ORCHAReD Learning Ecosystem

Research has long questioned the effectiveness of professional development (PD) on educator and student outcomes. Typically, PD is limited to scheduled student-break days, taking place as an expensive, in-person endeavor with little or no follow-up support provided. If follow-up support happens, it may occur weeks or months after the initial session.

Organizations such as Learning Forward (2011) have tried to standardize effective practices and PD outcomes. However, individual state requirements for PD seat time generally range from 90 to 180 hours over five years (18-36 hours yearly). Comparatively, IES' comprehensive PD research of 1,300 reviewed studies found that teachers need 49 hours of PD annually to produce positive student outcomes (Yoon et al., 2007). This sum totals almost 250 hours of PD over five years, equaling far fewer hours than any state requires. Limited, expensive PD-hour offerings, with an average cost of $18,000 per teacher, do little to create a return on a district's investment and leave teachers needing additional support (New Teacher Project, 2021). Moreover, many urban and rural districts lack the funds to support teacher professional learning on a large scale. PD in low-income communities is desperately needed to improve teacher retention and feelings of support. 

When teachers do not receive the professional learning support they need, they often turn to pre-designed curriculum packages from which they can mine classroom activities. These generic curriculum packages offer little incentive for teachers to transform their pedagogical approach and have been found to "de-skill" teachers (Petrie, 2012). Moreover, rarely does implementing pre-packaged curricula happen with fidelity, rendering the purchase a costly and ineffective spend of district dollars (Nevenglosky et al., 2019). Pre-designed curriculum packages rarely address local contexts and cultural responsiveness (Schwartz, 2022). In particular, civics curricula tend to be lecture-based, with few experiential-learning components required. Teachers do not receive the professional development necessary to equip them with the skills to successfully implement an active civic engagement challenge that subsequently allows learners to understand civic participation and actively participate in enacting solutions to local problems (Ward, 2022).

In response to the shortcomings of pre-designed curriculums, many urban districts are moving toward building their own systems. These in-house developments come with a hefty price tag; Chicago recently spent an initial $135 million on their new Skyward system, and New York City Schools earmarked, but then scaled back on, their initial projection of $202 million (Schwartz, 2022). While these in-house developments have good intentions of meeting their learners' local context and cultural relevancy, districts again fail to provide professional development opportunities to ensure the success of the curricular developments.

ORCHAReD is an online professional learning ecosystem that allows teachers to pick, learn, and grow based on their self-determined needs in an on-demand setting. ORCHAReD’s three-pronged approach to professional learning for teachers ensures innovative curriculum design and sustainable pedagogical changes to meet the needs of all learners in an ever-changing world. Interactions in and through ORCHARed bring content and skills to life in a relevant context that empowers students to develop actionable solutions to civic challenges for their local communities and beyond into global arenas.

Prong One: ORCHAReD provides teachers access to APLEs (authentic project-learning experiences) developed by Project ARC. These APLEs are quite different from the traditionally-scripted curriculum produced by major textbook companies or education foundations. Project ARC’s APLEs provide teachers with a 12-page overview of the learning experience, which includes the standards, skills, and content, as well as the suggested outline of teacher assessments and learner activities. These APLEs are not scripted experiences but support teachers in adapting the APLE relevant to the community context of the school population. Specifically, these APLEs align with civic action challenges steeped in social justice and community relevance. First and foremost, the MIT challenge APLE is now part of our offerings: How can all people learn about and take civic action to improve their communities and the world? Examples of additional APLEs that become more specific in their civic action and fall under the overarching challenge in this competition include a) How can we reduce crime in our community? b) How can we increase civic participation in our community? c) How can we develop more vital economic supports that meet the needs of our local citizens?  

These APLEs aim to engage learners in taking actionable change in their communities and world. Additionally, in participating in these APLEs, our learners have the opportunity to partner with community members who are experts in their fields, as well as the individuals who have the potential to effect the changes that our learners desire to make. However, the learning doesn’t stop with our students but extends to our educators.

