Knowledge Sharing: KGL’s Vanessa Vaughn Discusses Content Development, DEI, and the Future of K-12 and Higher Education Publishing

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Knowledge Sharing: KGL’s Vanessa Vaughn Discusses Content Development, DEI, and the Future of K-12 and Higher Education Publishing

Earlier this summer, KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd. welcomed Vanessa Vaughn as Senior Director, Content Services in our K-12 and Higher Education group to oversee content development for science and humanities subjects. Vanessa brings to KGL 20 years of experience developing high-quality K-16 content and a deep understanding of changing state and national standards.

Vanessa started her KGL tenure by contributing to the updated edition of our industry report, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Educational Content: What You Need to Know Now. I sat down with her recently to discuss her new role, content DEI in educational publishing, and how she sees the industry changing in the next five years.

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Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Educational Content: What You Need to Know Now

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Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Educational Content: What You Need to Know Now

A free report from KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.

Over the last decade, in response to a changing, better-informed world, the publishing industry has taken steps to bring more diversity into the workforce as well as to make their content more inclusive. However, those changes have at times been criticized for moving too slowly.

Recent legislation, social justice movements such as Black Lives Matter and #MeToo, and global disability rights and transgender equality campaigns have helped accelerate the industry’s desire for equity and better representation for all. As many publishers have seen, though the need and desire to make content and companies more inclusive are there, the path forward on how to implement these changes is not always clear.

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All About the Game: How Gamification Can Improve Engagement and Learning

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All About the Game: How Gamification Can Improve Engagement and Learning

There is no question that technology, particularly in the last two years, has played a large role in the field of education. With remote learning, students and educators were required to become not only familiar but fluent in EdTech. But as we spent more time on screens away from each other, students became less focused. With engagement at an all-time low, teachers did everything they could to get the attention of students, even resorting to employing games in their curricula in order to encourage participation.

Though gamification of learning objectives was around before the pandemic, this teaching method was not used as widely. As teachers tried everything to engage students, they soon found that when they began implementing games in their classwork, students were participating, paying attention, and even learning lessons. Now that students are back in the classroom, will games still be an active part of education?

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Knowledge Sharing: KGL’s Sonny Regelman Discusses Educational Content Development

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Knowledge Sharing: KGL’s Sonny Regelman Discusses Educational Content Development

KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd. has long provided product development services to the preK-12 and higher Education markets, working with many of the big players in addition to smaller and niche education publishers. For the last several years, one of the key leaders of KGL’s Learning Solutions group has been Executive Director, Sonny Regelman, who has experienced working in this field both on the content provider side as well as the vendor side.

Recently, I interviewed Sonny on the ins and outs of educational content development, where publishers experience pain points that partners can solve, the digital transformation of the market accelerated by the pandemic, and what new initiatives are on the horizon for the industry.

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Teaching English as a Second Language: Challenges and Opportunities

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Teaching English as a Second Language: Challenges and Opportunities

KGL is introducing an occasional series of explorations into the current issues in K-12 and higher education, where we will spotlight the varying perspectives of teachers, students, education publishers, and other stakeholders in the learning life cycle. We begin with a conversation with an elementary school teacher of English as a Second Language (ESL), in order to gain more insight into the struggles of students, gaps in ESL and ELT resources, and opportunities for content providers.

Over the last two years, teachers have borne the brunt of the pandemic. Teachers who work in specialized areas of learning where students need additional resources are feeling that to an even greater extent. We sat down with an ESL teacher, Ms. T in a school in the Bronx, New York to better understand the current teaching environment.

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Developing a Culture of Accessibility

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Developing a Culture of Accessibility

Accessibility has been the buzzword in publishing over the last several years as the industry embraces the need to make its content available to all readers. We at KGL have previously highlighted innovations in accessibility in K-12 learning and also potential hazards of not making scholarly content accessible.

As we look to the future, most specifically 2025 when the requirements of the European Accessibility Act will be enforced, we want to focus on the important steps and perhaps changes in corporate culture publishers need to take in order to make their content available for all readers.

