The following transcript has been edited for readability. Timestamps have been removed and minor transcription errors corrected. Speaker comments and context have been preserved. Please note that Dr. Erwin’s job title has since changed. However, her title in this transcript reflects her position at the time of recording.

Opening Remarks

Rich Portelance

Welcome, everybody, to the EdGate Powers Education podcast, and today, I have a very special guest: we're speaking with Dr. Kelli Erwin from Learning.com. Now, this is all in relation to our conversation regarding Texas, adoptions, and finding and closing the gap. And so, Dr. Erwin is a longtime friend of EdGate, and I'll let her give a little bit of an introduction. Just making sure that everybody that does view the podcast knows, we have a webinar on September 26th. If you haven't already signed up, sign up now. And if you're seeing this afterwards, then please go back and view the podcast, which is also on our YouTube channel. So, without further ado, Dr. Erwin? 

Dr. Kelli Erwin

Hi, thanks, Rich. I’m glad to be here. Yes, I'm Dr. Kelli Erwin. I work with Learning.com as the director of education. I've been with Learning.com, at this point, for almost 13 years, but I've been in the field of education for really over 20 years at this point. Everything from a classroom teacher–kindergarten through second grade–to running a technology lab focusing on technology applications; kindergarten through fifth grade, working with gifted and talented students, as well as working in district administration for many years. So, I had the opportunity to work with standards and curriculum from… sort of the teacher standpoint, from the district administrator standpoint, and then now, from the publisher standpoint. So, I’m glad to be here to have this conversation today. 

Rich Portelance

Well, we're glad to have you, and I think there's an entire conversation right there in just your introduction when you talk about, you know, having the experience as a teacher, working with the talented and gifted students, and working in administration. And there's a lot of carryover and a lot of experience I imagine that you have. 

Discussion

Rich Portelance

Now, from what I understand, I haven't been with EdGate as long as you have essentially–you know, I've been here for two and a half, three years–you've really worked with EdGate for quite a while and had relationships with some of the team members for a long time. You know, what was the starting point and the genesis for the work that Learning.com and you have done with EdGate? 

Dr. Kelli Erwin

Right. That's a great question. So, you know, we all know standards are very important, and they are the key to what we do in education, right? But, not just knowing the standards and making sure we have content aligned, but being able to demonstrate, right, those alignments for our customers, and for ourselves to make sure that we're providing that high-quality instructional material that meets the needs. And so, that's really where this sort of relationship began, was making sure that we had a way that was easy on the publisher side to be able to demonstrate and create those alignments that we could share with our customers. And so, that's really kind of the impetus of where all of this started, is looking for a solution that would allow us to do what we needed on our side in an easy, faster way than doing it manually. And then have something that we could then share with our customers so that they had the confidence they needed to know that the curriculum was meeting their needs, and making sure they were meeting their state requirements. 

Rich Portelance

So, that leads into another question; as you talk about alignments and you talk about meeting state requirements, one of the things that we've been talking about internally for quite a while–and I'm not sure if everybody understands this term–but it's crosswalking. You know, taking alignments from one state, and crosswalking to another state, and then figuring out where the gaps are so that you can get up to speed quicker. What's your experience? Did I describe that accurately from your perspective, and how are publishers viewing that exercise?

Dr. Kelli Erwin

Yeah, you did. You know, we use the term crosswalk in a lot of different ways in education, but the way you're using it fits perfectly. You know, as a publisher, we can go in and say we know these specific standards align for– I'll use Texas, for example, since that's where I am. These align to Texas standards, and that's great, but we don't just serve Texas, right? We serve states all over the country, and internationally, for that matter. And so, when you have a crosswalk tool that allows us as a publisher to align to one state, and then it sort of funnels out to the other states based on the algorithm and the language used in the standards, it's a timesaver for us, right, because we aren't having to go in and manually align to every single standard. Because, you know, standards aren't that different, right? We have specific things that we need our students to master across their education career, and the states aren't that different–math is math, right? Technology is technology–it's not that different; it's just that the language that is used within the states may be slightly different, or the depth at different grade levels might be different. So having a crosswalk that allows you to say, “We're starting with this set of standards from this state,” and it funnels out into the other states just saves us a whole bunch of time. 

