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Priten: Welcome to Margin of Thought, where we make space for the questions that matter. I'm your host, Priten, and together we'll explore questions that help us preserve what matters while navigating what's coming.
Priten : Our first set of episodes will feature conversations that help inform my upcoming book, ethical Ed Tech, how Educators Can Lead On AI and Digital Safety in K 12. Starting us off, we have my colleague and friend, Aiden. Ian, COO of Thinker Analytics, a company I work for that focuses on teaching critical thinking skills globally and at scale.
Many college graduates lack basic reasoning skills, and that gap affects everything from how they evaluate information to how they engage with technology itself. We'll explore the intersection of philosophy and technology and education, the ethical commitments that EdTech companies should have, and why explicit instruction and reasoning matters more than ever, especially as AI becomes increasingly prevalent in our classrooms.
Let's dive in.
Aidan: My name's Aidan Kestigian and I'm the COO of Thinker Analytix. After grad school I got a job as a program manager in a research lab, that was at least somewhat focused on my research area, which was kinda democracy and voting, and redistricting. I really loved working in the research space, but I missed the teaching component of my time as a grad student. And so I started seeking out roles, really at the intersection of philosophy and education and Thinker Analytx is squarely in that intersection.
Priten : How would you describe Thinker Analytx to somebody who hasn't heard of us before?
Aidan: We brand TA as an education nonprofit that teaches critical thinking at scale. There's a couple important components of that. One is critical thinking, what is critical thinking? In our world, we see critical thinking as a set of skills to reason, to make and evaluate arguments that you hear and read about, in newspapers and classrooms, and to be able to think clearly about complex issues.
The other component of what we do is scaling. So trying to teach those skills in a way that meets many different students at many differentage and grade levels, and in many different academic contexts.
Priten : I feel like for some people when they think about philosophy, they think of like dusty books and this like blackboard setting with a professor in a plaid suit.
And that's obviously not what TA is, but what about the intersection of philosophy and technology do you find exciting?
Aidan: The dusty Blackboard was me. I assigned books and physical readings and held class discussions. I was really fortunate because when I taught, I think the largest class I was ever in front of was about 40 students, which I think a lot of faculty would say is like really nice because you get to know each student, you get to spend a lot of time with each individual. But even at that smallest scale, it's hard, it's really hard in terms of time and energy and brain power to provide really deep tailored instruction and feedback to each student. And so what excited me about the intersection of philosophy and technology is being able to bring the benefits of doing philosophy, the skills, the kind of habits of mine to many students in a kind of personalized and tailored way that I wasn't able to do as an instructor, a single instructor in front of a room of 40.
Okay, so I wanna hear more about TA, but before we do that, love to ask folks what their first memory of an ed tech tool as a student was,and what was the feeling? Was it excitement? Was this dread? Was it like, why are we even doing this? What was that like for you?
So to date myself, I was born in the nineties, so when we used education technology, we went to a room, a specific computer room at school,
I can remember learning how to type, like typing and type speed was a thing that we learned how to do. And I remember that even at that time what we were learning was gamified. Everything was a game on a computer, which was, is interesting now because there's a lot of debate now about whether that's like a good way to go about teaching skills is through hyper gamification, but I remember at the time it was incredibly exciting.
I think that was every student in my class's like favorite time of day was like going to the computer lab, 'because it was not just gamified, but also the things we were doing were generative. It was like having time to create things that you maybe didn't do in other courses. And [00:05:00] I remember it feeling like, almost like recess in a way. Yeah. It was like the fun time of day, which I think is something we try to think about a lot at TA is how to capture that- at least a little bit of that, in what we do.
Priten : That's my first memory of Ed Tech as well, which is, I think it was like Mavis Beacon Like trying to get the high, like there was a competitive nature to it, which I think was like super exciting. Now that you mentioned it was very gamified, like there was like levels to pass and there was like actual graphics that went along with it which I don't, know if if you went to a high school student today and said oh, like how do you learn typing? They would, still give the same answer. I feel like we don't teach it anymore, which maybe is some clues to how we should approach other things, but there was excitement around it.
