inSpace Seeks to Reimagine Online Learning

Hi. Welcome to the Future of Education. I'm Michael Horne, joined today by Dr. Nerene hall, who's the founder of a really neat company called Inspace that is out there to redefine the online learning experience by really making so much of what we do in a traditional world, just a seamless part of the online world, but not just stopping there. And I think you all are going to love this conversation. We have things planned that we have never done before on the Future of Education, where we're actually going to get a product demo. So you're going to want to stay through this entire conversation because we're going to learn a lot about what Inspace is doing, but actually get to see it and get to see what it feels like to be in the platform that they've created. So with that, I'm going to bring up Nerene joining me on. On the metaphorical virtual stage. It is good to see you. Thanks for being here.

Thank you, Michael. I'm really excited to be here.

Yeah. So let's start before we get to show people what it actually looks like, what you've built, you and your team at Inspace. Just tell. Tell me first, your own background. How did you get into this world of higher education?

Absolutely. So my background is in data science and machine learning and computer science. So since, like, pretty much fourth grade, I loved programming. That's. That's all I wanted to do. Like, you know, just hacking into systems, pushing the boundaries, see what happens, and then really just like, tinkering and learning through that process. So, you know, when I graduated, like, it was like, no brainer for me, like, I needed to be in computer science. So I actually went to my undergrad in Armenia, and then I got into grad school in US and I went to University of Vermont and had a great experience, did my Master's. And then, you know, I always wanted to do PhD in three years, which initially seemed like an impossible task. And, you know, people were wondering about that. It ended up happening. So I did get my PhD in three years, which was really fun. And actually, in grad school, I started a company. I have always been sort of fascinated with new products, innovation, and how really just not settling for what's out there and just, like, pushing on it and see what happens to it. And could we do better? Like, there's always, like, that question, like, can we do better? Like, is there something else we can do? Yeah. And so when I graduated, you know, I loved academia and I loved industry, and I loved both so much that I couldn't decide where to go. So I sort of paved this path right at the cross section of academia and industry. So I went to IBM, Watson and I loved that experience and actually got to meet with Gina Rometti who was a CEO at that time. And we had like this amazing experience about sort of how to bring tech to Africa and like the whole infrastructure and what it could be. And at that time I realized that I was so passionate about teaching and research, but I also really passionate about sort of seeing that in real life and like how things kind of get used in real sort of applied situation. So basically what, what I've decided to do is like I went to Champlain College to teach as professor, but I also always advise startups and was been very involved with like Silicon Valley companies and kind of doing data science and sort of helping to sort of shape businesses. So that was sort of a unique position for me, like always being at that cross section. So yeah, very cool.

And for those who don't know, Champlain College operates under a very unique model relative to most of higher ed. Very entrepreneurial place focused on really connecting the students to employers, as I understand it in the region and building very practical skill sets for them. So that sounds like a great place for you to have your academic experience and then the entrepreneurial side of you as well that I think bleeds into. Tell us about Inspace. What, you know, what's the origin story? What problem were you trying to solve as you created it?

