John Bower
CEO, uBoost INC
Describe your segment of the industry and
where do you see your company positioned in this segment.
uBoost has a unique and innovative solution to support student recognition and rewards and, by extension, student engagement and classroom management. Recognition and rewards programs are not new. Teachers have used “home grown” programs to inspire and motivate students and manage classrooms for centuries. Recent trends in education intensify pressure for schools to perform and produce results. This high-stakes environment leads schools to implement alternative programs to achieve improved learning outcomes. Recognizing that a key piece of the puzzle is student motivation, innovators in education have updated extrinsic rewards from pizza parties and gold stars to performance recognition and incentives that are relevant to today’s learner.
UBoost’s solution is an online performance recognition and rewards platform where points are awarded for positive behaviors and redeemed for relevant rewards. With its underlying principles backed by research uBoost is designed to increase student engagement and ultimately, drive positive learning outcomes.
“When a learner earns rewards for attaining high standards, this creates a positive feedback loop, which increases interest and involvement, leads to high personal evaluations of performance, results in increased competence, and builds intrinsic motivation.”(Cameron, Pierce, Banko, & Gear, 2005, p. 641)
“Today, the debate has moved beyond the question of whether rewards are inherently harmful or beneficial. . . . Specifically, rewards have been found to increase motivation and interest in tasks that are of initial low interest. On high interest tasks, positive effects of reward are obtained when participants are verbally praised for their work, when tangible rewards are presented in an informational manner, when rewards signify competence at an activity, and when the rewards are offered and given for achieving performance standards or goals.” (Cameron, Pierce, Banko, & Gear, 2005, p. 641)
What is the biggest challenge to your segment of the industry in 2009?
As achievement gaps widen and NCLB benchmarks become more rigorous, schools and districts continue to explore new programming to support their core academic performance objectives. To date, program focus has been on supplemental services, response to intervention and other academic initiatives. However, a growing number of states, districts and schools are using student recognition and rewards to augment the full range of academic curriculum (in school and after school). Today, these programs are not yet mainstream with many seen as “fringe,” especially the pay for grades pilots which are often viewed suspiciously.
To that end, the biggest challenge involves district and building education of, awareness about and receptivity to student recognition and rewards programs. Across the country, research is identifying the positive impact that student recognition and rewards programs have on student engagement and academic performance. Examples include:
Incentives in Charter Schools
Source: study by Margaret Raymond, Stanford University, 2008 Scores on state achievement Reading tests increased 4-6% per year of program participation.
Incentives to Learn
Source: experimental study by Kremer, Harvard University, Brookings Institute, 2004 Kenyan girls showed significant gains in test scores (average gain 0.12-0.19 standard deviations).
Test score gains remained large in the year after incentives were removed.
Additional positive results included higher teacher attendance and positive “peer effects” among students.
Opportunity NYC: Spark
Source: New York Post, 2008 17 of the 35 schools performed better in English, and 21 performed better in math.
APIP
Source: APIP and experimental study by C. Kirabo Jackson, Cornell University, 2008 Increased # of minority students passing exams from 10 in 1995 to 377 in 2006.
33% increase in the # of students scoring above 1100 on SAT or 24 on the ACT.
8% increase in the # of students who matriculate in college.
Ohio School District “Coshocton Bucks” Source: Study by Dr. Eric Bettinger, Case Western Reserve University, 2008 Increase in # of students attending optional tutoring.
Increase in math scores for 3rd – 6th graders.
Stocks in the Future
Source: Study by John Hopkins University Seventh graders outscored comparison group by 31 percent on standardized test.
Sixth graders outscored comparison group by 18 percent on standardized test.
Learn & Earn
Source: EMSTAR Research, Inc., 2008 Students’ science grades significantly improved while control group students’ grades declined.
REACH
Source: New York Times In Chemistry, the number of passing scores increased by as much as 82 %.
What is your company doing to meet these challenges?
uBoost is employing a variety of initiatives to educate the K12 market about the use of quality, well deployed student recognition and rewards programming and its impact on student achievement. These include:
1. Participation in high profile, national pilots like the one launched in NYC, Chicago and DC Public Schools in September 2008.
2. Ongoing development of a library of third party and internal research reports identifying the measurable impact of student recognition and rewards programming.
3. Executive Briefings at select, national conferences like NSBA.
4. Public Relations programming highlighting program successes, client results, student impact, etc…
5. Webcasts and webinars featuring national researchers, early adopter clients, and others.
6. Subsidizing research studies to measure the impact of uBoost on target populations like Title I students.
What is your company's unique advantage in the marketplace?
Based on our research, uBoost’s platform is unique in the marketplace. It is the only research-based, highly scalable, web solution that supports the three pillars of program effectiveness for recognition and rewards programs:
1. Frequency of recognition
2. Relevancy of rewards
3. Reinforce behaviors, not outcomes.
uBoost reduces the administrative stress on teachers by eliminating program management and product purchase and fulfillment while supporting their classroom and academic performance goals and engages students with an interactive platform featuring hundreds of thousands of activities and items in our rewards catalog. The end result, a more motivated and engaged student that learns the behaviors that lead to positive outcomes.