Aidan: when I read this question, I actually looked up some of the programs like, did you have Schoolhouse Rock? It used to be videos, but they made them into PC games for students. That was, I think, one of the first transition from just like digital video to interactive media for students.
Priten : Yeah. The other thing is like BrainPOP was really bigand that was really exciting. And I think they started to do a lot more complimentary things and not just the videos.Crash course videos obviously were a thing, but that was much later in school. And BrainPOP was definitely still K to five for me. If you, were to frame the problem that TA is trying to solve, how would you frame it?
Aidan: Research I did before I worked at Thinker Analytics was largely in political philosophy and ethics. And there's a lot of work in that area about what it means to be, free and a fully autonomous person in the world. A lot of their recent literature talks not just about the kind of conditions around you in the world that might either enhance or inhibit freedom, but also the kind of skills and capacities that you need as an individual totake advantage of the opportunities that you have. Part of what drew me to TA and what I see us as doing and contributing to the world is making sure that students have the skills, the capacities they need. really just the basics to take advantage of the academic opportunities in front of them, especially at the college level, but also the professional world that they're going to enter into after college. In particular what we're trying to do is give them the basic reasoning skills that they'll need toengage in advanced academic coursework, and engage in professional discussions, professional decision making, with good reasoning.
Priten : I think a lot of folks, especially like those in higher ed, would say that, we already teach those reasoning skills. Most intro classes are built around it. Freshmen seminars are supposed to guide students into that.
Maybe even SAT prep courses are supposed to get you to do some level of reasoning these days.
Aidan: Totally. I fell victim to that too. I assumed that because I was in front of a class talking about big ideas and pushing back on students to get them to think really hard about complex issues that, yeah, I was building their reasoning skills.
Unfortunately the research shows that's not the case. Almost half of college graduates don't have basic critical thinking skills, that we might assume they have after college or even before college. The research shows that it's not the case.
I think by ignoring that we are deluding ourselves as instructors into thinking that we're making progress on a really important problem that we're really not, and that it actually takes some really explicit, focused instruction on just those skills to get students to where they need to be.
Priten : Yeah. maybe at this point also, if you were to define reasoning skills, how would you define that for somebody who's thinking about what that actually looks like?
Aidan: And these terms are diffuse, so it's a very reasonable question. The phrase critical thinking, the phrase reasoning, I think are diffuse. And so it warrants, being really precise about what we mean by those things. I can give you a couple examples, but at Thinker Analytix, we operate off really an explicit list of the kinds of tasks that students should be able to complete in order to show that they are, a good reasoner.
So here's an example: a student should be able to read a short paragraph, arguing for a particular policy. They should be able to pick out the conclusion of that paragraph to know what is this person really arguing for, and they should be able to evaluate the argument. They should be able to decide for themselves whether the reasons presented are true and relevant, whether they're really strong reasons to believe the conclusion.
So that's just three different tasks. But that's three among a list of, say, roughly 30 that we teach, at Thinker Analytics.
Priten : Yeah. now I'm sure we could talk a lot more about the what we teach, and the why we teach it. but obviously the show [00:10:00] is geared towards thinking about the technology. so I'd love to talk a little bit more about the how now. What are some like ethical and pedagogical commitments, that we as a team have that you think are important for that guide? How we approach, the development of our tools?
Aidan: Several pedagogical commitments that I think make a through line through all of our programs I'll give you a few. one is that pedagogy comes first. if we're going to build something, especially something technological, we start first with understanding like, what wouldthe world's best teacher do in this case, what would that look like? Either in a classroom or online? what would they be doing to make these decisions? What will research tell us we should be doing in these cases? And then we try to build the technology around that rather than the other way around.