Rich Portelance

Yeah. That's terrific, thank you for that explanation. You know, in that process, and so I know you use the ExACT Standards Alignment Platform, which is, you know, kind of where we've put our energy to allow for standards to be visualized for alignments to happen and for reporting. And one of the reports that I know Kathleen on our team is most proud of is the Gap Analysis Report. Can you explain how you use that and why it's significant? 

Dr. Kelli Erwin

Sure. In fact, I was using it this morning, actually! It's such a fantastic tool, because once we've gone in and aligned our standards, it gives us this quick snapshot that we can pull that shows every single standard listed out and what percentage of the content aligns or doesn't align to that particular standard. So, it gives us this ability to take a quick glance and say, “Okay, we know XYZ standard has hit 80%. Wow, we want it to be closer to 100%.” So how do we plan to fill that gap, right? And so, that report is– it's such– Again, I keep saying it’s a timesaver, but really that is the benefit of the tool, as it saves us time; we don't have to manually create a spreadsheet with formulas. You all have done the backend work, so all we have to do is go in, click a few buttons, select a few filters, and there you have it. 

And it really is a tool that has helped us–especially even in the most recent Texas adoption, right? We were able to go in and pull that report very early on to see where we had gaps in our content based on what the proposed new standards were, so it was fantastic to be able to work with EdGate and say, “Hey, here are these new proposed standards. They may not be implemented yet, but we need some information to help guide us,” right? And so, it was great to work with you all to get those standards added into the tool sooner than they normally would have been, so that we could run this analysis, and quickly identify areas where we might need to build new curriculum to meet these new standards. So, that's another great way that that tool has been helpful. 

Rich Portelance

That's a terrific example, and certainly it reinforces the message that we want to bring to market, which is that we're helping to power education, you know, and try to provide meaningful tools. It's not just about, you know, selling something–it's about how do we really solve some of these challenges, because the bottom line is that we have 50 independent fiefdoms here in the U.S. that all are operating in a unique– in different fashions, and we have to adapt to that. And as publishers, you know, it's not easy to try to play out 50 different scenarios, and so if we can help to bring some understanding to that.

There– one question I have, and I think this is going to catch you out of left field a little bit, but I want to ask it: one of the things that EdGate does is they provide open standards. So, essentially, you know, there are the GUIDs (Globally Unique Identifiers) that we leverage are– allow you to manage, take those standards, and apply it in any different way you want to. Basically, you buy it, and then you have it, and you can run with those standards. How does that make a difference for Learning.com? Is that a benefit to you?

Dr. Kelli Erwin

I would say it's definitely a benefit, because though there may be specific states that we work with–let's say there's an RFP (Request for Proposal) that comes out, and certain standards are needed well. If you all have already added the standards into the ExACT platform, I don't have to reach out and say, “Hi, EdGate! We're doing this RFP. I need these standards.” And there's a process to go through to get the standards into the system, and then there's a process that we have to go through on our end to make sure we have the standards, so it's, you know– I keep going back to the time-saving thing, I think I've said that five times now, but that really is the biggest benefit. It's also nice to not have to say, “Hi, I need these standards,” and maybe nobody else in the country is ready for them from a publisher perspective, but we are, so it's not asking for a one-off or unique thing–it is something that truly benefits anybody who uses EdGate’s ExACT Platform. So, while your question may be out of left field, it's really easy to talk to because… Because this universal set of standards being there for all of your customers to use benefits everybody in the moment, right? It's that “just in time” need as opposed to “I needed it two weeks ago–” and I just found out today I needed it two weeks ago, so how do I get the help I need? 

