on multiple national research projects involving both quantitative and qualitative design-based research methods. Dr. Lenz is associate professor and program coordinator for Special Education Programs at the University of Central Arkansas. He has over 200 publications, has written and directed numerous educational grants, and built his own edtech tool, known as GIST.
Scott Shellabarger is ZUNI’s chief technology officer and has overseen the development and programming of the existing ZUNI web app for the past three years.
Also working on the project, in addition to content curators McCord and Aycock, are Brandon Hoult, the company’s full stack developer; Dr. Julia Young, CEO of Precision Data in Little Rock, and her research team; and Dr. Jose Blackorby, director of research and development with CAST, a nonprofit education research and development organization that created the Universal Design for Learning framework, now used the world over to make learning more inclusive.
ASBTDC Assistance
The Department of Education has a SBIR Phase I success rate of 5%, which is lower than the SBIR agency average of 15-25%. To have success, ZUNI Learning Tree needed to submit the highest quality application possible and one that reflected a clear work plan to be carried out by a well-qualified project team.
“ASBTDC’s Rebecca Todd was instrumental in our success with winning this award. Over the past four years, Rebecca has guided ZUNI Learning Tree and our service providers who assisted with writing responses to the requests for SBIR proposals. Her thoughtfulness, attention to detail, ability to keep everyone on task, and informed was amazing. She stays objective and when the writing gets stressful. When everyone is tired, her objectivity and gentle encouragement kept everyone going,” said cEO McCord.
The company also benefited from ASBTDC market research services. “ASBTDC’s market research on OERs and their use in schools proved valuable in the writing of the proposal. Being able to request market research at no charge is critical to a startup. A portion of the proposal response must focus on existing research,” she said.
Advice for Prospective Dept. of Education SBIR Applicants
Tina McCord has the following advice for prospective Dept. of Education SBIR applicants:
- Don’t get discouraged by reviewer comments. Just be sure to incorporate them in the next response you submit. I promise at least one reviewer’s comments will make you mad, but don’t let that get you down!
- Work with the ASBTDC.
- Find a good service provider and apply for Arkansas Economic Development Commission’s Technology Transfer Assistance grant to engage those services.
- Find someone who has won an SBIR award and is willing to share with you how they designed their response. This past year, we met a mentor who had won and that helped us understand how to format our response.
- Keep the faith. Every year I would swear that I would not write a response the next year, but each year, I would roll up my sleeves and dive in. I am glad I did. Though it took us four years, it was worth it!
What’s next for ZUNI Learning Tree?
“In addition to performing on this Phase I project and preparing for Phase II, we plan to continue supporting educators and families across the nation by providing free access to the OERs linked in ZUNI. When districts purchase the enterprise solution to support existing learning management systems or to use ZUNI as their custom learning management system, they save everyone time, money, and are insuring equal access to quality educational resources for all students, families, and educators. Our mission is to be the trusted go-to K-12 educational platform everyone can use to access quality, vetted, free OERs that can inspire everyone to dream, learn, grow, and do together,” said McCord.