We don't try to see what the technology can do and then just shoehorn pedagogy into it. Pedagogy always comes first. I think the other commitment that we have that I personally feel really strongly about is that we want students to be very aware that they're building skills while they do it, which is not always the case for students in a classroom.
Sometimes it can feel,especially online, that you're just clicking through something that is just something you've gotta finish. At Thinker Analytics, we want students to be excited to build skills to understand why it's important that they build skills and be motivated by that but also, be aware in the process that those skills are improving. and so being able to track their progress, and see it visually on a screen, is really important to us. One more commitment I'll throw in is, the content that we teach, the reasoning and critical thinking is really important.
Not just for everyday interactions, but also for engaging with social and political bodies, right? Being able to go to a local meeting and understand what people are discussing and debating and decide for yourself What you think about that. that to me is almost like a moral commitment.
Like why we need to teach these skills in particular and why we design the technology to enable that kind of skill building.
Priten : As you're talking about, the way we frame the tech development, I was thinking, there's a lot of conversation right now about student engagement and the stickiness of ed tech tools. And I feel like to a degree we've ignored that and I think that's a strength. I'm curious if you feel the same way
Aidan: Yeah. I guess the cynical way to say it is that we don't put fun first.
Priten : Yeah,
Aidan: I agree. I think we want our programs to be like, engaging and interesting and motivating, but I don't think that aspects like gamification have ever come first, in a discussion about how we should build something and I think if we cared about super stickiness, that would be almost top of the agenda. More and more I'm hearing from teachers and students and parents that, that's actually becoming a concern about how sticky they are. So I think it's a strength that we can say, we want it to be enjoyable to some extent, but that's not our goal.
Like our goal isn't to build an enjoyment kind of experience. The goal is to teach and to learn.
Priten : And in a world where the market is trying to make things like more efficient for students or make it seem like it's easier. I'm thinking about things like the 90% requirement. The timeout in particular I was thinking about as you were talking, we're literally telling people to get off the site, right? Tell me a little bit about what was the reasoning behind having us build that feature?
Aidan: requiring that students get a 90% on an assessment before they move on, and asking them to take breaks if they're not hitting that 90% multiple times in a row. I think what we're trying to show students is that reasoning is hard.
It takes a long time, a lot of practice to build those skills. that's okay, that is just the feature of skill building for many of the things you'll wanna do in life. Like becoming a great chef. I love cooking. It's taken me decades to learn how to do it well.
I think what we're also teaching alongside these skills is. a willingness to try and try again and come back. that's maybe something that is missing from other kinds of ed tech is this idea that it is tricky and it's not gonna be just all fun and games every single time.
You're gonna have to try and keep trying.
Priten : Yeah. On that note, I feel like technology in general has become more and more ambiguous in our classrooms, but also as AI continues to grow, folks are throwing around terms like ethical ed tech. with a very low bar to me.
what does it mean to you when you approach, the ed tech development that TA does?
Aidan: Yeah, I guess there's kind of [00:15:00] two levels on which you could say something is ethical. one is a very thin level, which is just that it doesn't, say harm or, yeah. Maliciously use, a student's work or their data.
Doesn't sell it for malicious intent or something like that. but there's a higher bar that I think people are starting to talk about a bit now, which is like, what is the purpose of it? And was it designed to actually put that purpose first?
Is it something that is designed to actually develop skills or make them more, teach them content knowledge that's really important? Or is it really designed to just keep them on the site as much as possible? And so I think that's a higher bar and it takes a lot more sleuthing and testing to figure out whether that's the case.
That is something I'm proud of about TA is that the moral purpose is always front and center. It's always the guiding principle.
Priten : Yeah, The, that like thin ethical definition seems definitely to be the most popular. are we. Doing something blatantly immoral.
If not, then we are suddenly ethical. As long as it's not illegal. suddenly it's ethical. And that's, That was a very early thing that philosophers learned to distinguish between, philosophy students learn to distinguish between legal and moral.
it does seem like folks are starting to have those conversations, especially because it has been an influx, right? And so I think now folks are like, oh, what exactly, what are we doing? I'm glad folks are slowing down and asking those questions. an organization run by philosophers has definitely been asking that question for longer.