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Accessibility Continues to Evolve in Education Publishing

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Accessibility Continues to Evolve in Education Publishing

In an article we published on this blog back in 2017, we highlighted some of the challenges, complexities and benefits associated with making digital educational content (K-12 and Higher Ed) more accessible for visually and cognitively impaired readers.

Fast forward several years and the sector’s commitment to digital equality has really been put to the test. As millions of students all over the world switched to remote learning, educational publishers and learning providers had to act quickly to ensure that all the right resources and content were available digitally in order to support students’ rapidly evolving needs.

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Reimagining Virtual School: Better Learning Strategies for a Digital Future

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Reimagining Virtual School: Better Learning Strategies for a Digital Future

Perhaps the most fundamental problem with remote learning is the way that school systems approach the use of technology in the classroom, often simply mirroring in-person activities in a digital environment rather than tailoring or reapproaching lessons using different tools that technology offers. When online learning was just a quick fix until students got back to the classroom, that was fine. But as we look ahead to a future with digital learning likely to continue as part of the curriculum to a certain degree, we want to highlight a few ways that schools and educators can reimagine the virtual experience to be more effective for students and teachers alike.

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Seven Publishing Trends for 2021

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Seven Publishing Trends for 2021

At around the same time last year, publishing industry experts and analysts looked ahead with optimism, hope and excitement as they speculated on what wonders 2020 might bring. As we all know, things didn’t exactly turn out as we expected. But, while many might think that trying to second-guess what the future may hold is a bit like nailing jello to the wall right now, surprisingly there are actually many clear indications of what could be in store for us in 2021. Here are our top seven predictions for what publishers can expect from the year ahead.

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Is XR technology’s “Zoom moment” finally on the horizon?

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Is XR technology’s “Zoom moment” finally on the horizon?

Every year - like clockwork - technology experts and futurists speculate as to whether this will finally be THE YEAR for mass market adoption of VR (virtual reality), AR (augmented reality) and MR (mixed reality), now commonly referred to under the useful catch-all umbrella term XR (extended reality) technologies.

When the vast majority of the world’s population was plunged into lockdown this year, and whether we liked it or not, staying in became the new going out, these debates around XR adoption logically intensified. This was to be the perfect storm. Suddenly the conditions were ripe for immersive innovations to really come to the fore and show their full potential.

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More than Words: Why Human Translation is Leagues Ahead

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More than Words: Why Human Translation is Leagues Ahead

The American philosopher and linguist Noam Chomsky once famously said: “A language is not just words. It’s a culture, a tradition, a unification of a community, a whole history that creates what a community is. It’s all embodied in a language.” While these words are revered by many of those who work with languages for a living, decades of attempts to mechanize translation would suggest that the technology industry believes we are not far from finding an automated system which has a deeper understanding of these wider complexities of language.

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The Classroom of the Future: Advances in Remote Learning

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The Classroom of the Future: Advances in Remote Learning

Over the last two decades, technology has gained wider acceptance in the classroom. Since the pandemic, when teachers and students have been abruptly forced apart, tech solutions from video calls to virtual classrooms to online learning platforms have leapt into widespread use and become a lifeline for education this term—a topic we wrote about in a previous blog post.

But as we look toward the next school year and beyond, will these advancements remain a stopgap measure for connecting with students and delivering instruction during unusual circumstances; or has the way children learn been changed forever? The following are some key innovations in digital learning that are likely to be part of K-12 education for a long time.

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Teaching with Tech: Five Tips for Navigating K–12 Distance Instruction

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Teaching with Tech: Five Tips for Navigating K–12 Distance Instruction

It would be an understatement to say that these are challenging times for teachers. Plunged into lockdown with no time to prepare for it, educators are quickly adapting to the new realities of distance instruction while getting up to speed with technology platforms, unfamiliar teaching techniques, and changing district and institutional guidelines. Throw in pressures to ensure students don’t fall behind juxtaposed with advice to refrain from overwhelming students and their families, and the situation becomes even more delicate.

Technology has without doubt been the great enabler of education during the COVID-19 crisis.

