YouSaid · the spoken record

John Fallon

lines on the record: 77
first: 2019-08-02
most recent: 2019-08-02
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“that is focused not on the top 1% but the top 100% that takes the view that every person in this world is capable of learning and achieving more of themselves and that excellence and quality does not mean exclusion. It can mean a problem in our world. I think that's what will emerge. Quite what that looks like, I don't know, but I tell you very much want Pearson to be at the heart of making it right.”
2019-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Pearson CEO John Fallon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“a new type of institution that will merge. I think you could see the first truly global. University that could emerge, perhaps American, Chinese, British, Australian, India, you know, I think that.”
2019-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Pearson CEO John Fallon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, but also I think one, there will be, they have a niche and an important role in market. But I think there is also...”
2019-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Pearson CEO John Fallon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because there's no way of waiting with an answer to say it's the same thing worldwide. I've traveled recently a lot and it's fascinating to watch what's going on rendered asunder by tech and there's ways tech can really be I'm trying to lean into the solution-based tech this year. I've been chastising quite a bit for I don't think they're unintended consequences. I think they were fully intended in a different way than you're thinking. Anyway, last question. Will there be an Oxford Cambridge in 50 years?”
2019-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Pearson CEO John Fallon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I don't know how that changes. So I think that is a clearly important. Thank you for letting me off the hook because there's no way of winning with an answer there.”
2019-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Pearson CEO John Fallon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“that was designed for a two-party world where those two parties were normally sort of varying hues of the same colour. We've now in a world where there's perhaps more sort of stronger. I'll avoid using the word extreme because that's probably a bit too pejorative. And so I think it's leading a big part of the center ground. Certainly here in the UK and arguably elsewhere, sort of un you know, there's a lot of people who frankly are politically homeless. And the electoral system, as it stands, is not able to accommodate.”
2019-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Pearson CEO John Fallon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that so from a, you know, speaking from a Pearson perspective, obviously we operate in 70 countries around the world. We're bipartisan. We've got used to working with governments of all sort of political hues. Sort of, I do worry that there's a rancor and a bitterness to the public discourse that is not doing anybody any good and here in Britain as in as I think in America and elsewhere we have to learn to find ways to disagree with each other in a more sort of respectful way than we have And I think the other thing that's interesting observing this is that we have an electoral system.”
2019-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Pearson CEO John Fallon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would say that we work likewise, we have very close relationships with Microsoft. Again, Microsoft is actually a big customer of ours. We run all of the Microsoft certification, which I should hasten to add, we run on Azure, not on AWS. We have an extensive range. I think back to my earlier point, I largely see what they do as complementary. And we're building on the platform and...”
2019-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Pearson CEO John Fallon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, what's interesting is, you know, if we've been having this conversation about Amazon five years ago, we'd have thought of it purely in terms of them as a bookseller. Now, as I mentioned earlier, Amazon Web Services powers the global learning platform. But likewise, if you want a job in customer services at Amazon in a non-English-speaking country, they use the Pearson Versant test. So the sort of the nature of the dynamic and the relationship between Pearson Amazon becomes more multifaceted, as we know. We hope very much there'll be a partner as we think about how we move into much more of a subscription rental type. So it becomes a different type of dynamic and a different type of relationship.”
2019-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Pearson CEO John Fallon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so our competitors are in one part of our business the competitors are Cengage and McGraw-Hill, in another part it would be K-12 Inc. In another part it might be Coursera or 2U in another part of the business it's sort of ETS I mean I mean we compete across a whole range of different sectors there's no one quite trying to do what work imagine”
2019-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Pearson CEO John Fallon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We're now at a point where actually the growth rate could get quite exciting because the structural growth opportunities begin to”
2019-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Pearson CEO John Fallon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I mean, I think we're like a lot of incumbents in other sectors that have gone through this transformation. We're now at a point where, as I say, we're about $5 billion in annual revenues, the third of our business that is growing at double digits every year, partnering with universities to launch purely online degrees, professional certification, virtual schools, teaching and learning English as a second language, the work we're doing in places like China. And then we have two-thirds of our business, which was the more sort of traditional analog business, where the rate of decline is slowing as we now get over the digital hump. So we're in this sort of exciting point where, you know, we've been through five really tough years. We've had to take a billion dollars of costs and more out of the business, create a much more digital platform-based company.”
2019-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Pearson CEO John Fallon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of They develop and evolve. It's a great idea. I think that. Let me finish it. Think about your business. Your competitors right now, your typical competitors are McGraw-Hill and I guess Heshet, I suppose.”