Prong Two: These designed APLEs provide teachers with a foundational understanding of the inquiry-based pedagogical approach that underpins the APLE experience. Many of these teachers will grow with the ecosystem as they participate in our APLE Bites online courses, embedded within ORCHAReD. This ten-module, self-paced course allows teachers to develop an APLE from scratch. From this design, teachers can delve more specifically into civic action opportunities within their communities and extend those opportunities at the state, national, or even global levels.

Prong Three: For those wishing support, the ORCHAReD learning ecosystem has it readily available as just-in-time access to Project ARC certified coaches. These certified coaches provide feedback at all levels of ORCHAReD interaction, which includes during the implementation of Project ARC designed APLEs, throughout the APLE Bites course while developing personally-designed APLEs, and while the teacher implements the personally-designed APLE in their classroom.

ORCHAReD is designed to serve all populations from all communities globally. By relying on short, adaptable APLEs and just-in-time coaching, teachers have what they need to get started with an authentic and relevant civics experience. However, ORCHAReD's most significant impact will be in communities where educators feel the least supported: low-income districts and schools. 

Our learners will not grow without the appropriate support to grow our educators. Too frequently, higher-income districts with proficient and advanced standardized test scores are unwilling to change much about their teaching practice. Conversely, low-income districts experience the frustration of feeling alone in trying to navigate professional learning opportunities that they may have to pay for out of their personal funds or travel far distances to receive. Additionally, paid-for curriculums are designed in a standardized manner that fails to address the cultural relevance and local context of populations, further marginalizing low-income rural and urban areas. 

Little attention is paid to how to personalize professional development or how to design open-ended challenges for learners to solve in a way that is relevant to their communities. Thus, many teachers abandon these authentic learning experiences and fall back to "teaching to the tests" that are irrelevant to their learner population. These traditional-teaching methods lead to more significant classroom disruptions, and our most marginalized students fall farther behind in all curricular areas. 

ORCHAReD provides professional learning to our most vulnerable teaching populations at an affordable rate, in a personalized fashion, and through a networked system of collegial support. Current Project ARC partner schools that benefit from ORCHAReD's prototyped version are located in Los Angeles, Las Cruces, Cincinnati, Albuquerque, and Charleston. Additional partner districts that are ready to onboard, based on recently acquired RFP success, include several urban areas within Texas, such as San Antonio ISD and the Educational Services Center eleven, which serves the major metropolitan area outside of Dallas. Furthermore, Project ARC's partnership with the National Academy Foundation, which serves 392 high schools in the US that contain 80% minority student populations, will enhance our reach to those most vulnerable educators.  

The concept of ORCHAReD stems from our collective 40+ years of experience coaching with Project ARC and other organizations serving low-income rural and urban districts across the globe. Specifically, Dr. Tim Kubik started teaching at a village school with few resources in Liberia, West Africa. Dr. Dayna Laur grew up in a poor, rural Southwestern Virginia town in the 80s. She attended a school district with few resources, no advanced coursework, and limited community commitment outside of football. In our years of consulting, we have worked in various district environments, many similar to our first experiences.

Specifically, Dr. Kubik has worked with teacher teams in underserved Hispanic and indigenous populations in many schools within the Albuquerque Public Schools system and in underserved learning communities in Los Angeles, New Orleans, Southern Ohio, and West Virginia. Likewise, Dr. Laur has worked in underserved communities such as New York City, Los Angeles, Albuquerque, and rural East and West Texas. In each case, we have learned the importance of learning from those we served as much as, or more than, coaching them.

Today, Dr. Laur serves on the Shine Music Foundation board of directors, which seeks to bring music education to every student in need in the York City area of Pennsylvania. Shine aims to “build community by unifying diverse groups of people through a love and passion for music.” Dr. Kubik also serves as the Chair of the Colorado Democratic Party’s Education Initiative, which puts him in contact with all of Colorado’s 178 school districts, including underserved urban communities such as Denver and many equally underserved rural districts with teacher shortages and financial limitations that inhibit teacher professional learning. 