I would love to, think about a feature that we developed or are developing, where ethics was the forefront of a conversation that we all were having. what comes to mind, in terms of our internal conversations, if we wanna share those.
Aidan: So I can give you a recent example. We recently released a one hour module that is designed not to necessarily move the needle on skills a ton. It's only an hour, but actually just to get students excited to develop their critical thinking skills, to inform them about what critical thinking is and why it's important and why they might be interested in doing some of that skill building
That was an area where we committed time to an informative module, and one that includes. a pre and post survey and test to inform students of their own starting skills. I think that transparency about where you're at with your skills an ethical commitment It's just being really transparent with students about what they can do and how they can get to the next stop. how can they move their skills forward? And so we built a whole module just to give them that baseline, give them that starting point. It's getting quite a lot of uptake by instructors, because often when students come into their classes, They don't know what their starting skills are. this can help, give students, some ownership and some transparency on their own skills, but also help instructors know okay, where are we starting?
Who are these students sitting in front of me?
Priten : Yeah. The exciting part to me for that module was, like student buy-in As educators we need to get students to actually buy into our pedagogical goals more and more. Especially when shortcuts and cheating options, and cynicism about education in general are like, yeah, growing.
that module does a really good job of both, like answering for the student like. Why, like, why are you, clicking on these buttons, right? it's not, this is not just a check mark, like your professor told you to do this, so you play a video in the background and just go tick, tick, Because for a lot of students, that is how they view things like this. I'm excited to see how that progresses for how they take the rest of the course. that to me, that is promising and matches what, kinds of pain points, folks are talking about.
But yeah, that's definitely an exciting development. On that note, love to just break down the role that, students professors and teachers play in the actual development of TA's products and how we've approached that.
Aidan: Oh, absolutely. It's a huge role. It's a massive role that students and faculty play.
So I can give you some examples. one is just that we are constantly engaging with students. In the chat function on our site, fielding emails from them with questions and feedback. when they reach out for tutoring or for support, we provide that, but we also take it as a signal that maybe we could be looking at the feedback we are already providing and making it better.
So trying to understand any student input we're getting as, prompting for improvement. The way weimplement and iterate programs is very much focused on how to gather feedback, quickly and to a high quality. with any module or new program we put out, we often make it
free first so that we can get, faculty and student feedback, as much as possible from as wide a range of schools and colleges and [00:20:00] universities as possible. and then we literally collect all of it and sort it and, make improvements based on that. We also run a faculty, committee that, meets kinda monthly during the school year, to which we can put really substantive, high level questions about the design of programs, and they can provide guidance, to us.
Priten : So it's, constant and it's the number one way that we go about improving our programs. Yeah. That's, one of my favorite parts of working with TA the opportunity to think about These larger questions in a way that feels good to me. But I get to meet faculty and talk to them, and see how much they care. because they know how much you all value them. And I think that definitely creates a very good symbiotic relationship. it's great to be a fly on the wall in those rooms.
Aidan: It's my favorite part of my job is getting to work with faculty.
Getting to work with brilliant people who are just so in love with their jobs and their students is like one, just personally fulfilling, but also the best way we could possibly go about building educational programs.
Priten : Yeah. And I do think this is why there is, high instructor retention, right?
They have deep relationships with you all. Like they get to interact with you, come to you with questions, but also they know their input is valued. And I think that,
That to me is a stark contrast, from a lot of mass market tools at least. another one of our strengths, if we were to pat ourselves on the back. when we brand TA, as like an ed tech nonprofit, and that inevitably means that there's, two key aspects of it.
There's the tech aspect and then there's the programs and there's, the curriculum and the relationships with our faculty in schools. you and I are in charge of the two different parts of those. how do you see that function, in a mission-driven organization? Because I think folks might have some predispositions about what our roles might be at an ed tech, company. I want to, see how you view our relationship. Not to put you on the spot,
Aidan: here's the big reveal.