2019-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Pearson CEO John Fallon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We give credit for prior achievement. Credentials become much more stackable and transferable. Why couldn't I take Course with King's College London virtually and one with Arizona State University and one with the University of New South Wales. And why couldn't this time I spent at Microsoft, I got some credit for and using sort of blockchain or related technologies, everybody has their learning passport, which they take with them through life and which they develop and evolve. It's a great idea. I think that's the way this is going and it's very much the way we're trying to design and build our business.”
2019-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Pearson CEO John Fallon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I agree. Yeah, I mean, and so, you know, back to where we were talking earlier, I mean, we were talking with our partners at Arizona State University in the online business there, online program, the typical student would be 26, 27 years of age. They've probably had a couple of goes of getting a university degree and failed. They've now got perhaps a family. They're working, but they've still got that burning desire to learn. Their confidence is fragile. The most unexpected thing can knock them off track. And so how we think about this in a much more flexible way, but maybe...”
2019-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Pearson CEO John Fallon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I have sort of mixed views on this because the data would tell you that that's still a smart decision, that as of today The earnings premium of someone who's got a four-year degree is somewhere, well, it's as low as, I think it's as low as 40% in North Dakota, but it's as high as, you know, in... Peter Till State of California, a four-year graduate with a four-year degree earns twice as much throughout their working life as somebody who doesn't, even somebody who's got a...”
2019-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Pearson CEO John Fallon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Clearly, we see a world of talent. We see those are skills and knowledge that everybody in this world is capable of having and deploying. And so how do we design education and learning in a way that enables everybody to acquire those skills and do so not just in high school or between the ages of 18, 22, but to go on doing so throughout working life? So I think what you will see is education that becomes much more flexible, much more adaptive, that you don't have to go away, travel hundreds of miles away from home to acquire them, that you can acquire them in the workplace, that you can acquire them as alongside bringing up a family or tendering for an older relative, and that you can Everybody is capable of acquiring them and they're capable of acquiring them at any time and any stage in their life”
2019-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Pearson CEO John Fallon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, if we're designing, you know, if we're thinking about how education should evolve. Those are things the skills that have traditionally been taught by liberal arts degrees and have been seen to be things that the elite”
2019-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Pearson CEO John Fallon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so we commissioned another major piece of research, which basically combined Human expertise and insight about the future of work with machine learning. So it was a combination of the two. And it looked not just at the impact of technology, but of demographics, urbanization, growing political uncertainty. And what it told you was, and we looked at not where there's going to be more jobs and where will there be less jobs in 10 years, but actually as importantly, what are the underlying skills that are most going to be in demand in the workplace? Ability to learn how to learn fluency of ideas. Understanding and empathy of how others will react, things like sociology, understanding you have organizations, psychology, the things that make us uniquely human.”
2019-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Pearson CEO John Fallon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The first of the studies in this area was, I think, about five or six years ago, and it was 47% of all jobs in America are going to be sort of automated within 15 years. I keep saying this. And that was the co-author of that was a guy called Mike Osborne, who's the professor of machine learning at the Oxford Martin School, obviously here in the UK. And I remember we got talking to him. you know, like all good academics, he told us all the things that were wrong with his own research and how it was sort of flawed.”
2019-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Pearson CEO John Fallon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think it's a good area. I think a lot of, I think you should just need to sort of take a step forward and then come back, if you like. And what does the world of work look like in 10 or 15 years' time in a world that, you know, is radically disrupted by sort of automation and robotics and the like? And I don't know if you remember there was...”
2019-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Pearson CEO John Fallon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To 100 and work well into our 80s and 90s, and we're going to have five or six different careers. You have to have new skills. And so that's when there's interesting companies like PluralSight, for example, who are starting to sort of move into that space. It's an area, big area of growth where we're making a lot of investment. And I think those are... Probably more fertile ground because then you don't have a lot of the other more sort of institution and cultural challenges that probably you've got in public education.”
2019-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Pearson CEO John Fallon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Far sort of, you know, outlived, yeah, but I mean, I think if you now look at what EdX are doing, I mean, we partner with EdX. We're taking a lot of their shortcourses and are applying them in places like India and China, which is creating lots of sort of great opportunities. We have a very small shareholding in Coursera. I think the way they're reinventing themselves now is quite interesting. I think back to your earlier point, a lot of the original technology money went into K-12. And I think that has proved. Very, very difficult, especially commercially. Now I think much more of it is going into employability, lifelong learning, this idea that if we're all going to...”
2019-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Pearson CEO John Fallon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think certainly a lot of what they have done or what has come out of the valley has then enabled us to do what we're now able to do. So, for example, we launch our First of what I was describing earlier about the generation of the next. Way of digital courseware in the apps that's built on a lot of underlying technology. So a lot of, you know, it's based on technology that's come out of Google. It's based on technologies that come out of Amazon, our new global learning platform is built on Amazon Web Services. So we've taken a lot of the tools. That they have created for wider applications and said, how do we use our knowledge and insights of learning science and education to then apply them in a more sort of specific way? I think on the MOOCs on Massive Open Online Courses, I think, yes, the hype.”