Feedback on ORCHAReD has been solicited from networked peers worldwide, who were chosen based on their varied experiences with teachers in need (including African, Asian, and South American schools). Furthermore, the diverse team of Project ARC project coaches, with vast experience in urban charter, low-income international schools, and rural public districts, has enhanced the ORCHAReD concept. These project coaches will continue to extend their reach to educators most in need of professional learning support through the ORCHAReD virtual ecosystem. Finally, the teachers we serve have also been consulted for feedback rounds on how ORCHAReD can best be of use to them.

Project ARC has developed the core components that make up the meat of ORCHAReD. We have the developed APLEs, the APLE Bites course modules, and the Project ARC certified coaches. These elements are in place and working well with several partner districts. We are collecting data from these first implementations to adjust our product as needed and to add to our growing repository of APLEs. We are creating new course modules to meet the demand for additional support. We are also continuing to build our team of Project Coaches to meet anticipated demand in the upcoming year. 

Project ARC is partnering with Harrisburg, PA-based Citizen Developer with Laura Daughty as the lead developer assigned to this project. Citizen Developer is classified as a no-code software platform that offers design agility while ensuring an online system's security, control, and compliance. Citizen Developer maintains a proven track record of being a cost-saving solution compared with traditional tech designers. According to Citizen Developer’s (2023) calculations, the average project cost reduction is 95.1%, all while completing development 20 times faster than other application platforms. Furthermore, Citizen Developer offers industry-leading service level agreements with support, performance, security, disaster recovery, and availability. Citizen Developer’s development proposal for Phase I of ORCHAReD indicates a three-sprint design process. The estimated development time is 798 hours over nine months. The project kickoff and Sprint I’s requirement gathering and backlog prioritization are slated to begin this summer. 

Project ARC has hired a former Google researcher to assist in data collection over the next several years so that we may continually improve ORCHAReD. Additionally, we have hired a marking and sales director to support us in expanding our market share of what we know is a departure from traditional professional development products. However, we are honestly clueless when it comes to thinking about the legalities of moving this product to market. Thus, legal advice is our priority. 

We have become well-versed in grant writing at Project ARC. We have applied for an SBIR grant to continue to make a fully-realized ORCHAReD a reality. However, we know that the funds from this grant only cover a portion of our needed capital. While grant writing is one of our self-taught specialties, raising funds is not.

We are confident that Citizen Developer is an excellent fit for ORCHAReD; we are always open to adding support on the technology end of development. We want to ensure that ORCHAReD is a robust product without missing key elements. 

Finally, ORCHAReD's potential is far-reaching. We want to ensure we do not miss any critical partners for distribution. While our sales and marketing director is doing a fabulous job, we also know that more than one person can handle the market's untapped potential. Thus, support in this area is also greatly appreciated. 

Existing solutions for improving teachers' abilities to provide authentic and relevant learning experiences rely on traditional teaching methods such as reading and following directions or direct instruction from professional learning professionals. These costly professional-development trainings, pre-designed curricula, and train-the-trainer models support an entire professional development industry. A few multi-million dollar companies consume a great deal of public money to support professional teacher learning. We view ORCHAReD as a potentially disruptive platform that would challenge the pre-eminence of these curriculum and workshop factories by putting these dollars to work in and for the local communities they are allotted initially. 

ORCHAReD will provide affordable and sustainable PD to low-resource districts, which often lack the budget to pay for an onsite instructional coach. ORCHAReD will create a more stable teaching faculty through job-embedded professional learning and ongoing, on-demand coaching, as teachers feel supported through effective PD. Research shows that job retention and reduced turnover can also be significant benefits of effective PD, especially when it is authentic and meets teachers' needs where they are (Eberhard et al., 2000; Rodgers & Skelton, 2014). This stability will be passed on to learners. Additionally, ORCHAReD's job-embedded professional learning will support educators in shifting their instructional classroom practice to APLEs, challenging learners to move beyond low-level Bloom's classroom tasks. Precisely, this shift moves our learners into actionable rather than passive civic learning opportunities. Starting with our learners, even at the earliest grades, creates a future community of civic participants. 