Rich Portelance

Yeah. No. Thank you. That's what was in my head, and I know we… you know, we try to provide those standards and make it as flexible and adoptable as possible so people can do what they need to do, and keep those up to date. Now, we spoke a little bit– we had a conversation earlier, and we talked about, you know, okay, the starting point with EdGate 10 to 12 years ago, and now here we are today. How have you seen the landscape change? 

So, if you're talking to other publishers, you know, Learning.com is out there doing the work. What's changing in not only Texas, but other states, and how are you adapting to those changes? 

Dr. Kelli Erwin

Sure. You know, standards change on a regular basis, and they're not all aligned on timing, right? So, Texas may have just done new standards two years ago, Florida may do them in a year, so, you know– and then California may do them in three years, so there's not this consistency, right? So, as a publisher, you have to be very nimble with your timing, and you have to have a tool–a resource–that really helps you know and understand every single set of state standards. And, you know, I keep saying states, but we have ISTE (International Standards for Technology in Education) standards, we have international standards, right? So, it's not simple to know and understand standards–nobody understands and knows all of the standards. But if you have a tool like EdGate’s ExACT Platform, you can go in and learn about the standards quickly, and you don't have to have the depth of knowledge for every single state, because you have a resource and tool that helps get you there when you need to get there. 

The landscape changes on a regular basis, right? Standards are based on legislation; sometimes they're based on state education agencies (SEAs), and different feedback that those entities get along the way sort of drive the need for change. If you talk technology, technology drives the need for change just in and of itself, right? But all of these different entities also have technology standards. So, it changes rapidly, and being able to pivot rapidly using a tool like what EdGate provides makes a difference to all of the vendors because we have what we need, again, in that moment. 

Rich Portelance

Yeah. Well, thank you for that. You know, you talked about legislative changes. I was talking to some of the other folks who were going to be on our webinar on the 26th of September, and… Texas is– there's a lot of change going on, and they were talking about the legislative session coming up; there's going to be more changes. How does a company like Learning.com manage that process? Because it seems like, you know, with IMRA (Instructional Materials Review and Approval), the suitability standards, and, you know, all this change in Texas specifically, that's– there's a lot to digest and to manage. You know, what's your process like? Do you have people on board that are just focused on Texas? You know, how do you deal with it? 

Dr. Kelli Erwin

Yeah, that's a great question. I will say different vendors do it in different ways. You know, we aren't as large as some of the big publishers that do have specific teams that sort of focus on different states when it comes to creating their curriculum–we're a smaller company. We have good relationships with our customers and with former teachers, former district administrators in the state that we partner with and work with–they come in and help us as subject matter experts (SMEs). When you talk about Texas, we have several team members in Learning.com that were former teachers in Texas specifically, right? So, we have a wealth of folks at our fingertips, if you will, that we can reach out to in order to have these conversations. Because of the relationships that we have built with our district partners throughout the state, we often reach out to them and say, “Hey, we've heard this is coming,” or, “Hey, we know this is a pain point that you have. How can we work with you? How can we help you?” We go through an… almost constant, really, process of gathering feedback from our current customers, as well as reaching out to folks who aren't our customers, to find out what their pain points and needs are, so that as we move forward as a company, our focus really is to help students build those healthy relationships with technology. 

So, not just… digital literacy in the moment of, we need our students to be able to go online, type a paper, and safely do research. We work with our customers and our students to try to make sure that the content we build addresses the standards, of course, but takes it a step further, so that we're helping students build those enduring life skills that they need that's going to take them beyond K-12, whatever that looks like. Whether it's going straight into the workforce, or going to college or a trade school, or whatever it is, and having the access to EdGate’s ExACT Platform and the ability to look at the standards holistically makes such a difference in all that we do, but that allows us to have these deeper conversations with customers and people internally to help us get what we need, in order to provide what our customers need. 

