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[fusion_dropcap boxed=”yes” boxed_radius=”” class=”” id=”” color=”” text_color=””]D[/fusion_dropcap]r. Ai Addyson-Zhang is a self-described “Disruptive Educator.” After achieving her career goal of teaching at the college level, she became disillusioned with our education system, and came to the conclusion that her only choice was to get out … altogether, and start educating from a completely different angle, from a “Classroom Without Walls.”
Dr. Ai reports, “My childhood dream was to become a college professor. After receiving my MA from Syracuse University and then Ph.D. from the University of Maryland, I officially began my teaching career as a proud Assistant Professor.
“Everything seemed going well until March 2015, when I got my first wake-up call as a college professor of Public Relations and Social media.
“I read in a good student’s paper that he had never heard of ‘Pinterest’ and didn’t even know how to spell the word. He discovered this during an informational interview that I assigned my students to do. The same student also wrote in his paper that my teaching was too “dry” and too theoretical.
“I felt hurt. But more so, I was shocked that the student had never heard of the term “Pinterest”. It turned out that this student was not alone.
“It seemed that my students were far less digitally savvy than I had assumed. I started asking questions and doing formal and informal research. I discovered that while students are quite adept at using social media to consume content and connect with their friends and family members, they knew nothing about using social media as a content creation tool to build a brand for themselves, to share stories, and to inspire social movement and positive social changes.”
Read our interview with Dr. Ai, and feel free to comment below with any questions; I’ll pass them along to her.
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You can watch the video interview above with or without subtitles, or read the transcript. (All done watching? Watch part 2 of the interview.)
CHUCK: Hello there. Chuck Moran here with Online Video Mastery, and I’m really excited today because I’m going to be spending a little bit of time with my friend, Dr. Ai. Dr. Ai and I go back to a walk we took together several years ago at Social Media Marketing World in San Diego. And we’ve been friends and communicating ever since, and I’ve been keeping up with her career a little bit.
So, I’m very interested in having Dr. Ai present to you a little bit about her bio, and then I’d like to have her talk a little bit about her Classroom Without Walls, which is an extremely exciting program that she’s launching.
Dr. Ai, please take it away. A little bit of your bio, please.
AI: Yeah, thank you so much for having me on the show. Really exciting, Chuck. Really honored.
So, I will introduce – my name is Ai – “A.I.” – “artificial intelligence.” It’s easier to remember that way. I’m a professor turned entrepreneur. I taught in the classroom in higher education for 10+ years. I was teaching public relations, communications, and the social media classes, and I spent almost two decades in higher education.
To make a long story short, a few years into my teaching career, I discovered the current education model is very broken on quite a few different levels. And I asked myself, “Ai, what can I do to make this situation better? Do I want to continue to be part of the problem to perpetuate the situation, or do I want to be part of the solution?” So, I decided to resign from my job – to join the solution. How I solved the education problem was that I wanted to create a better model outside of the existing model to prepare the next generation to be future-ready. That is the story behind the Classroom Without Walls.
CHUCK: That’s great. Tell us a little bit about what you found was broken in our current education system.
AI: Yeah, on so many levels, I think the biggest missing link is that we have way too many professors, academics, in the teaching space, especially for students who are learning business or learning more about marketing, psychology, communications, social media, digital marketing – the creative aspects of business. And I think we have way too many academics.
We need our teachers to also be practitioners. And I will have learned from my own experience – after I got my master’s degree, after I got my PhD – and I learned so many theories, but I don’t have any professional background to back up what I was teaching in the classroom. Students feel like my classes are very dry — just like all other classes, right? That’s why student disengagement – great in higher education – is very, very high.
A few years ago, Gallup did a big study on thousands or millions of students, and they discovered that as students become older, they are more disengaged in the class. So, in other words, younger students are more engaged in the class with their teachers, with their classmates, whatever they are learning. But in contrast, older students – high school, college-aged students – are more disengaged. And I see that in my classes all the time. Now, I can really understand why students are learning all those theories.
So, I decided if I want to be a better teacher, if I want to teach my students to be future-ready, I as a teacher have to be future-ready myself. So, I finally let go of my PhD, the fame, the good feeling. Terminal degree, right? We call this a terminal degree. I literally stopped learning after I got my PhD. I thought, “Oh my god! I got this terminal degree. Why do I even need to learn more?” What a big mistake.