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Education Publishers Rise to the Challenge of Lockdown Learning

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Education Publishers Rise to the Challenge of Lockdown Learning

In our recent “Publishing as an essential business” post we looked at how the industry has been responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly focusing on how publishers are contributing to global efforts to confront the crisis and prove their value. There has undoubtedly been a concerted effort from every corner of the industry, whether that’s by making critical content accessible when it’s needed most or by making these distressing times more tolerable and entertaining for isolated readers.

Of all the industry sub-sectors, education publishing in particular has been in overdrive in recent weeks, as worldwide lockdowns have flung parents, students, teachers and educational institutions into the unfamiliar territory of home schooling and distant learning.

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Digital Equality for Distance Learning

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Digital Equality for Distance Learning

Accessible content ensures that students with disabilities don’t fall behind during the Great Shutdown

Here at KGL, we have long championed accessibility in publishing. Ensuring that your books, journals, digital products, websites and other content are either remediated or “born accessible” is essential to readers with disabilities. Many publishers by now appreciate that the same technologies and guidelines that improve access to materials for people with visual or hearing impairments, limited mobility, perceptual and cognitive differences can also open opportunities to better reach and serve all users. But if there has ever been a time to acknowledge the consequences of digital equality, it is the great experiment in distance learning of 2020.

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Publishing as an Essential Business

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Publishing as an Essential Business

A round-up of how the industry is responding to the COVID-19 pandemic

In these challenging times, there has been much discussion of what qualifies as an “essential business.” There is the debate around which establishments should be allowed to continue physical operations during a social distancing shutdown (are liquor stores, bike shops and video games as essential as grocery stores and the healthcare supply chain?). Some organizational habits like meeting culture, long commutes and digital red tape have already been exposed as decidedly nonessential for a post-crisis world. But while the majority of us adjust to working from home (a luxury obviously not afforded to many frontline professions), the coronavirus pandemic is unfolding as an occasion for the industry to prove its worth.

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A Look Ahead at Publishing in 2020: AI, AR, Plan S and More

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A Look Ahead at Publishing in 2020: AI, AR, Plan S and More

As 2020 begins, we look at what the year holds for publishers of all kinds, and how technology can help them improve their systems, increase revenue, reach new readers, and more.

#AI #technology #innovation #automation #workflow #AR #PlanS

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Unleashing the Untapped Potential of Digital Learning

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Unleashing the Untapped Potential of Digital Learning

A free report from KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.

Across most levels of education, students now expect learning experiences to be broadly in-line with their fast moving, digitally native, on-the-go lifestyles. And the pressure to cater to this need and deliver learning in a dynamic way is something which educational institutions feel on a daily basis. Innovation in this area has unfortunately not always evolved quickly enough to match the expectations of this new generation of learners, who now require digital curriculums which embrace quick and easy access, cross device capabilities and multimedia elements.

Our recently published report Six Approaches to Effective Digital Learning highlights some of the most exciting trends, transformations and technological developments in this booming sector, and in this post we explore just a few of the report’s findings.

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Educating the Netflix Generation: Digital-First Strategies for Textbooks Take Hold

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Educating the Netflix Generation: Digital-First Strategies for Textbooks Take Hold

Publishing giant Pearson boldly announced recently that it was moving towards a digital-first strategy, thus rendering the century old traditional textbook model as good as dead. Meanwhile, higher education specialist Cengage has been steadily expanding its online textbook subscription offering globally, experimenting with new cost-effective digital distribution models to cater to the Netflix and Spotify generation.

There are a number of reasons why, in this day and age, digital-first strategies make more sense than ever for education publishers.

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Accessibility for Publishers: Practical Tips That Demonstrate it's Well Within Your Reach

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Accessibility for Publishers: Practical Tips That Demonstrate it's Well Within Your Reach

Accessibility is an approach to publishing and design that makes content available to all, including those with disabilities who use assistive technologies on the computer. Publishers also benefit from embracing this essential initiative. When accessibility is well executed, it can expand readership and provide a higher-quality user experience for everyone. In our latest industry report, KGL provides business cases for accessibility that can be brought to leadership and stakeholders in a publishing organization.

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