🧪Creating a framework for experimentation in modular learning
When building new software, we often discuss creating a strong framework for experimentation. A good framework for experimentation involves building hypotheses, defining clear metrics that indicate success (KPIs), and choosing tools to evaluate how you’re performing relative to those outcomes, so you can consistently iterate on your method. In good product design, products are never finished but continuously improved based on data from structured experiments running all the time.
Failure is an indispensable part of effective experimentation. As you embark on this new path, there will be many times that you'll be tempted to do what your friend is doing or fall back on standardized learning outcomes or experts.
Having a clear framework for experimentation will help you realistically assess how well your program is progressing relative to your goals, seek out feedback as needed, and constantly evolve your method to better suit your child’s academic, social, and emotional needs.
It’s not as hard as it sounds.
Unlike building a tech company, you only have one “user,” your child. If you have multiple siblings, modular learning will look different for each of them. You can also incorporate goals such as family well-being into your metrics.
Sometimes startup founders have to be reminded to get user feedback. Parents don’t have to remind their kids to give them feedback. As long as you have clear goals about what you want to achieve from modular learning and are open to trying new things, failing, and adapting along the way, you already have a framework for experimentation that will serve you well.
In this post, we discuss the differences in evaluating outcomes in modular learning and traditional school, what to evaluate, tools and software to support families in measuring progress, and advice on getting into college.
How to get started
If you work in tech or are an entrepreneur, you might already know how to create a framework for experimentation. So by all means, use that method! Otherwise, we have some simple ideas on how to get started with this method.
Create a mission, core values, and flexible goals
Get started with three brainstorming sessions, at a time you have energy and time. Sit down alone, with your partner or co-parent (or a trusted friend), and with your child, and take some time writing out your initial goals for learning. Make sure to include social, emotional, and intellectual goals, as well as practical goals (such as getting into a good college).
It is vitally important that you include your child in this process.
Even if your child is three or four years old, they are not too young to have this conversation. If they’re a teen, these joint brainstorming sessions will benefit you all enormously in staying on track with learning. Children are much more geared towards learning and success in life than many parents imagine. Depending on their personality and when they start homeschooling, they may even fully take charge of their own learning, which can be a huge gift. If your child is involved in goal-setting and understands the “why” behind your homeschool strategy, they’ll be much more invested in the learning itself.
It’s up to you to decide who is running most of the learning, whether it’s you or your child. But many families do let their child lead, and this can be a great choice for many kids. Others crave and do better with more structure. But again, it’s important to question assumptions. Your child may be much more self-directed than you realize, especially given space and time to explore their interests, experience natural consequences, and freedom to experience that delicious sweet spot of boredom that sparks creativity and action.
Take your time
Parents are often afraid that if they miss even one week of formal homeschooling, their child will get behind and won’t be able to catch up. This is largely an irrational fear. It may be true in a school with standardized curriculum that a week away from school can set a child way back, but it does not apply to modular learning. When children learn at their own pace with 1-1 instruction, they learn much more efficiently. Take the time you need to develop your framework for experimentation and don’t rush.
Question assumptions
Take the opportunity to question some of your biggest goals with your child: For example, is getting into a good college really important? Why is that so? If you want your child to learn handwriting and they don’t, how do you think that will serve them? If you want your child to love learning, does it have to be fun all the time? How does your child feel about pushing themselves in subjects they dislike? Take the time to question assumptions so you’re really aligned as a family.
Make a pretty list and hang it somewhere
Narrow down your top ten goals, print them up, or write them out beautifully and hang them somewhere in your house. This will be like a mission statement and core values for your company that you can keep referring to.
Choose tools to measure progress
Whether your method is check-ins, exams, built-in assessments, expert support, or standardized exams, choose some tools to evaluate how you’re doing relative to the goals. (We’ll discuss tools we like later in this post.)
Your tool may be simply checking in periodically to see how your child is doing relative to the list of goals you created.
Keep iterating
Have check-ins every couple of months, weeks, or days about these goals. Change them as much as you like, but make sure they’re somewhere everyone can see, so you can constantly refer to them.