Rich Portelance

Wow. There's so much going on, and there's a lot there when you talk about, you know, the students and allowing them to build out these skills. And, you know, some of that is embedded in the standards, some of that isn't, but you're really kind of taking a “looking-glass approach”, you know, trying to go deeper into it, and I think that's fantastic. 

There's another side to it, because if we're going to– if we're going to provide curriculum to states and we're going to be a viable entity, you know, they're put– Texas, I'm just going to use that example as putting up these, you know, they’re barriers to some extent, or hurdles that we have to get over. So, there's a business development process, you know, and Learning.com, you know, they're not– you're not there to do it as a charity, you know; you have to make money, you have to grow your business, right? So, I think there's that challenge that, you know, trying to provide the best possible curriculum, trying to meet the standards and the requirements that exist, but also, continuing to grow your business so that you're thriving, and if you're thriving, you can provide better value and more substance to your clients, right? So… that dichotomy, do you have, like, a counterpart on your team, or someone you work with from business development to say, you know, “This is how we're going to approach it”, so, you know, we're not just, you know, meeting the level requirement, but we're trying to go a little beyond, and trying to grow a little bit. How do you..? 

Dr. Kelli Erwin

Absolutely. You know, that's interesting that you asked me that question. We just released a new learning pathway for students on Tuesday, actually, that sort of… spawned from exactly what you're talking about, right? So, we do have a team that is regularly looking at the market, talking to our customers, and again, talking to folks who aren't our customers, and truly trying to dive in and see what their needs are. And this particular learning path that I'm talking about, we realized from having these conversations that customers sometimes want a pathway that doesn't necessarily give a survey of all digital literacy skills, but really hones in and focuses on digital safety, right? So we created a new pathway that, again, like I said, was just released on Tuesday, that is focused on the CIPA (Children's Internet Protection Act) requirements, that help districts get E-Rate funding, but take it a step further. 

So it's not just a handful of items that are CIPA–they are truly curated pathways of items that students can go through and complete. In some cases, it's, you know, student-led, asynchronous, and in some cases, it's teacher-driven, but these items take students through a pathway of really setting a good, solid foundation so that they're safe online, and they understand cyberbullying and how to interact with the Internet safely, right, and how to communicate online. And so, by working with our group that does–what you just asked–of really reaching out to the market and understanding the needs, we went down a path of very quickly being able to create… a resource, if you will–a learning path–that allows districts to get students where they need quickly, but also can extend over time so that students understand that online safety and digital citizenship, they aren't a, “Oh, we're going to do it in the month of October, or at the beginning of school.” It filters throughout the whole school year, so that students are learning that this is an “always important” set of knowledge and skills, as opposed to a… I hate to say one and done, but sometimes that's what it turns out to be. So that was really an interesting question; that's funny timing that you brought that up. But we do have a team that works on that regularly to try to make sure we are able to grow the business from a profitable standpoint, so that, obviously, we can stay in business, but do it in a way that is meeting those urgent needs of customers and non-customers that we hope someday will become customers. 

Rich Portelance

That's right. No, I think we take a similar approach. You know, obviously EdGate is focused on the middle user–we're focused on folks like you–so it's a B2B versus a B2C kind of function. But, you know, it's getting that active feedback, trying to anticipate needs, and trying to build out tools and solutions that really allow companies like Learning.com to be ahead of the game rather than being reactive, you know, so you can be proactive towards whatever it is you need to do so you can be successful. And, you know, that's why we like to have these kinds of conversations; we learn a lot, and then we can continue to develop those tools that help to power the marketplace, so, thank you. 

Dr. Kelli Erwin

Yeah, and I will say, I'll add to that, Rich. One of the things that I have appreciated the most about the relationship with EdGate over the years is that there are times that we have hit snags, right? And it's, “Oh, I don't understand how this works,” or, “I would expect to see ‘this’ and I don't see it,” and EdGate has been very responsive, every single time to help work with us, to try to find that solution that benefits EdGate as a business, but also Learning.com as your customer, and benefits our business. So, that's been a really nice piece of the relationship over the years. 