So, I decided to finally walk the talk. Everything that I was teaching my students, I started to practice what I was teaching myself. I started to be really active on Twitter, and then I joined some Mind Tutor chats – I launched my own. And I started to be active on Facebook. When live streaming came, I was using Blab. I don’t know if you remember. That was quite a few years ago.
CHUCK: I do, yeah.
AI: I was using Blab, embracing all those different live streaming platforms. I launched my livestreaming show. Writing blog articles, doing my show. So, everything that I asked my students to do, I was doing the same.
Besides being a teacher, I became a practitioner, and oh my god. My teaching has improved so much. And finally, my students were telling me, “Dr. Ai, we’re learning so much!” And that makes me feel really, really happy. And so, that is a big missing link in today’s students.
And secondly – and this is more relevant to people teaching social media, businesses – and we assume because our students are so-called “digital natives,” they know automatically how to use the social media as a way to build their personal career, to practice professional development, and to learn to do digital networking to run their own personal brand. And we assumed because they grew up with technology, therefore, they know everything about technology. It is definitely a myth. It is very wrong.
[bctt tweet=”And I discovered from working with almost 3,000 students, they are very digitally savvy but only in terms of sending a selfie, socializing with their friends, taking pictures, playing games, being entertained. @aiaddysonzhang” username=”onlinevidmaster”]
And I discovered from working with almost 3,000 students, they are very digitally savvy but only in terms of sending a selfie, socializing with their friends, taking pictures, playing games, being entertained. They are very good at that, but they have no idea how to use social media the way that we are using social media, as a way to share something, to inspire change, to create a social movement using technology for positive social changes. They have no idea. It is a learned skill.
But because many teachers will assume our students know everything, we are not teaching them the right way to use social media in the classroom. Therefore, students, they are just like, nobody’s actually nurturing their digital literacy. And I have heard so many stories of my friends that hire college grads to work on their social media campaign, or as interns – disaster, right? They have no idea. And so that is another missing link. That is why I’m such an advocate of digital literacy using social media in the classroom to facilitate teaching and learning.
Those are two big ones. Another one is, I think the important life skills are really missing in the current education curriculum. Students are very good at taking paths and examining AP classes, memorizing facts, information, regurgitating this phrase and that. They are really good at figuring out what my teacher wants me to do, and what I am to do to get an A in the class. But they are really bad at implementing what they have learned, and also to have the relevant life skills to be future-ready – communication skills, collaboration skills, creativity.
I know quite a few studies that back this up. I don’t know if you want me to share. Just like creativity – there was a big study that came out recently, last year or so, and they wanted to study students, how creative they are. So, they asked students, “How many ways can you think of using a paper clip?” And asked the 4-year-old, 5-year-old. And they were like, “Yeah! This, and that.” And so, hundreds of – they scored 98% in terms of creativity. Genius.
So, five years later, the researchers asked the same group of children, and their creativity dropped to 50%.
CHUCK: Wow.
AI: So, another five years later, they had the study again. The same group of children. The number continued to drop. By the time they are emerging professionals, their number dropped to 2%.
CHUCK: What?!
AI: What happened? So, what happened is that they became more educated, and I see those students in my classes all the time. They are so conditioned. They are only looking at the right answer, right? They’re so afraid to make a mistake, and they just don’t want to take any risks. And at the end, it is not our student’s fault. It is this old educational system, the structure, the way that we’re teaching, the way that we’re evaluating our students. And as a result of that, being in this prison for a few decades – yeah, by the time you are released from the prison, you lose your agency, you lose your creativity, and you have no life skills.
CHUCK: That’s amazing. Yeah, I’ve noticed the same thing. I used to work with interns at the University of Virginia and came up with a very similar idea because I would see these undergraduates who are incredible at texting with one finger, or one thumb. I’m still texting with two hands, and it takes me awhile to find all the keys. But they were incredibly adept at those things you’re talking about – taking pictures, selfies – but first of all, not being able to add in a lot of additional creativity. But then, especially not being able to apply – because they were never taught. It’s not their fault. But they were never taught to apply those same skills to any kind of business, nonprofit, professional type of environment.