ORCHAReD's competitive edge is its focus on formative assessment and on-demand feedback to ensure teacher mastery. Unlike market competitors, ORCHAReD participants receive personalized feedback from project coaches for each mini-lesson. Their mini-lesson assignments must pass a project coach's review before unlocking the next course module. These feedback opportunities allow a personalized experience where a coach offers individualized support outside the course videos and suggested resources. Once a participant completes all modules, ORCHAReD's coaching ecosystem provides the additional benefit of on-demand support during classroom implementation. ORCHAReD's variety of job-embedded coaching moments (personalized feedback, logs of coach interactions, student work analyses, video uploads, etc.) can propel advances in systemic, vertically-aligned goals from the elementary to secondary buildings, allowing district administrators to capitalize on success points in one school to increase system-wide outcomes. Overall, the on-demand coaching support is the potential difference in online PD offerings and will lead to more significant changes in teacher practice and positive student outcomes. 

ORCHAReD seeks to disrupt professional-learning systems that target civics concepts in the classroom to stretch them into actionable community solutions, driving a parallel between student learning and community change. 

Disruptive innovation theory guides the push to create PL opportunities outside the norm of conventional PD offerings. Christensen's (2018) disruptive innovation theory purports the development of simple solutions that allow those without access to resources or capital to disrupt existing markets previously. Specifically, "disruption begin[s] by successfully targeting ... overlooked segments, gaining a foothold by delivering more-suitable functionality" (Christensen et al., 2015, p. 4). However, the theory's misapplication results in many ed-tech companies claiming to "disrupt" classroom practices with the "wow" factor that does little beyond digitizing traditional practices such as giving quizzes or homework assignments (Christensen et al., 2015). In fact, disruptive technology is "the processes by which an organization transforms inputs of labor, capital, materials, and information into products and services of greater value" (Christensen et al., 2017, p.11). ORCHAReD intends to disrupt the current expensive and low-performing PD market by making an affordable online PL ecosystem the norm, with its first target in civic action-oriented challenges for learners. ORCHAReD will provide administrators with needed information to make data-driven decisions that directly result in sustainable changes in educator practice that translate to learner gains in the classroom. 

Within the next year, ORCHAReD will become a full reality with its completed design. Within the next five years, Project ARC's goal is that ORCHAReD will expand to meet the needs of educators in 25% of the U.S. educational system, which includes 3,450 school systems and would impact a learner population of approximately 13.8 million students. Beyond the scope of the States, with our partnership with SCORE Campus in Singapore, ORCHAReD is poised to enter the East Asia market rapidly.

To ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all (SDG 4), teachers need access to quality and low-cost professional learning that translates into actionable classroom practice. ORCHAReD will target SDG 4 as Project ARC expands its reach into schools that need quality professional learning designed to meet the needs of individual teachers, which will, in turn, target the impact on their learners. Specifically, this professional learning will initially focus on civic action APLEs so that our learners connect the content and standards to the real world, empowering them to effect change in their world. Additionally designed APLEs by teachers can and will target all other existing SDGs. 

In the fall of 2020 and spring of 2021, Project ARC conducted action research on the nine-week facilitated course for two and half months with a small 9-12 Los Angeles Unified charter school and a large suburban K-12 NJ school district. The schools began the course with 25-35 teachers. The administrators' main concern was course completion, and the results were disappointing. Only eight NJ teachers completed the entire course, with two finishing all the required activities on time. Teacher feedback indicated they lacked time to stay on the required schedule. However, the teachers who completed the course ended with a fully-developed APLE to implement. 

This experience led Project ARC's pivot to focus on designing a work-at-your-own-pace course and more direct coaching support. This move was supported by Hodge's and Chenelle's (2018) findings that an online eight-week facilitated course with feedback for teachers proved challenging when assignments had set deadlines. Similarly, Lee (2018) discovered low-participant course ratings related to discussion boards that were viewed as distracting and time-consuming activities. Although much smaller than Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs), Project ARC's findings similarly identified only 20% of course participants as active (Joksimović et al., 2018). In another case highlighting the challenges of course completion, Canopy Lab, a provider of non-facilitated online courses, noted that an 8% completion rate is reasonable and desired (N. Bernal, personal communication, January 27, 2022). 