I'm really grateful for the professional relationship we've developed between these roles because I think it really is symbiotic in a way.
The programs, are improved by good technology, but also in the way we were discussing earlier, what the program content is, influences the technology and how it should be designed and built. And because we are so mission driven, there's never been a time where I've thought one of these things is kind of taking priority over the others. it's always like they have to work in a neat way to make the mission move forward. That's been really personally interesting to me because I think. As a philosophy PhD, I just wasn't as aware of how these innovative, nonprofits and startups could work.
that's been, a really cool, professional thing to learn how to build a group that can work in that symbiotic way.
Priten : Yeah. given how many different aspects of the organization fall within your purview and how many different hats TA seems to wear between, being a nonprofit organization that's very mission driven.
being at the cutting edge of technology and developing tech tools that are unique, and, trailblazers in the field, and then still having a very deep commitment to research and academia, how do you see the balance of all of that and how do you balance it? How do you not, fall into just one of those categories and, do disservice to the other ones?
Aidan: I think one way we, Balance. It is just by acknowledging the variety of strengths on our team and being aware of gaps and where we need to fill in and build out, strengths so that those things are in balance. for example, this faculty committee that I mentioned, came about partly because it's Really good to do and we've always gotten faculty feedback, but also to build up a team that could help us triage and think through all of the feedback that we get, which maybe would be too much for one person to do in addition to the other things you mentioned. trying to figure out who the right people are what the strengths are and how we can empower those people to do those things well.
is something I'm trying to get better at and learn how to do, build out a team that's not just happy, but also working on the things they're really. Yeah, just really excited to work on, but also really skilled at, doing, if that makes sense.
Priten : When you think about the next five years the five year timeline at this point just feels so scary, because I don't know what five years means anymore. But, if we were to try to think about the next five years, what do you think our biggest challenges are at TA, but maybe even in education as a whole?
Aidan: I'll take education as a whole first. One of the biggest challenges [00:25:00] I'm reading about every day is the motivation problem: why should students be motivated to. Go into a particular major, or finish an online program they've been asked to do.
What's in it for them? That's gonna be a recurring theme, especially as AI advances and the job market gets shaken up why should I do this instead of something else? And that's something we at TA are gonna have to continually be in touch with and talking to students directly about.
In terms of our organization, you mentioned earlier our faculty retention. I think a lot of that comes from. being, a like person to person organization. we have talked to every faculty member that uses our site, which is wild, right? There's a lot of people, but I think that's. Such a strength, because, we can provide tailored support, but also in return we get really direct, authentic feedback from, people and they feel comfortable doing that because we've met and can work with them to improve things based on what they say. I think that because that is such a time intensive.
Part of our organization might be actually where we end up going. Which is the opposite of where you hear the rest of the job market going. Yeah. investing in person to person help and support, and just, connecting people, playing more of a network connector among faculty who are excited by this kind of learning.
Priten : Yeah, those seem like reasonable, challenges that we might face, but also, how we will continue to hopefully, meet those challenges. a lot of the decision making for education technology in schools, and universities especially universities, end up falling directly on teachers and professors.
there are very heavily marketed to group, especially again recently, I'm sure at some point there's decision fatigue, but also, the sense of being overwhelmed by the number of options. what advice would you give to educators who are trying to evaluate which tool to use in their classroom?
Aidan: One of the things I would wanna do is be able to write down very clearly like what are the three things or four things I want my students to get out of whatever this tool is that I might be considering.
what do I want them to be able to do? how do I want them to be different Afterwards? This is standard backwards design teaching stuff, right? actually try to talk to someone who works on the product or help build the product and ask them what the product will do to get your students to those goals.
hopefully they can. Assure you that will happen, you should be able to have a conversation, even over email with someone. I think that can walk through the design of the product and how it's designed to either get you to those goals or not.
that is if you're, if, you have questions, that would be my first go-to. for something as personal as education, I would hope that companies are set up to field those sorts of questions.