So, what I’m hearing you say, Dr. Ai, is that there’s basically a wall in our educational system. And on one side are the students, the way that they’ve been taught. But when they’re outside of the wall, they’re digital learners because we’re in a digital environment, of course. I mean, this was probably a different metaphor or different way of thinking about it, back in the 90s and 80s and before. But now that the whole world has switched to digital, these young people have all these skills, but there’s this wall right in between.
That leads me to ask about your Classroom Without Walls because I think that’s an absolutely fascinating concept. How did you come up with it, and what does it mean?
AI: Yeah, thank you so much for asking. Yeah, definitely, there’s this big wall, and going back to what we mentioned earlier, this gap between what is happening inside a classroom and what is happening outside the classroom – a few weeks ago, at Google, they actually had a big announcement. They are launching their own career certifications to replace the traditional four-year college. And I think it is only going to be a matter of time that there are going to be more organizations like Google launching their own career certifications.
Why? Because the cost to onboard a fresh college grad is very expensive. Last year, a big study came out saying that students do not have the hard skills and the soft skills to be future-ready. It’s like a slap in the face – after four years in college, after so much money, okay? I’m not even learning the necessary hard skills? So, Google, they are launching their own certification, which is only a few hundred dollars and half a year (six months) for three relevant positions.
In other words, for students who are looking to be hired in those three specific positions, they don’t need to – they don’t have to go to a traditional four-year college. They only need to do the Google certification, and they will use that as a way to evaluate the students and to replace the traditional college. And I love that because we need to have more people from the industry to co-design students’ educational journey.
When you think about education, and ever since a kid is very young, everything is given to the kid, right? My mom – before I started schooling, my mom, my dad told me that I had to learn this. As I grow older, there’s a standardized curriculum. There’s a standardized exam. And so, everything is given to our children without their involvement, right? We look at all the committees designing curriculum. You rarely see a kid on the committee, right? All those people are decision makers, policy makers – different interest groups are making decisions about how to draw our learning and what they need to be taught. Of course, you see the missing links.
So, for me, designing the Classroom Without Walls really is based on what I do as a teacher, being in the classroom for so many years and, at the same time, as an education consultant. I work with different brands. I also work with schools, and I also do coaching with teachers and the individual students. And also, I become a lifelong learner. So, really consolidating all these experiences of what I do as a teacher, consultant, and students.
I designed the Iceberg Model. And what I learned is that oftentimes, parents come to me and will ask me – especially since COVID – they will ask me, “Hey, Dr. Ai, I’m really concerned about my children. They’re not learning this. They’re not learning that. How can they be ready for the future?” Most parents think the only thing they need to be concerned about in terms of their children’s future readiness is academic performance, right? In the United States, we use a grade point average. But actually, research has shown GPA is inversely related to innovation orientation.
CHUCK: Really?
AI: So, in other words, the higher the GPA, the less likely a kid is to innovate. But if you ask all the parents, “Do you want your children to be innovative?” every single mom or dad will tell you, “Yeah, of course!” Right? Then, if you tell the GPA is the wrong benchmark, they’ll be like, “No, what are you talking about?”
To really kind of wake up the parents, I designed my Iceberg Model, and the tip of the iceberg is really traditional school-based learning. And underneath the tip of the iceberg are three core elements we cover in Classroom Without Walls to future-proof the next generation.
We talk about – one core component is New Media Knowledge, or digital literacy. We really work with students to embrace social media, to embrace the fact that students are digital learners. We’re connected with our students where they are, not where we think they should be.
We also work with the students on their LinkedIn profile so they can be ready for the “Show Me” economy. Show me how good you are. You say that you have this Communications major. You say that you’re a good speaker. But how good you are in terms of communicating, you’re talking to the camera, launching a podcast, doing what you are doing right now. This is a learned skill, right?
So, we work with the students to really improve their online presence, to improve their digital literacy, to be ready for the “Show Me” economy. One of my students is launching a live streaming podcast, and I have students who actually got jobs before they even graduated from college because of the podcast, which is really amazing.
