A Conversation with Parlay Founder Bobby MacDonald

Click to Enlarge +A Conversation with Parlay Founder Bobby MacDonald

by Jacquelyn Whiting, April 2021

Jacquelyn Whiting: Bobby MacDonald from Parlay, thank you so much for being here with me today to have this conversation about data-informed decision making.

I'd like to start by asking you to share a little about your background and the journey you've had as a student and as a person that inspired you to develop Parlay and all the different features that it provides both teachers and students.

Bobby MacDonald: Well, thank you. It's really great to be here.

The original idea for Parlay came to me in my second year of university, and it was born out of a pretty common but very salient frustration. There were two parts to it. One, school—both high school and university—felt really divorced and disconnected from the events and ideas that were shaping our world. And it's not like I was studying particle physics; I was studying politics and economics and business, so although there was a lot to talk about in the real world, we weren't really having real-world discussions. And the second part was that I was kind of sick of being lectured to—not to discount the value of a really great lecture or a really great lecturer, but there were so many smart people around me who had so many interesting ideas that it seemed like it was a bit of a miss not to be talking to one another. Engaging with each other's ideas and perspectives, challenging each other, and having that constructive dialogue could've been so valuable, because (a) it's fun, (b) it's a better way to learn, and (c) it could've prepared us for what life would be like later, both in and outside our jobs.

So that was the original idea. I was in my second year at university. I was 19 years old. There wasn't all that much I could do about it at that point. But the thought stayed with me and I kept coming back to this idea of Parlay: a place where students could come together and have informed academic, real-world discussions.

As time went on and I came to understand the world a little more, I realized that these truth-seeking discussions are not just good in an academic context; they're absolutely foundational to everything we cherish as a society. They should be at the heart of our institutions of higher learning, our media and journalism, our workplaces and institutions, and at the family dinner table. Such dialogue is really a foundational element of western civilization, and we're losing touch with that. So over time, as I started to uncover that, I realized that maybe Parlay meant something deeper to me than just a great tool for an educational experience.

After I finished university, I worked in finance and software for a little while—so I was never a teacher—but this idea kept burning a hole in my mind. I created some mockups and shared them with some of my old high school teachers and university professors, and the high school teachers really took to it. They said, yeah, this sort of collaborative, student-centered, engagement-focused learning is going to be the future of education.

So we incorporated the company. I was going in blind, but, there was a passion, a kernel of an idea. Over time, we did a ton of research, working with teachers and students at some of the more prestigious private schools in the Greater Toronto Area, and we were learning from them: what were they doing with discussions in their classrooms? What did their student-centered learning experiences look like in these schools that'd had technology in their classroom for ten years? How could we translate what they were doing for a classroom of 30-35 students in a public school education? In public schools, there are more kids, and often more challenges. They may have less technology, fewer resources, etc.

In that research, we realized that while discussions are this incredible way to learn—they teach the skills of the future, they increase learning outcomes, they improve SEL, they teach the essence of citizenship—there were some problems inherent to discussions. Number one, many teachers and students weren't used to these student-driven learning experiences: "the sage on the stage" versus "the guide on the side" angle. Two, discussions were not inclusive. Only a few kids were dominating the conversation. (This was especially true in a class of 25 or 30 kids versus the 12 to 15 that you might find at some private schools.) The third problem—and this is the impetus of our conversation—was that student engagement is typically hard to measure, and what gets measured, gets managed. If you can't accurately assess, track or evaluate the quantity, quality, and diversity of engagement in a classroom discussion, it's hard to give good, actionable feedback. It's hard to figure out how we can improve, as an individual or as a group.

So on those three pillars, we decided to build Parlay to focus on making discussions more measurable, more inclusive, and ultimately, more meaningful, building best practices in wherever we could.

JW: I'm really struck by the scope of the teaching and learning experiences that you took into account, and then how you chose to focus on how we assess—not in a "gotcha" kind of way, but assess in a growth model, in a way that allows us to get better at this thing that we all have to learn how to do well. I find a tremendous value in the platform because of how well it achieves that mission, so it was interesting to me to hear how you arrived at that point.