2019-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Pearson CEO John Fallon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Reach more people, provide them with more feedback, do actually what the best teachers have always done. But what is it we don't know? We don't know. How do we ensure, for example, that as we become more adaptive and more personalized, we're opening up opportunities for people, not closing them down. One of the great benefits of education is the serendipity. That moment when you suddenly find that you love a subject or a passion or you're good at something that you didn't know, how do we ensure that as we adapt technology and apply it, it's opening up those opportunities, not closing them down. We don't know how the brain, how the way the human brain functions will change.”
2019-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Pearson CEO John Fallon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. It gives better feedback. But what I do agree with you is, you know, and learning the lessons from some of the unintended consequences of social media.”
2019-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Pearson CEO John Fallon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And to be clear, you're right to say we're not far away from it. What I've described is something we are trying to do. We've not yet mastered. I think to me, the importance things is the teacher is in control. It's the teacher that sets the rubric and the machine that applies it. And I think we are quite a long way from machines. A big enhancement to the productivity of teachers because it frees them up. To doom add more value added things. And it's better for the student because it provides quicker.”
2019-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Pearson CEO John Fallon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's scary to people. That's an essay. There's one thing, but the answer is four, and it has to be four or whatever the answer is. When it comes to more thoughtful things, even though a lot of the technology is being used to see if kids are plagiarizing or use the thing too, there's pattern matching and things like that. But the idea of taking more sophisticated thoughts and letting the machine do it, I do think we're not very far away from that, but how does that change the teacher technology?”
2019-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Pearson CEO John Fallon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Watching you, and you can come back in at any point and see how I've marked it, how the machine has marked it and correct it, and the machine will then learn that and reflect it through. That's scary.”
2019-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Pearson CEO John Fallon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You here's a little snippet of a video. Here's a person you can talk to. Here's a classmate. Who's actually mastered this? And actually, the classmate will learn as well because we learn by teaching others what we know. One of the, you know, I have a... Daughter who's just finishing at university college London, one of her complaints and one of her colleagues' complaints is they submit an essay. Takes forever to get the essay back when they do, they've got a fairly perfunctory mark, doesn't provide them with help and feedback. A tool we have in development at the moment would enable a professor to Sign an essay, mark the first 20 or so herself. At which point the machine would say, I'll take over from here and I can mark the rest of these essays to the rubric that you have taught me.”
2019-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Pearson CEO John Fallon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So it can provide individual feedback to the student. It can say, well, you've mastered this concept, but you're struggling here. So here's where you should focus more effort. Here's a tip.”
2019-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Pearson CEO John Fallon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If you're applying AI to a lot of learning, which obviously testing is a very good area, looking for patterns, when you get into more complex thing, which is less, this is the answer, that makes sense when it becomes more, which learning most of learning is about the more subtle things. How do you then apply AI to that?”
2019-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Pearson CEO John Fallon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it is our responsibility as to how it's used and our responsibility is to empower people to progress in their lives through learning more effectively. So everything we do is about enhancing teaching and learning and we wouldn't ever get caught in doing anything other than that”
2019-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Pearson CEO John Fallon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, as I say, it's completely the test itself does not know the person and it doesn't know the analysis, authenticity, it's purely on the basis of the fluency of their...”
2019-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Pearson CEO John Fallon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Improve. It's assessment for learning. I'm just going to use it because there's been so much controversy around predictive policing and everything else in terms of if they're dealing with someone of color or someone or not. Does that go into your thinking of who you're testing or?”
2019-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Pearson CEO John Fallon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so if you take the Pearson test of English, which is a test that's used for immigration purposes in many countries, for citizenship purposes, or for admission if you're a non-native speaker and you want to go and study at an English speaking university, the speaking and listening all elements of that test is marked by machines. We've taught the machines to mark that test. Something like speaking the level of accuracy of the mark is much better. You remove all human bias, you get the result much more quickly, and you get the feedback that is personal to you and helps you to improve. It's assessment for learning.”
2019-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Pearson CEO John Fallon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Calculus is the first one, and then there will be whole other range of areas and other area, big application for AI. So we have used artificial intelligence, machine learning for many years in our high-stakes assessment. So if you take...”
2019-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Pearson CEO John Fallon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Almost two speed world. We have to continue to transform and adapt courseware for professors to teach. Encompass based situations or in institutions. And in addition, there's also a lot more informal, complementary different types of learning. Is a different experience, and doing both draws on a lot of the same expertise, but it's a different experience.”