In January 2022, Project ARC released its first pre-designed APLEs and hired seven project coaches to support implementing these projects to coincide with the self-paced course. Project ARC continues to collect qualitative data on the trial runs of these implementations linked to direct coaching. 

Initial feedback from focus groups is positive when discussing ORCHAReD's potential. When describing the vision of ORCHAReD, a head of school responded, "I wish that were available ten years ago" (J. Horowitz, personal communication, December 7, 2021). Conversations with a PD director noted the need for rethinking PD in the COVID era. "Whole group PD is dead. Teachers need one-on-one PD with individualized coaching" (D. Lauer, personal communication, December 8, 2021). Our focus on civic action and social justice has also been highly regarded. "We're creating change within our communities, and our learners are at the core of that change" (M. Bentencourt, personal communication, November 16, 2022).

Teacher professional learning relies on traditional teaching practices where experts disseminate “best practices” through training or curriculum. As such, no matter the practices, they do little to transform teaching. By contrast, ORCHAReD relies on crowdsourcing of “promising practices” that respect teacher professionalism to apply these practices in local contexts best. Combined with an assets-based approach to coaching, we believe ORCHAReD will not only develop individual teachers but is more likely to transform their approach to teaching within their own classrooms. 

Civic action must start with education, specifically education that empowers learners to effect changes within their community and beyond. Changes in pedagogical practice that allow learners the space to tackle the challenges their communities face creates a more civic-oriented population of youth that grows up to be civically engaged adults. Education is the key to improving civic action, but passively learning about civic action is not enough to create civically-minded and civically-involved future adults. 

Project ARC is partnering with Harrisburg, PA-based Citizen Developer with Laura Daughty as the lead developer assigned to this project. Citizen Developer is classified as a no-code software platform that offers design agility while ensuring an online system's security, control, and compliance. 

ORCHAReD seeks to capitalize on Web 2.0 and 3.0 interactive communities by building a platform that allows teachers and certified coaches to interact toward their own improvement and that of their learners. After Phase I of the development of this platform, the ORCHAReD will include a virtual software as a service (SaaS) that houses the APLE Bites self-paced course, the Harvested APLE projects teachers develop, and a teacher progress data dashboard that includes relevant course information, visual metrics, and coaching interaction narratives for administrators. This prototype supports data-driven PD implementation virtually and in person. Additionally, a just-in-time coaching chat feature will be available with an option for scheduling the coaching hours. Finally, the catalog of Harvested APLEs submitted by participant teachers will provide users access to APLEs to try in their classrooms. This catalog can be shared within a school or district or showcased for cross-district sharing.

During the fall of 2023, Project ARC intends to collect significant coach-interaction data to increase our instructional coaching reach. During this stage of continued development, we will codify feedback on teacher assignments from coaches for use in developing algorithmic and AI-driven feedback to help scale the benefits of coaching interactions. The additional AI component will allow us to serve our district partners better and can significantly reduce district spending on an in-house instructional coach. Additional benefits abound for districts that cannot afford an instructional coach. 

Teacher professional learning is primarily an industry led by white curriculum and professional learning experts. As such, it replicates the “colonial schooling” system that sees white people as the experts and people of color as underserved populations (Black, 2016). Although many organizations are working to implement diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts to change this system, the potential for systemic change is minor compared to the potential inclusion offered by crowd-sourcing of promising practices from teachers worldwide.

While Dr. Kubik and Dr. Laur are white, Project ARC is a 50/50 partnership with one female co-founding partner. We have also intentionally selected diverse individuals to serve as Project ARC-certified coaches. These seven coaches include several ethnicities, international countries of origin, various religious backgrounds, and multiple sexual orientations. Project ARC actively seeks out minority representations for our Project Coaches so that they can become mentors to teachers in low-income communities and connect with these teachers on the levels of the students the teachers serve. Additionally, we have brought on a Project Coach who is a wheelchair user and specializes in meeting the needs of differently-abled learners, including deaf, blind, and neuro-diverse. Our Project Coaches design and develop our APLE curriculum, using their extensive teaching experience in minority-represented districts and international areas of need to ensure they meet the needs of all learners globally. 