Yeah, so Michael, just kind of going back into what you said about Champlain College. It's one of the most innovative schools in the country and one of the things that happens there is sort of this very hands on experience. It's all about sort of giving students a place where they can learn from practicing. And so we have a lot of flipped classroom model applied there where students are really just learning the content before they show up to class. And then the classroom time is all about making sure they apply, apply it. And so a lot of the times like you know, when I was a program director for data science, we would hear from employees that our students hit the ground running like they already know all the tools, all the trades of sort of the secrets of the field and they really just kind of get going instead of sort of trying to learn how to apply what they learned in school to like real job. So you know, when Pandemic started, like just like everybody else in the field I was teaching and I love teaching this machine learning course and like other courses and, and one of the big parts about it was having this discussion based conversational dynamic where like we'd have this really exciting conversations about the future of machine learning, how can we make it more accessible for everyone and make sure that there's the data privacy issues, all of that is addressed. And you know, when we pivoted to virtual, I felt really great. I just got Google Faculty Award for all my content and everything was online. So I thought, well, I got this and, and that is until I had that first class. Right. You know, we were in sort of zoom environment, which, which is great that we even had that right at that time. But I felt like it was not the same dynamic. Like I lost that connection with students. You know, we tried all sorts of things. Like I asked a question and everybody tried to answer and then everybody paused because we didn't have social cues. So like everybody was trying not to interrupt each other. And. And the more important thing was like, we just didn't have the same learning moments. Right. So from that point on, I just basically went on trying every possible platform out there. I was trying things like, you know, Gather Town, Sophia, Ticket bars, every possible thing. And what I found was that some of them were fun, but learning wasn't happening there. And some of them were so rigid that I couldn't really have all that sort of interaction I needed in classroom. And like one of the biggest things is like, you know, when you're in a classroom doing project work, you basically have students break into groups and they go into different corners of the room and they're working on the project. And as a teacher, you can observe the entire classroom at the same time and you can join into conversations and you can step away so they can continue that conversation. And none of this was possible in breakout rooms because like it was like the separate rooms that were created, students were in these different meetings. And I basically didn't know what was happening in individual breakout rooms and had no visibility. So that's where the idea came up. Could we do visually connected breakout room experience just like in a real classroom?

Wow. And so you ended up creating this totally new company product platform. Tell us a little bit about what you were going for when you created Inspace. And I know we're about to try this thing that we've never done before of doing an actual demo in a moment. So I can feel it and the audience can feel it, but tell me a little bit about what were you trying to create and what have you built to this point, in your words?

Yeah. So the idea was like so me and my co founder, we have been coding together since college, right? And so we got together and we're like, what if we forget everything out there and start from scratch? How would we build a video conferencing platform just for education and learning? Like, if nothing, no other application matters. So we focused on that and the first thing that came up was, in a real classroom, students have agency over their experience. They can stand up, they can ask a question, they can go to the blackboard, they can talk to whoever they want. And so that was one of the things we created this thing where every person has a video circle and you can click on your circle and you can move around the space. And there's something called proximity based audio. When you're close to people, you can talk to them, have conversation. As you move away, the sounds go down, so you can go talk to others. So just like that, the student decides who they want to talk to and when. If they need to have a one on one conversation with a teacher, they can just get close to them and have that conversation and then they can go talk to their peers. So before the class, they can have these discussions and like, you know, the little ice breaking moments before the class actually happens. And so the freedom of movement was the first thing that we noticed that was missing, really. Then the next thing was like, how can we create the social cues? Right. Like, I want to be able to see where everybody else in my classroom is, because this is a shared experience. Right. We all belong to the same classroom, but at the same time, we wanted to make sure that each student has an opportunity to participate in a conversation and make sure this is their experience and they're not in a listener role. Right. Like, so, like a lot of the time in traditional platforms, like, it feels like one person talks and everybody else listens, and that's okay. But very quickly, students turn their cameras off and then, you know, they're on the side walking their dog or whatever it is that they do. And so being able to have that visual where, like, everybody knows where everybody else is, right. It was like really important. So social cues and agency for students was the two things that we really build on.

That's really interesting, the social cues and agency. And I'll pop that up into a banner just so everyone can key in on that. But if it's okay with you, I'd love to actually see what this looks like.

Sure. So as we go through this experience, one quick thing. I know our audience is going to experience this through your eyes, basically, as we go through a very quick tour, but really one of the big things is, like, the moment you click on your circle, you move around and you decide where to go and how to experience your own learning experience. That's kind of where it starts clicking. So, yep, we can definitely jump into the demo and then maybe people can experience for themselves.

Perfect. So let's jump right on in right now, and then we'll come back and we'll talk about what we've seen afterwards. So we'll give it a go.

Hi, Michael. Super excited to have you on Inspace. Welcome.

Yeah, thanks for welcoming into the actual environment. This is unprecedented on Future of Education, but I'm excited to get the tour.

Absolutely. So we're actually right now outside in a hallway so we can have a little chat before we go into the class. We are going to actually go into a real class. It's a marketing course, and just observe and see how it actually happens. Ready to jump in?