2019-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Pearson CEO John Fallon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Practices. This has got, I mean, this will have a lot of rigor to it. I mean, the other interesting thing is as part of it we've Created a lot of the content that goes with it. And we've drawn very heavily on our experts and all obviously the capabilities we have in this area. But when you are designing for a mobile app, You actually have to go back to very first principles and create a difference. So I think you will see, and I guess you can go-based. Yeah, it's mobile phone. And this actually goes back to one of your, you know, you're asking me earlier about what lessons do you learn is we have to exist in a sort of like a twin track.”
2019-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Pearson CEO John Fallon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You couldn't teach yourself calculus, but you could use it to, you know, I've got an assignment. I'm struggling with this. Maybe this will complement and supplement it. And as I say, if it was bundled, you could then see a scenario where with the student's permission. You could then share the insight and feedback with the teacher. Who would then be able to say they had 100 students in class?”
2019-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Pearson CEO John Fallon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And we're starting with calculus, but it could be across different lots of different subjects. The student would get this and then just go through it themselves. You couldn't teach yourself calculus with it.”
2019-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Pearson CEO John Fallon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, because I think then it would be this is not likely to be sufficient in itself to replace the students still going to be strudding at a university. We could see a scenario where it's bundled with the course, where it's feedback. I was at a major university in the south of the US recently one of the biggest and most forward-thinking math departments I described it to him he said we'd love to have have that so we're launching it first as a director consumer but you can imagine lots of different applications and we're starting with calculus but it could be across different lots of different subjects”
2019-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Pearson CEO John Fallon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we have the relationship, and the way it will work is one thing we've learned is the best way to solve a math problem. Is still to get a piece of paper and a pen write out the problem and then solve it long hand this Will enable you to do that, take a photo of what you've written on your mobile phone, send it to the Pearson app and within five seconds the machine has translated it into text has marked it for you and provided a view. So there may be seven steps in the problem you've got the first three right, you've struggled with the fourth. It provides that feedback to you. It's step by step to you. There's something like a hundred different concepts. This enables us to then also teach them in a nonlinear way, which means it's personal and adaptive to you.”
2019-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Pearson CEO John Fallon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The first of these apps is really aimed at calculus, introductory calculus courses. It's known in America. It'd be an introductory math course that you'd take if you were doing any science or engineering degree. It's one of the hardest courses, one of the biggest reasons people drop out of STEM degrees is they don't master calculus. And so most of what we do, as I was explaining, is around helping and supporting the teacher-student relationship. This is the first app we've launched, which is aimed directly at students.”
2019-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Pearson CEO John Fallon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So Ada Lovelaser is one of the, I think with Charles Badget and one or two others was one of the absolute sort of pioneers of the earliest stages of the computing. So, you know, way before Alan Touring and what was happening out at IBM on the West Coast and all of that.”
2019-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Pearson CEO John Fallon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is it a British? Well, it's a sort of partly tribute to Ada Lovelace. It's partly a recognition that AI is about AD as she was. Yeah, aiding and supporting and enabling.”
2019-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Pearson CEO John Fallon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If you don't understand That learning is complex and it's messy and you learn and you get some feedback and you go again and you, as I say, you learn by sharing and you learn by teaching somebody else. So I think the You know, education is riven with a lot of false dichotomies, and perhaps the worst of them all at the moment is somehow that this is teacher or technology. This is teacher and technology. It's not human or machine, it's human and machine. I think we'll talk a little bit about how we are deploying artificial intelligence. We very much think about it as an intelligent assistant. It's there to support and enable and empower a teacher and a student. It doesn't display change as human dynamic.”
2019-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Pearson CEO John Fallon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And they also want an incredible user experience, which is really important and is something that has been challenging for us and many other publishers over time. But obviously great television or great movies can make you laugh and make you cry and make you think, but you sit back and you consume. Education, you lean in and you do. And I think if you don't understand.”
2019-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Pearson CEO John Fallon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think you have to recognize one what it is you're really good at, but also really understand your customers and really understand, to use a terribly old-fashioned word, the pedagogy. There is an art and science to learning. And you learn by doing. You learn by teaching others. You have normless people talking about, oh, I'm going to be the Netflix or I'm going to be the Spotify. I'm going to be doing this. And there are things we can learn from that because this is absolutely the Netflix or Spotify generation. So in terms of a business model, they want to rent or subscribe. They don't want to own. And they do want an incredible, which makes sense. And they also want...”
2019-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Pearson CEO John Fallon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Model these things and understand what students want. We don't need teachers almost. I know they say that. They don't, but it's behind the eyes. It's like that this can be done. Everything that can't be digitized will be digitized is one of the things I say a lot. That's the mentality. Talk a little bit about this when you're facing enormous amounts of venture funding, all kinds of new theories about that. Nothing wrong with that. Talk about what it's like when you have one of these companies that has already been in this business for so long.”
2019-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Pearson CEO John Fallon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT