Note From the Founder | Academic Engagement Process

Note From Founder

(March 2020) - I have no doubt that once the lingering impact of the health and economic crisis brought by the coronavirus epidemic has stabilized, we will soon realize an equal, if not worse, crisis infecting our educational system; namely, an increased disparity in our educational learning environments as a result of:

The ability for only those limited students with access to privilege, social stability, and financial resources to (a) quickly adapt to alternative learning techniques adopted, and (b) sustain focus in their educational pursuits (whether desired or obligatory)
The inability for those students in less-advantaged learning environments to adapt to disruptions to schooling resulting from the crisis, including less than adequate, inconsistent, and/or non-accessible alternative learning infrastructure and adverse changes related to their socio-economic environments
The economic burden facing our communities will inevitably lead to changes in the educational institutions' operating landscape and underlying infrastructure, including changing and/or closed businesses, relocations of students and teachers, changes in education budgets, re-allocation of resources and changes in available course offerings
These disruptions combined with an expected urge for educators to relax academic standards and performance requirements to accomodate individual needs and circumstances will undoubtedly reduce the overall level of learning

The COM platform was designed to transform the focus of education toward individual passion, desired learning, and cross-pollination of resources based on a holistic allocation and integration of available human capital. This system organically creates universal parity in education opportunities by allowing each student to pursue learning based on unbiased access to resources that align with their interests and preferences.

COM believes that students focused on passionate and productive pursuits of interests have a natural incentive to pursue efforts toward their objectives, including self-improvement. When combined with desired learning and connectedness to their educators (mentoring) and peers, it can be a natural prophylactic to distractions, disruptions, and inequalities among varying socio-economic environments.

A use case - Creating engaging learning environments by connecting stakeholders that share common interests, values and/or relevance

COM is steadfast in its belief that a disruptive change is needed to make educational environments more engaging to students through the creation of learning experiences that are based on student preferences and interests, and which can be equally provided to every student regardless of ability or socio-economic status.

COM believes that learning environments geared towards the personal preferences of each stakeholder will soon be inevitable, especially with the growing social and economic discourse over access to equal education opportunities or an ability to pursue a passion with the same level of priority as others.

Furthermore, COM believes that the growing tendency towards reduced reliance by educators on historically standard assessments and performance to accommodate learning inequalities and/or to accommodate individual student socio-emotional needs is detrimental and will further expand the disparities in learning and opportunities for all students, unless there is a proper alignment and optimization of resources based on student and teacher preferences.

COM believes that this trend will only lead to more disengaged students caused from lowered expectations and lack of recognition for those that put forth effort and performance, adds an enormous burden to educators in attempting to manage "individual case studies", limits the ability and desire of motivated students to excel, and will ultimately lead to greater unintended consequences as policies will inevitably vary from classroom to classroom and from school to school.

Final Conclusion:

COM's Platform provides policy makers with the tools to broker stronger classroom environments and interactions between students and educators through an ability to identify and align those educators, students and student learning environments (defined as a student activity offered during school) that demonstrates a high likelihood for connectedness based on student interests and preferences. COM believes that this approach is the most sound and universally applicable method for improving overall engagement and performance, reducing disparities in learning and allowing for the sharing of ideas and opportunities that are accessible to all students (creating an eco-system of activities and resources that are tied to each students common interests and preferences – “Cross Pollination”).

Our educational environments should be a source of inspiration, motivation, and change for students. While socio-economic stratification will always exist, students' shouldn't be limited due to an inability to obtain a relevant and engaging education.

There is no effective way to manage the increasing level of individual data of each education resource and the growing and changing educational landscape and to effectively “Cross Pollinate” resources among a large community without a scalable and adaptable decision making model.

The COM Platform will solve these problems.