Rich Portelance

That's outstanding, and it seems to me, having worked with these folks for the two and a half years or so is that's the kind of team it is; the kind of people, you know, mostly former educators. They get it, they understand the challenges, and they want to be responsive and helpful, so I appreciate you saying that. If I'm looking here at, you know, the use of, you know, kind of talking about standards and metadata, and one of the things that we struggle to talk about internally– We're trying to figure out what the terminology is and what people understand is this content optimization. And really what it is is when we pull in a standard–a new standard–we put in metadata that allows it to be discovered within learning systems, and makes it helpful and more flexible for our clients. Can you describe how Learning.com is utilizing metadata and the effect that's having on your alignment? 

Dr. Kelli Erwin

Sure. So, you know, one of the things that has been nice along the way is… the way that EdGate provides information to us, right? We don't link in to EdGate where our customers go straight to EdGate, right, and see things. On a weekly basis, you all provide us with a file that we upload into our system that allows our customers to go in and see these standards alignments and the various types of metadata that–excuse me–that are provided there. And so, this ability to work together so that we have accurate GUIDs, standards, the information on the grades, etc. has made it a lot easier on both ends, I believe. And there have been times that the files didn't come through right, or we were missing data, but again, it's such a great communication between the two companies that when we run into those glitches along the way, you all are really fast and quick at providing the new file, or updating, or recognizing where maybe the two systems aren't talking together correctly through the spreadsheet files that are are provided, and things like that. But yeah, the metadata is of huge importance to us, because we not only know the state; we know the standard at the standard level; we know the student expectations. So, from high level to the deepest, lowest level of the standards, you all are providing us with what we need so that we can provide our customers with what they need. 

Rich Portelance

Yeah. No, that's great, thank you. And when we do alignments and we, you know, everybody has different requirements for the type of alignment. You know, some want it super tight, some want it a little looser for different reasons, and I know that, you know, having spoken to Gina and Kathleen about this a little bit, we try to provide that flexibility and find the right spot for the client. And so, I would imagine for Learning.com, as you go into new states, do you find there's a need for a lot of adjustment? Or has the team kind of learned your requirements well enough that they get it– you know, the system gets it right each time pretty accurately? 

Dr. Kelli Erwin

It's pretty accurate each time. You know, I think we've worked together long enough where EdGate has gotten to a point where you really understand the nuances of the depth that we need our standards to go to. Even brand-new standards that come in, what– you know, we'll use Texas again. So, we have the new standards that were adopted in 2022 and implemented, you know, this year for back-to-school season, and we just said, “Hey, we need these new standards added in,” and you all understand how we work as a company. We didn't have to go back and forth and make sure things were added in, or changed, or modified. The standards were input exactly the way we needed them, which was really nice. But, yes, there have been times that we hear from our sales reps that say, “Hey, we need this new standard added; here's what we have from the state.” We send it to you all and say, “Hey, this is what we need,” and you guys have even come back and said, “Are you sure that's exactly what you need? Because historically, you do XYZ with this information, and what you provided us isn't going to get you there,” right? So, it's been sort of a back and forth at times to get us where we need to be. 

Rich Portelance

You know, and speaking of collaboration, I have to acknowledge you guys. Learning.com was a big part of one of our new tools; the Direct Align tool. We built that out really in cooperation with some of your needs and a few other clients. But, you know, can you tell people about Direct Align, what the value is, and how you use that?