I'm wondering if you can say a little more about the inclusivity part. So many of us are now coming together to ask key questions like "can we trust our shared facts?" and "how do we engage in discourse with civility?". And that relates to inclusivity. It's right there on the Parlay website, and you've said it in the course of this conversation. So I'm also wondering how, by activating student voice, you're helping people achieve that mission of also being as inclusive as possible.

BM: That's a good question. In a typical classroom discussion, you have kids who are very extroverted and may speak English as their first language. They're confident students, and they've always been willing to put their ideas out there. And in a classroom discussion that's not designed to ensure that everyone has a voice, those students are going to continue to improve and dominate the conversation—which is not necessarily a bad thing. They have a lot to say and are strong students; you want that to some degree. But the challenge with that is that the students who are a little more shy by nature—maybe English isn't their first language, maybe there are several reasons—they're just not going to be active participants. For them participating can be nerve-racking, and they know that student X is going to take that role and drive the conversation. And so, in some ways, they can get away with not actively engaging or participating.

The kids who are strong will continue to grow and build, while the other kids won't grow, and the gap will widen. Therefore, the goal is to teach the student to whom participation doesn't come naturally that their voice matters, that their opinion—however incomplete—matters, and that their perspective creates richness, formed by all the things that make them who they are: all of their life experiences, their background, their culture, whatever it is. They are unique in and of themselves, and we want to give them the understanding that their voice matters.

The first thing that you want to do is make sure you create the conditions and the culture whereby everyone has the opportunity to participate, and that some of the quieter, more reserved students feel comfortable, possibly even excited, to participate. They get positive feedback from the teacher and from their classmates—they get that flywheel in motion, in some sense. You get them realizing that their voice matters. That's step one.

Step two takes place as students get older and become more confident. This is where the civic engagement aspect comes in, the citizen element. Step two is to teach them, like John Stuart Mills said, that conflicting doctrines share the truth between them. So when we're discussing ideas—even contentious, political issues—we're helping them recognize that the facts can be construed in different ways to make a point, and that it's important to build evidence-based arguments. Thus, through the process of throwing ideas into the arena, of steelmanning our classmates' ideas and arguments, and of constructing, deconstructing, and reconstructing knowledge as a group with many perspectives, we all get closer to the truth, and we all understand the idea or issue better. And that's something that adults in this world are not doing very well right now.

So as students are finding their voice, the goal is to simultaneously or subsequently teach them that. That's how we think about inclusivity.

JW: It comes down to that notion that the conversation isn't complete if somebody's not participating. And that's a really powerful thing for students to realize about themselves. The platform allows for the validation of their perspectives.

I love that the platform includes prep space so that you really can wrestle with your ideas and collect what your resources are going to be. That way, when you contribute, it's not a gut reaction, but a thoughtful reaction. Some people talk to work out their ideas, while others need to work out their ideas first before they can talk. The platform meets a wide range of learner needs and helps every student to use whatever asset they're bringing to the dialogue. It's absolutely tremendous.

As a classroom teacher and a library media specialist, I always found it so frustrating trying to have a class discussion where certain students spent the entire time with their hand in the air. All they were doing was rehearsing in their head over and over again what they wanted to say to make sure they didn't lose their thought, which meant they weren't listening. They weren't processing anybody else. When they contributed, they weren't building on anybody else's ideas; they were just hijacking the conversation and pulling it in a different direction. The structure of your platform inherently addresses all of those challenges by providing students a place to collect their ideas. When you're having synchronous discussions, the queue means that the moderator can line you up, so you know when your turn is coming. There's so much about it that is so wonderful and so powerful.

I'm wondering if we can shift to the data piece of Parlay, because that was something that really struck me when I started to use it. Everything in the teacher dashboard is different from the way data is delivered by other educational platforms. Lots of platforms will generate a spreadsheet for you, and spreadsheets are really valuable when you want to crunch data and things like that, but you've taken it a step further into data visualization. I think that is super valuable because the spreadsheet-phobic people—and I have my moments of spreadsheet-phobia myself—still have a way to have access to all the data that's available and can understand it in a way that's meaningful for them.