Let's do it. Let's do it. Yeah.

Market to this audience. Understanding these details will help you build a full marketing plan. Below is an outline of what is needed, and to the right is just an example. But feel free to be creative or use a template as you would like. Hello, Nerene and Michael. Saw you just joined.

Hi, Heather. Thanks for having us.

Yeah, it's great to be here.

Wonderful. So we just went over the milestone for week two. Very excited to kick it off and break into breakout rooms. But before we do, just have a quick question for everyone. Curious if you enjoyed the reading from last week. If you did, go ahead and move your bubble over. Yes or no. Wonderful. Thank you for being honest. This is great. All right, so now we're going to jump into breakout rooms and start working on the project again. Do not expect you to finish it all today. This is just to kick it off for the week. And if you don't remember what group you're in, here is the listing. I'll share it in the breakout rooms as well. Group ones will go to room one, and group two will go to room two. Go ahead and break into breakout rooms.

All right, Michael, so just quickly in here, so notice that there's a screen sharing that was left so students know which groups they go into. And one of my favorite things here is that as a teacher, you don't have to do anything. You just click, click on the breakout rooms. They show up and students know exactly where to go. They just click and join. All right, let's go. Very cool. Yeah, let's go. A little bit into the hallway. Awesome. So in hallway, like, as a teacher, usually I would hang out here, and then when students have questions, they could just pop outside and ask me questions. And one of my favorite things is that I can visually see where my students are. Like, you can see in each room who is talking. There's like a little bubble movement happening, and you see their screen sharing, etc. All right, ready to pop into one of the rooms and see what's going on there?

So when we do that, we'll be able to hear them. So let's do it.

Yeah, absolutely. Let's go.

Yeah. Justin, thanks. I'd like to start with demographics. We, and, and on the research side of that, we can look up their age, their income, and other kinds of data in a quick web search. And so I did that already. And so let me tell you what I found. So for the millennial generation, those age range, they range from 21 to 36 years old. It's the largest population in the generational breakdown at 92 million. They really are not interested in traditional marketing. They're much more digitally inclined or oriented. They're fairly well educated, with 36% of the females and 26% of the males having bachelor's degrees. 57% are single, and this was crazy. 88% live in cities. So very city centric generation.

Wow, that is a pretty high number, especially for such a large population. Any other folks want to tell me where should we head next? Looks like we got the demographics covered. Where should we go to next?

All right, so we saw in the first classroom, they were talking about demographics and different ideas.

It's fascinating. I, I, I still can't get over the fact that, like, just like a real classroom, you walk in, you hear their conversation, you walk out. Now I'm hearing you because I'm, I'm getting to follow you around in this tour.

Absolutely. All right, let's pop into group two and see what this guy's about. Sounds good, Sam. Okay, cool.

So let me share a doc here, and we can take some notes on.

What we've just watched.

So, Adam, we can all write in this document.

Yeah, we can all edit this together. Yeah. So where should we start looking?

From the video, we know they're born between 1997 and 2012, making 9 to 24 year olds. So the oldest are just entering the workforce. So more in line with our buying Persona.

And they are digitally connected, but conservative financially, and they want to do good for the world.

I just did a quick research and seems like 58% live in urban, 24% live in suburban, and 18% rural. And since most are still in school because of their age, if we were to target Generation Z, I think we should do the older portion, 18 to 24 years old who are just finishing college, since they're probably the segment that is buying the most. And actually, here's a graphic that I found. I'm going to post it on the chat so you can add it to the document data.

Okay, great, thanks. Let me put that into.

All right.

I confess, I couldn't help it. I clicked on the doc. It looked like I could edit directly in your interface. Amazing.

Absolutely. That's one of the fun things where you don't have to juggle multiple tabs and just go back and forth. You just open your documents right there and you start editing with your team. That's one of the fun parts. Yeah.

That's incredible.

Yeah.

And I was. It was fun how I could blow up the screen in the room and then come back down to see the overall view and all those things. That was very neat.