ORCHAReD is a low-cost, fee-for-service business model that will rely on scale to cover development and improvement costs once the initial platform is fully active. Because ORCHAReD facilitates the implementation of Authentic Project-Learning Experiences (APLEs) through virtual, self-paced learning, peer collaboration, critique, and just-in-time coaching, it will generate innovation rather than relying on expensive expertise. These interactions will also provide real-time data for administrators to use in targeting interventions to ensure success. 

Furthermore, ORCHAReD intends to sell user space to outside organizations. This space will keep down the cost for our educational partners. Thus, corporate entities can purchase an "orchard" in ORCHAReD for their professional training purposes. Additionally, we plan to tap into community partners in a school district to cover school registration costs.

ORCHAReD data supports administrators as they recruit, retain, certify, assess, and evaluate highly effective teachers while simultaneously helping teachers acquire the knowledge and skills they need to improve classroom instruction and impact their learners' outcomes. ORCHAReD also alleviates the need for expensive, in-person professional learning that is often isolating for educators and leaves administrators dependent on in-person coaching to sustain momentum on initiative implementation.

Project ARC is actively pursuing federal government grants to help support the initial development costs of ORCHAReD. However, entrepreneurial support is needed to launch ORCHAReD successfully. Once the platform exists, the scale of low-cost fees for services will lead to financial sustainability and, if when disruptive, will lead to considerable profits as districts opt-in to this low-cost alternative to expensive onsite professional learning or curricula purchases.

In year one of ORCHAReD use, the estimated cost per teacher is $800. It is predicted that teachers will need more support from coaches when changing their pedagogical design and implementation. After year one, this price is reduced to $500 per teacher. The average number of teachers per U.S. district is 187 (U.S. Department of Education, 2012). Based on this average, in year one, a district would spend $149,600 on ORCHAReD and $93,000 in years two and beyond. Compared to the average district P.D. spend of $460,000, the cost savings of using ORCHAReD is significant (Gulamhussein, 2013). At a per-teacher cost, ORCHAReD provides more contact hours for a less expensive hourly rate. For example, an in-person P.D. session with Project ARC equates to $18/hour per teacher (12 hours over two days with 35 teachers at $7,500). Anticipated job-embedded P.D. hours in ORCHAReD are a minimum of ten, equating to $80/hour. Still, a much higher hourly commitment is expected, driving down the per-hour costs even further.

ORCHAReD provides professional learning to ALL teachers within a district or school rather than a targeted sub-population of educators who were "chosen" by the district to participate. ORCHAReD also has the potential to replace or provide an instructional coach for a district. This cost savings is significant. A year-one price for ORCHAReD is equivalent to two onsite instructional coaches, with one instructional coach for year two. These onsite coaches can only work with a handful of teachers each day and often never reach teachers who fall between those who desperately need assistance or those who are exceptionally gifted. Therefore, the cost savings for the value of the product is exponential. 

Additionally, ORCHAReD eliminates P.D.'s hidden costs. There is no need to hire substitute teachers, pay for travel-related expenses, purchase lunch offerings, or offer stipends for an extended school day. There is also a much higher return on investment based on job-embedded teacher support and nearly guaranteed implementation of changing classroom practice, which, in turn, will positively affect student learning outcomes. 

One Project ARC Project Coach has the capacity to serve an entire medium-sized district. At the salary rate of $80,000/year, the direct contact with teachers is much higher than that of an onsite instructional coach. 

Selling ORCHAReD space to outside entities can potentially increase Project ARC's yield exponentially. A $10,000/year space becomes passive income for Project ARC, increasing ORCHAReD's profitability.

Project ARC has applied for the 2023 SBIR grant through the federal government, and the application made it through the triage round with an expected announcement of the award in late May. The funding for this grant is $250,000 for eight months. After the initial 8-month period, Project ARC plans to apply for the second round of funding that will last for two years and cover an additional $800,000. This initial support will allow us to build a scalable platform that is self-sustaining.

Additionally, a portion of Project ARC's ERC federal government funding is earmarked for additional ORCHAReD development.