Priten : I was recently reading a book called, the Unaccountability Problem. and it's largely like talks about how as corporations have gotten larger, they've put more and more like. Steps in between the CEO and the direct customer interfacing people.
I bet even putting tech in between. and that basically means that everybody's just deflects. So like you're never talking to the person making the decision. it becomes ambiguous, these are the rules, or this is the system. even if you got in touch with the CEO, they wouldn't.
Really, they'd be like, I don't control your refund. Yeah. It's just and in some ways what you're talking about is that like, TA has been explicitly designed to have a very high level of accountability. Like somebody wanted to get in touch with Ann, CEO, like they could
And she would intervene and we would all have a conversation. There is a high degree of accountability that we hold ourselves to, but also that we expose ourselves to by being available directly to faculty, and students that's something we should be proud of.
But that's not the direction things are moving.
Aidan: I get why in some cases 'cause it is hard and it can be emotionally taxing. It can be, tough on support staff. But, I think if you have a workflow that is transparent andthat you are at least taking in feedback and really considering it.
Even at the end of the day, if you don't agree or there's reasons to not implement the suggestion like. By and large, we've seen people get that It's a complicated business of trying to teach something to 15,000 students at once, 20,000 students at once, whatever it is. And so I think it's the transparency of the process almost more than anything elseand that's something I'm really proud of. we go through every bit of feedback and really try to implement the ones that, will make the site better, and that won't cause, damage or something like that. I think people understand that there is a decision process that we have to go through.
if you can't even see who the decision maker is, I could see why that's incredibly frustrating.
Priten : Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. now I wanna end on this note, which is that when [00:30:00] folks hear this, they might dismiss it as, well, TA is a nonprofit and so they can afford to think about these big questions they can afford, to, be intentional, to spend this much time on relationships with faculty.
Is that the truth? Do you not care about sales and growth? Is the bottom line not important to ta?
Aidan: Growth is incredibly important to us, but not in the way that you might hear about from.
A kind of full ed tech company that is for profit, right? So we care about growth because it means more students are learning the skills we're trying to teach, and that is our nonprofit mission. growth and scaling are embedded in our purpose. It also, allows us, in terms of the finances to grow programs and do more.
we of course, as a nonprofit reinvest any growth back into the organization, but, we do care about growth. That's something we talk about almost every day. trying to reach more faculty, more students. I hope if your listeners are interested, they'll be part of that.
thank you. This was super, productive. it was nice to reflect on some of the larger things that keep us, going as an organization. I'm hoping anybody who has any involvement in ed tech can learn something, and hopefully get inspired to approach the problems the way,
Priten : TA has. I hope teachers get a chance to check out, thinker Analytics if they are interested and want to, engage with you all or are curious about learning more, what are some first steps they should take?
Aidan: Sure. So they can check out our kind signature online program, which is it Think arguments. All one word.org. they can also reach out in the chat function on think arguments. There's a little button in the right hand corner where you can reach out directly to me, directly to our staff,
Priten : not to an AI bot,
Aidan: but directly to staff.
Yeah, and if you're interested in the nonprofit side of things, you can visit Thinker Analytx.
Ending with YTX dot org, and read more about the other programs we've got going on and what our mission is. Thank you to Aiden for that conversation about the work we do together and the larger questions it raises. Aiden's emphasis on making critical thinking accessible, and engaging on pedagogy over gamification and on meaningful student feedback reminds us that EdTech companies can act ethically. Stay with us as we continue the season exploring these questions from multiple perspectives.
And don't forget to pre-order the book that these interviews were for by visiting [email protected].
Priten: Thanks for listening to Margin of Thought. If this episode gave you something to think about, subscribe, rate, and review us. Also, share it with someone who might be asking similar questions. You can find the show notes, transcripts, and my newsletter at priten.org. Until next time, keep making space for the questions that matter.