Absolutely. And feel free to try the proximity based audio too. So as you slowly move away from me, you'll notice, like, you know, as I move away, you can. Yeah, you can't hear me anymore. And then as. As we get close, you can hear me. So there's definitely the proximity based audio. Yeah.

So I can run away from you, in other words.

Absolutely. You can totally go have a nice little side chat with Heather. Yeah.

It's incredible how you guys have. It doesn't feel forced though, like you're trying to approximate the real world too much and sort of like a second life way.

Right.

It's. It's very natural.

Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the things is really just supporting things that happen in a real classroom. For me, it was just seeing my students when they're in breakout rooms working on projects and really seeing who is talking. And when they stop talking, that's a perfect time for me to go in and just see how everybody is doing.

Very cool. It looks like Guillaume, for example, right now in the first room is talking. He's blinking a lot right now.

Exactly. And you can hover your mouse and kind of see who is talking, their name, et cetera. But also like, you can invite them over. Like I can invite someone over just to come and have a conversation. Like if I just invite Mike over, he gets a notification that says, you know, Nareen invited you over and if he accepts, he'll come over here. There he Is. Hi, Mike. Thanks for showing up. Hey, everybody. Yeah, no worries.

Yeah, thanks for coming out for a minute.

Yeah, yeah. Anything I can help you with? Just showing the feature. All right, excellent. Well, feel free to call back if you need me again. Sounds good. Thank you. Bye. Bye. All right, so, yeah, go ahead, transition to breakout rooms.

Let me add to discussion.

Sounds good.

Hey, everyone, we're going to start to transition back. We're going to go to discussion room. So wrap up your conversations and we'll start with discussion shortly. Okay, few more minutes.

So as a host, you have access to different configurations. You can set up presentation room style or different breakout rooms. Like you can have 10 breakout rooms or however many you need and move between those.

Very neat, very neat. And just the gestures and the way you just hit broadcast there. It's very seamless.

Cool. Oh, looks like we're going to be outside.

In a scene I'm familiar with.

Let's get in a circle. We can share feedback and what you researched in the last, you know, few minutes and then we will get going. So which, who would like to go first? Which group?

Group two will go right ahead. Awesome. So we were tasked with Generation Z and our product was a healthy alternative chocolate bar. So what we found out a few things about Generation Z. They adopt quickly. Largest generation ever, actually. And they're very entrepreneurial. And 92% of them already have a digital footprint in this world, which is very unique. So, yeah, I think we have a really good market segment to start with and kind of know some of the digital ads and how we're going to market to them.

Wonderful.

Thank you so much. That was great. Justin, do you want to go next?

Of course. So I will take the lead for Breakout room number one, the dream team. Over in Breakout One, we were working with the millennial generation. And so a few key facts about millennials. They have a very large population segment at 92 million. Millennials are ages between 21 and 36. They're not really interested in traditional marketing campaigns. And we know that they don't really have a ton of brand loyalty. So they'll go for whatever the best product is out there and kind of get those ideas from peers as well as feedback and reviews online. And so what we decided for our Persona, we selected a 29 year old single woman from Boston. And our plan to market to this customer Persona is we're going to hit it hard on social media, offering promos and discounts in order to kind of tap into the fact that millennials will take the best deal that is offered to them. And so that's our plan so far.

Wonderful. Thank you for sharing. Thank you, everyone for just jumping in and getting started on this project. Can't wait to see what the week has to go. So great job, everyone. If you want to continue and have conversations after this session, feel free. I'm available for questions in our office hours or you can continue to chat in the canvas. Chat whatever is easiest for you. Have a wonderful day. And if you want to break out into rooms, I will set this up as a traditional space for you to do that.

All right, so that was Heather's class.

All right. Coming back here, that was amazing. For those that experience perhaps a bit of a lag watching on the video and stuff, we will post a link so you can look at that demo video directly on your own computer after. After all this goes down. So that we're not. So you're not obsessing over, did I miss this detail or did this synchronicity not work how I thought it did? Because it was a very seamless experience for me on my end, I will say. So we'll make sure that that's available as a separate experience. But Nareen, very cool to showcase that. We got a lot of neat comments while this was going on. You know, we have JW saying that he wish he had had this during his exec MBA experience. We had people just saying that they were happy to see how far it's taken. One question that Heather Hodgson asked was, what are the different ways you can use Inspace in the online classroom? So I'd love you to give a little bit of a flavor of the different use cases for this.

Absolutely. And, you know, one of the interesting things have been, like, for us to observe how people use it. Like, as we kind of have been progressing, as you know, InSpace has been available since last fall for folks to use in a real classroom. And a lot of professors just came back to us and they gave us, like, amazing use cases. And, you know, we're like, sharing that with others. So one of the biggest things that we heard is like, visually connected breakout room experience is a game changer because, like, you know, as you saw, like, students break into groups, one of the things is, like, you don't have to do any work in terms of, like, putting students in the right groups, et cetera. And students feel agency because they click on their circle, they know where to go. And there's also a little bit of accountability. A couple of professors emailed me saying, you know, I had two Students who stayed right in the hallway when we started breakout rooms. And I knew they weren't actively participating, so I emailed them and they were my most active students for the rest of the semester, like always following and doing things. Now the other thing that we have seen people do, for example psychology and language professors, they love forming a circle so they can have a conversation in a circle. It's more connecting experience for them. And sometimes you see when a new person joins in and they're maybe late, everybody just makes a little space for that person to join into the circle. And it's very inclusive kind of experience. The other thing that. So we, we have this available on LMS. So all LMSs have this integration. So as a teacher to set it up, it's just one click and then once you have it set up, you can always see who is in the space before you enter. So the virtual classroom actually stays available for students 24 7. So they can jump in there and have conversations before the meeting or after. Actually the teachers decide when to make that available for them. And so that sort of creates this virtual classroom that's available for students all the time. It's like the study lounge, right in a real campus experience. And there's also the chat. So the chat is persistent. So if you start a conversation in a classroom classroom, then students can take that conversation and continue it in Canvas or Blackboard or Moodle, whatever they are using. And so there's also mobile apps, so they get notifications when someone is asking a question and they might just say, you know, have a conversation and be like, all right, do you want to jump into the space and work on this together? And you also notice like a lot of these features like, you know, Google Document integration, where you can just edit right from there, you don't have to have multiple tabs, sharing, et cetera. And so we have seen like online asynchronous schools use this for more of a experience where like it becomes like a digital community around the course. And also in traditional classroom where a lot of schools that were working with us went back to in person instruction, they actually took in space with them because in a classroom they would share the screen and students would do peer coding or working on documents together, or the teacher would ask them to share something so they don't have to actually go to their computer, get like closers like the distancing thing with COVID instructions, et cetera. So there's different use cases that feature in the discussion presentation room that we saw where like when People come forward, they actually get a little bit bigger. Bigger. This was actually an idea from Kenzola from mit. And what happened is like in a hybrid situation where teachers like actually present the presentation room into the projector instead of their screen sharing. So then now students are in there, they're smaller, so it's not as intimidating of experience. But they also virtual students can pop on the screen when they want. So like everybody gets to see that they want to participate. So they don't get that side experience of the hybrid. There's lots of use. There are lots of use cases. Digital campus, like the libraries are using it for drop in hours, registers, office, wellness center. There's lots of different use cases. Yeah.

What strikes me is it's sort of like it seems like a big evolutionary improvement on a lot of the message boards and asynchronous tools that we use to communicate in online learning environments where someone might post a question and then like two hours later someone comes in and responds by text. And now you can probably have some of those in a more fluid real environment with actual verbal cues. And so it amplifies on a bunch of these things. And obviously the always on sort of continuous environment of it can radically redefine some of these experiences. And that gets me into the conversation that I want to shift to a little bit, which is its positioning relative to some of the other tools we've seen emerge since the pandemic and even a couple before, which is it feels like it's not just a classroom reinvention, it's really a school reinvention or full campus based reinvention in the online world. How do you see it relative to before the pandemic there was Minerva creating a much more active learning experience than we've seen engagely. And I've had the founder of that on here talking about that tool we've seen, class, which is built on the zoom platform. So my sense is that you will be grouped in with some of those tools, but there's obviously some unique features that you're doing that they're not. So how do you think about the positioning relative to all those?