Dr. Kelli Erwin

Yeah, that's a great question, and that was a huge, new upgraded feature for us, because it allows us to be very specific with the alignments. And what I mean by that is, normally, when we upload content into EdGate’s ExACT platform, there's an algorithm in the back end that will go in and align the content for us based on categories, which is great, right? I mean, that gets us where we need to be from the start, but when you're doing something like a state-level adoption that we just went through with Texas, you have to be very specific and ensure that the exact standard fits the exact item, so that when the state review committee is going through, there are no questions, right? There are no extra alignments that don't matter to them for what they're trying to do for adoption purposes. So having that Direct Alignment Tool allowed us to go in and very specifically pick which standards we needed to align to which items. And I truly believe that helped us in the review process, because it was very easy for the review committee members to go in and see, “Okay, here's this particular item. Oh, look, right here this is the exact standard,” without them having to scroll through a variety of standards. So, yeah, that's been a really nice benefit for us, and I'll use another example: we went through a process a little while ago–I don't remember the timing–where we wanted to go from using an alignment for E-Rate, sort of at that top level, down to a deeper level, so that we were truly able to pick from the two specific CIPA requirements. So it was nice to be able to go in and use the tool to go in and select those two very specific requirements to add to items, so that it didn't show up and look like an item met all E-Rate requirements when they don't necessarily, because some of those E-Rate requirements really are on the school district to, you know, to provide. So, yeah, no, the Direct Alignment has been a very positive change in our life! 

Rich Portelance

Oh, that's awesome. And I know that different states require different reporting language– 

Dr. Kelli Erwin

Right. 

Rich Portelance

–and so, when you're using ExACT, it sounds like you're able to run reports for each state, you know, and do state-specific language changes, right? 

Dr. Kelli Erwin

Right.

Rich Portelance

You can adopt as needed.

Dr. Kelli Erwin

Right.

Rich Portelance

Are you doing things internationally as well? That you're adopting and kind of utilizing ExACT to make things, you know, up to requirement? 

Dr. Kelli Erwin

Sure, we do. We work with a variety of international standards that we need, and it's been really helpful, because, again, standards are standards; it's not all that different–students still need to learn very similar things. But there are nuances to international standards that are different than we have in the States, and so it's been very helpful to be able to use that Direct Alignment Tool, and EdGate just in general, to help us get where we need to be. And it's nice, because the international partners that we work with, and– We have been able to say, “Here's what we have, here's what we use, how do we need to modify or change this based on what you know about, you know, whatever international location they happen to be in,” and it's been helpful to to be able to do that so that we can make those quick adjustments. Again, I keep saying timesaving, but that really is, in my opinion, one of the best benefits to us using EdGate. 

Rich Portelance

Okay, thank you. You know, one of the new things that we've done, and it's based on, I think, demand, and what we saw in the market is standards authoring. So, you know, I think you've had some experience with that, and again, you know, some collaboration there. One of the things that Gina mentioned to me was that we were able to ingest Learning.com’s objectives– 

Dr. Kelli Erwin

Our objectives, mhm.

Rich Portelance

Right, yeah. So, can you tell me about that experience, what you see as a future of standards authoring for Learning.com, and utilizing that suite of tools? 

Dr. Kelli Erwin

Sure. So we had some very specific assessments that we were building that we wanted to analyze students’ knowledge and skills based on digital literacy, right? So we built some very specific standards, and when you do something like that, you need it to align to all state standards. Well, that would be very confusing for customers if they go in and they see, you know, 50 different states’ sets of standards for an assessment. So what we did is we looked at all of the state standards, we looked at ISTE standards, and a few other things, and we came up with some objectives that we felt were sort of overarching of all of those things–that we could align our assessments to, so that our customers could say, “If our students are doing the Learning.com curriculum, they're going through the paths, and they do these assessments, we can see where they have growth, or where they still have areas of need.” And so, that's sort of where these Learning.com objectives came from, and it was great to be able to reach out to EdGate and say, “Hey, we have this unique set that you're not going to have anywhere else. Can you please put these in the system so that our assessment content can be aligned, and it can bring value to our customers?” And it was a really easy process. The hardest part was for us coming up with these objectives that were universal enough, right? The easy part was providing them to you all in a spreadsheet and getting them into EdGate’s ExACT platform. 