[bctt tweet=”To really wake up the parents, I designed my Iceberg Model, and the tip of the iceberg is traditional school-based learning. Underneath the tip of the iceberg are three core elements we cover in Classroom Without Walls to future-proof the next generation. @aiaddysonzhang” username=”onlinevidmaster”]
Again, I want to share with parents…they are still – the way they are thinking about education is very old-fashioned, why? Do some volunteer work, 4.0, play piano, this and that. Very, very traditional. And things have been changing very fast, parents are not even aware of. And many parents, I totally understand because they have a full-time job, so they outsource education to a school. Many of them will outsource education to a really good, competitive school district or private school. But unfortunately, again, research has shown children who are attending high-achieving schools are more likely to have addiction – alcohol abuse, drug abuse, sexual abuse, all sorts of addiction because of the pressure. So, we need to understand that.
CHUCK: Wow.
AI: Anyway, so we cover New Media Literacy. And the second core component is life skill. And based on what I mentioned earlier, students don’t even know how to talk to strangers, professional people. How to send an email to a professional. They have no idea. Those are basic questions. How to send a calendar invite. I have worked with students who don’t even know how to send a calendar invite, right? And some of the remote work tools, project management, Trello, Asana, Evernote. And even the basic ones like Google Docs, many students have no idea. So, we work with students to develop their life skills.
The Classroom Without Walls, we cover communication, collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, and emotional intelligence. And the reason we add emotional intelligence, again, is based on research. Research has shown EQ and soft skills are two times more predictive of a person’s long-term success than IQ. And again, most parents are only looking at IQ, right? So, I want to show them EQ. All the emotional intelligence is actually very important.
And there’s another study – they studied high-performance CEOs. And among those high-performance company leaders, CEOs – 90% of them are really high on EQ. And in contrast, people who are low performers – only about 20% of them are actually high on EQ. So, you see the contrast.
And last, but not least, we also cover mindset. What I discovered on my journey is that education and even learning is an inside-out journey. One of my favorite thought leaders in this space is Daniel Pink, and he talks about intrinsic learning and motivation. So, three core factors: autonomy, mastery, and purpose.
And my students, they join my program, or the students that I work with, they have no sense of purpose. I’m not even talking about five years, by the time they are 30 – are they going to change this or that. Even right now, they have no idea what they are interested in. They have no idea what they want to do. They are waiting for their parents, for their teachers, for curriculum to tell them what they need to do.
So, their heart is asleep. Most of the students I work with, their heart is asleep because, again, we think about education – we think about educating the brain, right? We need to learn this fact and information.
But what I discovered – true education is to inspire the heart. You want the students to uncover – not you, as a dictator to cover this and that – but actually, we show up as a facilitator to help our students to uncover what is their passion, what is their interest, what is their strengths.
And once we awaken their heart, they are ready to learn because we are into this information sincerity, right? Information is everywhere. Information is not the problem. The problem is, are you interested in learning more about the information? Most students are not interested in learning more about the information. Not to even mention, most of the information they learn from their classes has nothing to do with their personal life right now. Very irrelevant.
So, I really work with the students to understand who they are. We do value assessments, we do personality assessments to really understand, help them discover and uncover their passions, their interests. We also use IPD, which is a really popular Japanese concept. We do all sorts of things to awaken their hearts and to inspire them to become lifelong learners, and to figure things out on their own.
So, that is what we do at Classroom Without Walls and our curriculum.
Please feel free to comment below with any questions and I’ll pass along answers from Dr. Ai. Click here to go to part 2 of the interview.
Dr. Ai Addyson-Zhang is an educator and an entrepreneur. She received her MA and Ph.D. in Communication from Syracuse University and the University of Maryland. Ai is the founder of Classroom Without Walls, an alternative school to future-proof the next generation. Ai is also an Adobe Insider, Adobe Education Leader, and HubSpot Academy Instructor.
As a thought leader in online education, Dr. Ai specializes in incorporating social media and creative technologies into traditional curriculum to enhance student engagement and acquire 21st-century skills. Dr. Ai’s work has been featured in Forbes, Inside Higher Education, Pearson Education, Entrepreneur, “The Today Show”, and others.
Additionally, Dr. Ai hosts two weekly live streaming shows, where she interviews industry leaders in Business and Education, such as Seth Godin and Guy Kawasaki. Dr. Ai additionally serves as a SEMrush Webinar guest and host. Dr. Ai frequently speaks at academic and industry conferences including Inbound, VidCon, SEMrush Global Marketing Day, Social Media Day, Social Media Week Lima (the largest social media marketing conference in the midwest), and others.
Please visit classroomwithoutwalls.ai to learn more.
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