I think when I think about the landscape and the competition. So Michael, you know this. Anytime you create something interesting, that's solving a real pain point, you're going to have competition. And that's actually great. And I think for us it's really about sort of building this bottom up, right. Coming from the perspective of the teachers, coming from the perspective of the school administrators, and never sort of thinking like sort of that top down approach which sometimes is common in ed tech. So for, for, you know, we started with like the real classroom experience. And you know, a lot of professors, like, you know, Eric Mazur from Harvard has been working on sort of classroom engagement like in a traditional classroom setting for a while. And you know, we've connected and like some of these tools, like, I feel like there was like space to really digitize the traditional campus, but pandemic really just accelerated it, right? So when we first started, our goal was like really just solving this one problem where it's like in a classroom, can I have engaging, inclusive experience with my students where learning really happens. Like, you know, we go to classroom to create knowledge. Like those days when we just go and lecture and transfer knowledge are over because students can just go online, they can watch the best, you know, lectures on YouTube or wherever they go. It's really about connecting with students in the classroom, creating those knowledge creation opportunities and motivating them to go and, you know, pursue a career. So that we started with that. So like the first thing was like, let's create the most engaging experience in a real classroom. And then what we noticed is as a lot of our professors went back to in person after sort of last year and some stayed online, they actually took inspace with them back to real classroom. And we realized that in a traditional space, if you notice, as you walk on the campus now, students are on their phones and there's a little bit less social aspect to it than it used to be. When I was going to college, me and my co founder, we actually got together because she was working on a problem that I was working on and I saw on the board that she was working on it and I connected with her and we solved this problem together. And then we are friends years later. Now I think creating those moments in a digital space where our students currently are is really important. So, so back to your point about sort of discussions, like one of the things is like notifications, right? Like when someone asks a question, then you get the notification, then you can sort of answer them right there on the chat that synchronized between your LMS system, your actual virtual classroom and your phone. And then at that point, some conversations just happen better when you're synchronous. So you can just be like, all right, do you want to just take this online and just kind of continue talking? And the best part is that you don't have to create another space and send a meeting link and all of that is right there in your elements. So in Terms of positioning, our biggest thing was teachers are burned from trying 100 different things last year. So as a teacher I was like, let's build something that's so easy. You don't have to learn anything. You just click join and you just naturally flow because it's built with how humans operate. So that's why it's in lms. You just easily join. You don't have to create another link, install anything. So for example class, you have to install things. And it also inherits a lot of the sort of restrictions that Zoom comes with.

Baggage of Zoom.

Yeah, absolutely. And we tried like initially we tried to build on top of Zoom API. There's some limitations and you just can't have visually connected breakout room experience. Now in terms of Minerva, like they actually create a lot of content. So I can tell you professors and teachers, people in academia, like we're in this field because we love doing what we do and we know exactly how to do it. So anytime you have someone tell you how to teach your class, it's probably not going to be exponential growth. It's going to be some, there's place for that and I think there's going to be some of that, but not at that level. Now Engage. The I think engage is coming at this a little bit from different angle. Like they're looking at MOOCs kind of like from course Sierra background and I think like so you know, I'll just give you one example like you know this concept where as a teacher you're talking or doing some class and then the students can talk in the table together without sort of your awareness. I think any teacher can tell you that's probably not going to go great because like, you know, if, if I'm talking something as soon as they're having conversations like they can just go watch a YouTube video of me. Like I really shouldn't be there at that, at that point. And we have large spaces as well where you can have like a 200 people lecture style thing where you address everybody but then you can break into the smaller interactive sessions where like everybody is like connecting and like there's Tas, etc. And the key thing is like really just seamlessly going back and forth between those modes. So you never spend time really just kind of setting things up. Our biggest thing was like, let's take the technology out of the way and let teachers do their best work. They're great at teaching. We don't need to be part of that. We just need to give them all the flexibility and make sure that it works seamlessly, easily, and you know, when you are done with your class, then there's like all the engagement analytics and statistics and this ability to have your recordings and transcripts that are searchable. All of that stuff just goes through straight to your lms. So you don't have to do any of that work. You just focus on the content.

