Our Homeschool Innovation Project

For our last project, we had to pretend to be a private consulting firm and provide a digital transformation or innovation to a company. So, we decided as a group that we were hired by a smaller Home School Service Organization to offer them a solution that will help them remain competitive, versatile, and adaptable in today’s technologically driven world.

Our plan is to offer our client a multi-level solution. 

This solution will include having an online integrated platform via the homeschool site and a phone app that can be downloaded by parents and children that can provide a multitude of functions such as:

• Allow for community discussions, etc. that allow families to find easy answers to homeschool questions.
• Allow for a kid’s space for kids to discuss and interact with other homeschool kids of the same age and with the same interests.
• Provide a “spaced practice” or quizzing opportunity for homeschool parents to design, leverage quizzes from other parents, and deliver to their kid’s smartphones for reinforcement and practice of course material they just reviewed, etc.
• Provide a schedule and course management tool to track progress along the years.

This in our opinion and based on data and research findings would appeal to homeschoolers because there has been an increase in homeschooling numbers since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

 Homeschooling organizations may not have this level of support and innovation that is needed to keep up with the growing community. In addition, this service can provide a better quality of homeschooling by gaining more socialization from other homeschoolers using the app and providing another reinforcement mechanism such as smartphone-delivered micro-learning quizzes to homeschoolers beyond just standard quizzes and tests.

Homeschooler parents are generally more independent than most and might love the idea of being able to create their own quizzes for their kids and being able to share what they have created with other parents, in part or in whole. There is an impression that homeschooled kids do not get the social interactions that traditional school kids get because they are not taking part in traditional educational settings. The platform and app will allow for chat and discussion between homeschool kids to overcome the lack of socialization which is important for development.

• Spaced Practice Sample 1 see HERE
• Spaced Practice Sample 2 see HERE

Larger homeschool organizations may already have something like this however, our role as consultants is to target these services to smaller homeschool organizations to gain a competitive advantage by helping them keep up with the larger organizations, in addition to opening up several pricing models designed to allow for non-regular subscribers to enjoy the same community aspects and spaced practice of the platform at a lower cost. 

In addition to our document, we have created a presentation of our proposal which includes additional resources on what our consulting firm, DAEA Consulting  Download DAEA Consulting can do for quizzes for our homeschooling clients. 

References 

Agarwal, P. K., Henry, L., Mark, A., & Kathleen, B. (n.d.). How to use retrieval practice to improve learning. Retrievalpractice.Org. Retrieved May 19, 2022

Duvall, S., 17, N., & Tags: News Research November 17. (n.d.). New research shows homeschool growth across all races, and income categories. HSLDA. Retrieved June 12, 2022, from https://hslda.org/post/new-research-shows-homeschool-growth-across-all-race-income-categories

Goossens, N. A. M. C., Camp, G., Verkoeijen, P. P. J. L., & Tabbers, H. K. (2014). The effect of retrieval practice in primary school vocabulary learning. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 28(1), 135-142. doi:https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.2956

McDaniel, M. A., Agarwal, P. K., Huelser, B. J., McDermott, K. B., & Roediger,Henry L., I.,II. (2011). Test-enhanced learning in a middle school science classroom: The effects of quiz frequency and placement. Journal of Educational Psychology, 103(2), 399-414. doi:https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021782

NHES. National Household Education Surveys Program (NHES). (n.d.). Retrieved June 12, 2022, from https://nces.ed.gov/nhes/

Nonpublic & Home Schools. SOM - State of Michigan. (n.d.). Retrieved June 12, 2022, from      https://www.michigan.gov/mde/services/flexible-learning/options/nonpub-home

Retrieval Practice: A Power Tool for Lasting Learning. (2020). Educational Leadership : Journal of the Department of Supervision and Curriculum Development, N.E.A., 77(8).

Storm, B. C., Bjork, R. A., & Storm, J. C. (2010). Optimizing retrieval as a learning event: When and why expanding retrieval practice enhances long-term retention. Memory & Cognition, 38(2), 244-253. doi:https://doi.org/10.3758/MC.38.2.24