Rich Portelance

That's a hefty piece of work trying to come up with that commonality. I can't imagine– how long did that process take you? 

Dr. Kelli Erwin

Gosh, it took– It was myself and one other person diving into all of these standards and sort of doing this crosswalk that– It would have been really nice if you all had the Crosswalk feature back then, by the way! To go through this process, gosh, I think we spent a solid three months really just diving in and trying to find these commonalities on our own. It was quite a project to go through, but beneficial in the end!

Rich Portelance

Absolutely. You know, it's amazing to me, you know, I've been in edtech now for 12 years or so, but I was on the career side before, building out tools for helping students to transition from high school to college or to the workforce, and kind of thinking of new ways to do that. And as I got into this side of it, which is the curriculum, you know, management, it just amazed me how intricate, how detailed, how much work goes into trying to build out curriculum, you know? You can say, “I can build a lesson or build an assessment”, and that's the very tip of the iceberg, and there's this other big piece of work underneath the waterline that you have to go through in order to complete that process. And then, someone tells you, “Well, okay, that's for each state,” so you have to build that iceberg over and over and over again. Do you have a team of people behind you to help do that? How many folks do you have at Learning.com to build those icebergs?

Dr. Kelli Erwin

We have a very small team; we are constantly climbing our icebergs here! No, we have a– our instructional design team is made up of four people, including myself. And so, we are a small but mighty team that goes through the process of evaluating the content and the standards, and sort of forward-thinking to make sure that we are on the right path for today and for tomorrow. 

Rich Portelance

That's great, and I know the folks at EdGate are very happy to partner with you. It's the kind of relationship we like to build. You know, it's long-term, we– as you stated earlier, we start to understand each other's needs and requirements, be able to answer questions for one another, and then evolve as a unit to some extent so that, you know, you're finding success in the market and we’re making your job easier, and we can provide some of that to others, as well, so we appreciate that commitment to what we do, so thank you. So– and, you know, as partners, I know we've done some training with your team, right, on the ExACT platform. Can you talk a little bit about how that training occurred, and then how it translates to your sales team and being able to pull reports? Because one of the things I like to go back to, as you could see from my earlier questions, is, you know, it's got to build business as well. You know, it's one thing to meet the requirements, but if you're not growing, then, you know, it's not fully meeting the demand of what our clients have. So, do you have different groups that are coming in there and doing things within the platform? And how do you train up that staff to best utilize the system? 

Dr. Kelli Erwin

Sure. That's a great question also. So, I was the first person trained, and that knowledge stayed with me for a while, and as we've built out this instructional design team, you know, each time we have someone new come onboard, it also feels like there's something new going on with EdGate, right? So, it's kind of been this nice process of making sure that each time someone has been added, we pull in and have training again. So, even though I've used EdGate for many, many, many years, each time I go through the training, I am either learning something new because there's something new out there, or I'm being reminded of something that maybe I haven't used in a while, because I've just gotten into my routine of doing things a certain way. So, from that perspective, yeah, having the training has been really valuable to us. 

But beyond that, there are also resources that we can go access where we don't have to have a person give us training, so that's been really nice. The way we use the reporting is mostly within the instructional design team. We have a process built within the company where if someone needs a standards alignment report, they put in a request for it, the team pulls it into our sprint, and we run the report that way. So, we really haven't trained necessarily outside of the instructional design team on using the ExACT tools and the reporting system. But, what we have done is once we have those reports available, we have trained others on how to utilize them, how to talk to them, the different options that we have available for reporting–whether it's a spreadsheet, a Word document, or a PDF, or whatever–customers can then take those resources that our sales team provides to them, and use them for their benefit, whatever it may need to be. 