Very cool. So, two questions as we wrap up. First, it seems like if I had to summarize, like sort of the problem you're solving for it was to create a flexible environment where social cues and agency were a core part of the experience, which is perhaps different for optimizing for active learning or social learning or some of these other dynamics that some of these other folks are. How did you ultimately anchor, if I have that right, how did you ultimately anchor on sort of those design principles from a theory of like, how that will improve the teaching and learning experience?

Yeah, so our goal is like, not to support one pedagogical method and support the other. So, like, our goal is really just be agnostic. Right. And at the same time, obviously, active learning is like really has been growing. And I think that's really important. That's how I taught all my classes. There's the concept of flipped classroom experience when students learn everything outside of the classroom time. They read, watch videos, et cetera. So the classroom time is really just creating knowledge together and applying and learning. And I can tell you, like, every student gets stuck on something very unique to them. So being able to be there and have that flexible environment to answer those questions and create those moments where you can share your experience and connect with them is really important. So InSpace supports that. So like social learning, social emotional support in the classroom and active learning, we absolutely support that. But I think one of the. It's interesting the way actually some of the folks put it. It's like it's a platform that's built around things that happen in a real classroom. It's not a collection of features. And I think in software world, like when you have been in software for a long time, sometimes it's very dangerous path to go. Like, you know, the temptation to just create features. And I can give you one example. Like, so, for example, when you're measuring engagement, right? So some of our competition that you mentioned, like the way they measure engagement is like how many times students actually spoke. And this is very dangerous because the moment you start measuring and students know that that's how their grade is going to be, it paralyzes the whole conversation because now they're just trying to figure out a way to say something. Right. And in my experience, and I've tried this in a real classroom, that's very dangerous place to be. So what we're doing, actually we're looking at the convers dynamics. Right. So for example, like, you know, when people talk, you can see from outside there is circles kind of overlapping sometimes and this is all panda. But I can just say one thing. There's a lot of information in the pauses and how people interact and the quality of their interaction. And so being, having access to that as a teacher is more important than just making the number of times they spoke part of the grade.

That's really interesting. That's really interesting. So last question as we wrap up, which is maybe a little more on the business side, but you know, you listed a number of use cases for this that can support a lot of different parts of a campus operation, so to speak, from the classroom to the library to career services. Right. And even social experiences that occur perhaps more organically. Where are you finding the traction? Where are you selling into? What's that conversation like?

Yeah, so for us, you know, first it was all about sort of all the schools that were virtually teaching. And then it sort of very quickly became like all the online single synchronous teaching and online asynchronous teaching. Right. So that's kind of where we're seeing the traction to go. So for example, a lot of traditional schools were using inspace during the pandemic and as they're going through hybrid and in their traditional classroom and now we're seeing their online sides really embrace it and bring it into their asynchronous space because there's this sort of the value of sort of connecting, creating digital communities and sort of in person experiences in online space that is asynchronous and can sometimes feel lonely rather than so. And then the sort of ultimate goal like we have, we're working with some schools that is sort of creating this one school experience between tread and online. More to come about that.

Very well. We're going to keep an eye on that here. Nareen, very cool what you've built. Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks so much for the product demo and as we said, we will provide a link so people can check that out directly and be able to share that as well. So just hugely appreciative for the work that you're doing to improve the teaching and learning experience and coming on and sharing that.

Thank you, Michael. I'm really glad I was here. And thank you for the work you're doing in this space.

No, my pleasure. And for all you watching. We'll be back next time on the Future of Education. But if you liked this and you liked seeing that actual look, that actual demo of how Inspace actually operates, throw us a thumbs up, give us a comment, let us know. Send me an email DM me on Twitter just so I can get that feedback. I'll pass it on to the team at Inspace, but. But we'll also take it into account as we continue to shape what we show here on the Future of Education. And thanks so much, as always. We'll be back next.