Click to Enlarge +A Conversation with Parlay Founder Bobby MacDonald

BM: It's really hard to measure critical thinking skills, and just as hard to measure communication skills. It's really hard to measure these 21st-century skills that we know students need in order to be ready for the world. Standardized tests are one way to do it, but they're incomplete, and a point-in-time assessment. Test scores are often testing knowledge, for example, rather than skills. And so the way that we think about it at Parlay is: what is the highest value activity we can do to increase achievement and teach these skills?

Obviously, we see discussions as the most dynamic activity with the highest value and most flexibility. If you can build different scaffoldings and best practices into that discussion, you can—I don't want to say guarantee—but create a high degree of certainty that active and ongoing participation will lead to the desired outcomes of skill development. There's like a dotted line there, so then you want to measure as much as you can about student engagement in those discussions.

For example: in the Parlay Live RoundTable, you could look at how many times Johnny tapped in. How many times did the teacher have to nudge Johnny to encourage him to participate? Was he introducing a lot of new ideas? Or was he challenging ideas a lot? Was he building on ideas from others? Was he asking a lot of questions? How many times did he tap in compared to his peers? All this kind of data can provide a sense of his overall participation as it relates to expectations, as well as best practices and, of course, the rest of the class. In some sense, it's about triangulating the amount of effort that a student is putting in by understanding the breadth and depth of their engagement at a point in time, and over time.

The teacher then has all that data. We give them feedback suggestions. They can also give their own feedback to the students to create that feedback loop. For instance, you could say, "Hey, Johnny, you know, in this class, you didn't participate at all in the first discussion. In the second discussion, you participated two times." That might not be a lot for one student, but that might be a huge leap forward for him. The data enables you to have that benchmark and understanding of that individual student's journey through the different kinds of discussions. It's really about understanding the depth and breadth of individual student engagement at a point in time, and over time, as it relates to their participating in these high value discussion activities. That's how we think about it at the individual level.

The data visualizations really come in with respect to the class-wide summary. This is something that we learned from some of the best educators out there—the thought leaders with respect to discussions. The Harkness tables, or Harkness method, if you're familiar with that, is a good example. We also learned from a Parlay user and friend of the organization, Alexis Wiggins, who wrote an amazing book about "spider web discussions." A big part of that practice is the concept of a class-wide grade. In her class, she actually gives the class one grade. There's no individual assessment. It's about the idea that we're a group, we're a team here, and as a collective, we need to make sure that everyone has the opportunity to participate, that we're actively challenging and building on each other's ideas, and not just throwing a bunch of new ideas into the arena.

This is where the data visualization comes in. You can pull out that summary in Parlay, whether a roundtable is online or live, look at it as a group, and ask, "how can we get better?" There are reflection questions built in. You might say, "Ok, guys, 100% of us submitted a response, 80% of us gave a comment to our classmates, but only 40% of us received a comment, which means that most of our engagement was focused on less than half of the ideas. Next time, let's broaden that out".

Click to Enlarge +A Conversation with Parlay Founder Bobby MacDonald

JW: And I love that it's reinforcing students building those metacognitive skills. As a student, I have the opportunity to think of myself as a member of a whole. Who am I as a participant? Where are my growth areas? What goal setting can I do for myself? Conversations don't happen in isolation. Conversations require a group, so having a more macro way for students to consider the value of the conversation and having actual metrics to be able to determine the strength of that conversation is so important. They can't help but use that awareness when they go other places and consider who else is in their physical or virtual space. It becomes a part of how they navigate their interactions with other people.

Thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to chat with me today, Bobby. This has been an absolute pleasure for me. I've learned more about Parlay than I knew before, and I thought I was pretty Parlay savvy before coming into this today. I'm really excited for other educators and library media specialists to try this out.

BM: Thank you so much. This was a great conversation. I hope to do it again soon.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Read the School Library Connection review of Parlay at https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Home/Review/2256865.