And then, you know, we have a team who… Well, it's a mixed-up team, right? It depends on what the RFP is and what state it comes from, but we pull different people into the teams, and then of course being able to pull standards alignments for that purpose as well. So, again, we don't really have a whole lot of people going into ExACT, because we've kind of controlled that environment just a little bit, but we are sharing out the resources of what we have available. And there are times that people will say, “Hey, Kelli, can someone on your team pull us a quick correlation and let us know what percentage we're at?” Or, “Where our gaps are?” So, to go back to your question earlier about, you know, the Gap Analysis Report, we pull all sorts of reports based on the requests that are needed, and make sure the teams have access to those once we've pulled them. 

Rich Portelance

That's great, and I know from prior experience that if, you know, a customer like you– and I'm sure this has occurred for your team is, if you need a custom report or something that, you know, all you have to do is ask, and typically we will build out a custom report or make it part of the system as we talked about. 

Dr. Kelli Erwin

Right. Yeah, yeah. Because sometimes our custom needs aren't just our needs, right? People don't necessarily realize maybe they need that type of report until it's available, or you all announce that, “Hey, we have this new report out there,” or this new functionality, and it does make a difference. 

Rich Portelance

You know, there's a saying that our CEO, Peter Sibley– and it's funny, not a lot of our customers know about Peter. He's very quiet in the background–he's a real technology guy–and he was a former university professor, so, you know, again, he has an education background, but he always says, you know, “A high tide raises all ships.” And he really means that sincerely, like, you know, whatever we're doing has to be a benefit to everybody, and it's not, you know, he's not just trying to sell something–he's trying to create things that really have a meaningful impact on the market. And so, I think that's an example of his ethos that's reflected through the team, and how it's kind of embedded itself in everything we do. 

Dr. Kelli Erwin

It makes a difference; it really does. 

Rich Portelance

It does, and I'm grateful for, you know, clients like you, and this industry, because it seems like people get it, they understand education is a, you know, if you're going to be successful, you're thinking about that end user, thinking about the students, thinking about how you can better serve, you know, a broad audience. And so, it's fun to be part of that, you know, it's meaningful to be part of that. I'm gonna ask, you know, one last question. I'm curious about the CIPA requirements and how Learning.com has been able to report and meet those requirements for CIPA? 

Dr. Kelli Erwin

Sure, so, you know, part of our content is really focused on digital citizenship, cyberbullying, online safety, and how to interact safely with the Internet. And so, what we've been able to do is for the specific content items that we have created that sort of fall in our online safety/digital citizenship topic/focus, we have been able to take each of those items, analyze the objectives that are in those items, and then specifically go in and determine which one of those CIPA requirements it hits. And so, in some cases, an item might hit both CIPA requirements, and in some cases, it's, you know, one or the other. So we've been able to go in and create those alignments within EdGate, so that when we go in and do the reporting on our end–because we have specific reports that our customers can pull through our system–it pulls in directly and shows those items that we have aligned instead of it showing, “E-Rate has all of these different requirements, and you're going to check the box that you meet everything with these items.” No, it specifically calls out because of that alignment we've been able to do that you are meeting these two particular pieces along the way. So, yeah.

Closing Thoughts

Rich Portelance

Okay. That's fantastic. Well, one of the things– I want to give you an opportunity for any last words or thoughts that you have. I want to remind people that on September 26th, either, you know, sign up for the webinar or watch the replay here on our YouTube channel. And, you know, check out some of the other podcast episodes that we've had on. But I want to thank Dr. Erwin for coming along today, for sharing a lot of the information about Learning.com, and the practices that you're going through. It's amazing work that you're doing, and we're so glad to be a partner in that and support you. Any final thoughts that you want to share with the audience before we sign off today? 

Dr. Kelli Erwin

I enjoyed the conversation today, Rich. I’m glad that you all invited me to join the podcast this time, and I too am looking forward to the webinar, so thanks!

Rich Portelance

Fantastic. Well, we'll look forward to that, and have yourself a great day. Thanks, Doctor. 

Dr. Kelli Erwin

You too! Bye-bye!