conversketch of the pitches from Day 2 at Pente Pitch Challenge

ShapingEDU Action Teams earn funding to advance projects

If you’ve watched the ABC hit TV show Shark Tank, you know that inventors stand before potential investors, pitching their ideas in hopes of earning financial backing and mentorship. 

Well, five ShapingEDU Action Teams shared the similar experience for the chance to fund projects to shape the future of education at the first-ever 2022 ShapingEDU Pente Pitch Challenge, which took place over two days on February 22-23.

"ShapingEDU is all about activating and empowering our global community to effect meaningful change,” said Stephanie Pierotti, Director of ShapingEDU. “The Pente Pitch Challenge marks a pivotal point for ShapingEDU: we dared our Community of dreamers, doers and drivers to dream big, then roll up their sleeves and take action. We take our work seriously, but we don't take ourselves too seriously, so this was a great opportunity for our Community to have some fun while planning globally impactful projects."

Action teams dive in to shape the future of learning

At the 2021 Unconference last summer, the ShapingEDU Community revisited the founding 10 Actions and developed five new Calls to Action that are now guiding the efforts of the Community. The Pente Pitch Challenge served as the kickoff to this year’s five new projects. 

Our Action Teams and the projects that they pitched during the event include:

Team #1: Are We There Yet? Capturing The Evolving New Now in Learning
Championed by Lisa Koster and Paul Signorelli

The team pitched a way to highlight successful teaching and learning experiences from the pandemic by collecting stories in an online database that’s accessible to all, while analyzing them to identify challenges and find solutions.

Team #2: Emerging Credentials Standards
Championed by Allison Hall and David Thomas

By designing a toolkit dashboard accessible to the broad community, a variety of stakeholders can learn more about designing sustainable emerging credentials systems.

Team #3: Fostering Serious Play, Immersive Learning and XR
Championed by Maya Georgieva and Emory Craig

Extended reality (XR) offers exciting ways to create connection and learning in digital worlds. Welcome to Café of Cultures, an immersive XR space designed as a coffee shop for cultural understanding and enhancement of cultural competence.

Team #4: Data-Driven Learning Futures
Championed by Tanya Joosten

The Student Global Impact (SGI) Hub will uss data sources – such as Sociocultural Impact, Environmental Consciousness, Technical Innovation, Civics & Politics, and Employment Outcomes – to improve the decision-making process when learners are choosing an institution.

Team #5: Digital Belonging
Championed by Lisa Gustinelli

ConneXus is a training course for digital navigators to gain the knowledge needed to educate and inspire their communities when it comes to broadband access and digital literacy.

Research and student perspectives inspire pitches

Beyond collaborating with their Action Teams, participants enjoyed opportunities to be inspired, like a keynote from Katherine Prince and Jason Swanson of KnowledgeWorks, in which they shared information from their forthcoming forecast on the future of learning. Watch the keynote now.

They also heard from a student panel, featuring ASU students and alumni Faith Dalzell, Elizabeth Kaehr, and Ivan Quintana, who shared valuable perspectives on the 5 Calls to Action that participants used when developing their pitches. Check out the insights shared by these students.

Additionally, the community enjoyed an introduction to ShapingEDU’s Serious Play Studio (SPS), focused on energizing and empowering teams in and through play, fun, games, creative making and collaborative experiences. Learn more about the SPS activities at the Pente Pitch Challenge.

Pitching in the Shark Tank

After spending time developing their pitches with their Action Teams on Day 1 and part of Day 2, the Pente Pitch Challenge ended with participants presenting their projects. The panel of judges had up to $25,000 to allocate funding across these projects. Judges included:

  • Samantha Becker, ShapingEDU Co-Founder & Executive Director of Creative + Communications, ASU University Technology Office
  • Melody Buckner, Associate Vice Provost for Digital Learning, University of Arizona
  • Taylor Spuhler, Commercial Sales Executive, Microsoft
  • Kurt Walker, Head of Post-Secondary Education, Lucid
  • Tim Hogan, Vice President, Strategic Partnerships, Roadtrip Nation

The judges evaluated each Action Team’s pitches, rating them on areas like solution and value proposition, SMART goals, community activation and more. Each team was allotted ten minutes to pitch, which included time for questions and answers if possible. Watch all of the Action Team pitches.

While all teams earned funding, the projects that attracted the most "shark" funding from the judges were the Data-Driven Learning Futures' SGI Hub ($12,000) and Emerging Credentials' toolkit dashboard ($7,500). The SGI Hub pitch wowed the judges with informative mockups of what the Hub would look like, a multi-phased approach to the project with timelines, milestones and possible collaboration partners. “We all were completely surprised. I think we are still in shock but already moving forward exchanging ideas,” said Joosten. “We owe a big debt of gratitude for each judge seeing the potential in the Student Global Impact (SGI) Hub.” Special thanks to the Pente Pitch Challenge's sponsors, Amazon Web Services and the University of Arizona, for making project funding possible!

Judge Kurt Walker shared his appreciation for all the Action Teams before the event ended. “The work that went into this and the projects are really well thought out,” said Walker. “Having worked in education, I really appreciate the time and effort you put into this – thank you for letting me participate.”

ShapingEDU Co-Founder Samantha Becker agreed. “There’s a lot of great work to be done, and I also think that all these projects have inroads with each other. I’m excited to explore future collaboration possibilities.”

What’s next for the Action Teams

For the Action Teams, their work is just beginning! They will continue to develop their ideas and bring them to life with the help of the funding earned during the event, mentorship and possible collaboration with external partners.

Follow along on their progress throughout the year at ShapingEDU’s website and LinkedIn page.

Browse through some of the graphic facilitation summaries designed by ConverSketch’s Karina Branson.