Sarah Toms is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Wharton Interactive. She is a serious games expert and demonstrated thought leader in the educational technology field, fueled by a passion to find and develop innovative ways to make every learning environment active, engaging, more meaningful, and learner-centered.
Sarah has built transformative gaming platforms for education from the ground up, like Wharton Interactive’s award winning Alternate Reality Courseware platform. And she and her team are building the most innovative catalog of ARC games-based courses on the planet. Sarah has spent more than twenty years as a leader in the technology sphere, and was an entrepreneur for over a decade, founding companies that built global CRM, product development, productivity management, and financial systems. In addition, Sarah is coauthor of The Customer Centricity Playbook, the Digital Book Awards 2019 Best Business Book. And she is dedicated to supporting women and girls in the technology field, cofounding WIT@Penn, and through her work with the Women in Tech Summit and techgirlz.org.
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Sarah Toms is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Wharton Interactive. She is a serious games expert and demonstrated thought leader in the educational technology field, fueled by a passion to find and develop innovative ways to make every learning environment active, engaging, more meaningful, and learner-centered.
Sarah has built transformative gaming platforms for education from the ground up, like Wharton Interactive’s award winning Alternate Reality Courseware platform. And she and her team are building the most innovative catalog of ARC games-based courses on the planet. Sarah has spent more than twenty years as a leader in the technology sphere, and was an entrepreneur for over a decade, founding companies that built global CRM, product development, productivity management, and financial systems. In addition, Sarah is coauthor of The Customer Centricity Playbook, the Digital Book Awards 2019 Best Business Book. And she is dedicated to supporting women and girls in the technology field, cofounding WIT@Penn, and through her work with the Women in Tech Summit and techgirlz.org.
Recommended Resources
Alexander Sarlin 0:04
Welcome to Ed Tech insiders. In this podcast we talk to educators and educational technology investors, thought leaders, founders and operators about the most interesting and exciting trends in the field. I'm your host Alex Sarlin, an educational technology veteran with over a decade of work at leading edtech companies. Sarah Toms is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Wharton Interactive. She is a serious games expert and demonstrated thought leader in the educational technology field, fueled by a passion to find and develop innovative ways to make every learning environment active, engaging, more meaningful, and learner-centered.
Sarah has built transformative gaming platforms for education from the ground up, like Wharton Interactive’s award winning Alternate Reality Courseware platform. And she and her team are building the most innovative catalog of ARC games-based courses on the planet. Sarah has spent more than twenty years as a leader in the technology sphere, and was an entrepreneur for over a decade, founding companies that built global CRM, product development, productivity management, and financial systems. In addition, Sarah is coauthor of The Customer Centricity Playbook, the Digital Book Awards 2019 Best Business Book. And she is dedicated to supporting women and girls in the technology field, cofounding WIT@Penn, and through her work with the Women in Tech Summit and techgirlz.org. Sarah Toms, welcome to Ed Tech insiders.
Sarah Toms 1:44
Hi, Alex. It's so great to be here. Thank you so much for having me.
Alexander Sarlin 1:47
Yes, Sarah, you found a really varied career in technology, in education, in business, you've written books. In just a couple of sentences, what got you interested in serious games and education in the first place?
Sarah Toms 2:01
I came to the serious game space, I was looking for something. So I'd been in technology for about, you know, 17-18 years, really spent most of my technology career on the corporate side, and also ran my own startups in technology. And I wanted to do something totally new. I wanted to push the boat out, I wanted to stretch my skills, my expertise and opening at a Wharton School team became available to run their learning lab, which is building simulations for courses at Wharton. And I just became completely intrigued. I'm a gamer myself, I have had a very varied background in education because I spent my whole childhood living all over the world. And this just seemed like a really cool space to roll up my sleeves and see what I could do.
Alexander Sarlin 2:54
So Wharton Interactive, as you say, draws on simulations, on games and on pedagogical research, to create learning experiences for students that are about transforming and democratizing education. And it looks like students can get certificates from Wharton, which is one of the most exclusive business schools in the world, actually for completing immersive business games. It's a really fascinating idea. How did Wharton Interactive come about?
Sarah Toms 3:21
So Wharton Interactive has been actually a decade in the making. So this all started with my partnership with Professor Ethan Mollick, he and I started working together when I was running the Learning Lab. And we started to experiment with a number of different ideas, one being that most business simulations kind of suck, right? They're entering data into a glorified calculator, you know, how much do you want to invest in marketing, branding, etc, hitting submit, and then hey, presto, year two happens. And that's not the way the real world works. So he and I started to experiment with narrative driven experiential learning, really pulling from the interactive fiction world pulling from a, you know, the gaming space, pulling also from the pedagogical science space, and thinking about how we immerse learners in far more realistic experiences where the decision making is a lot more real. And then the other thing, which is phenomenal about Ethan is we both have this passion to bring quality business education to the world. So the Wharton brand, obviously, is very powerful, very well known, and in fact, has been working hard to remove the barriers of entry so that anybody can gain quality business education, and we are one of those avenues for folks. So thinking about how we, you know, drastically reduce the price for anybody to come and learn the best of entrepreneurship, high performing teams, what it means to run a successful business. So that really has been our goal.
Alexander Sarlin 4:58
Yeah, I mean, you mentioned that you Your desire to democratize education and the Wharton experiences cost $450. And while that's not, you know, nothing, that's a small fraction of the cost of most business school or executive ed programs, especially at elite schools with global brands like Wharton, so how did you get to that price point of, you know, under $500, for a certificate class, and what have you seen in terms of students coming to it for outside a traditional business school demographic?
Sarah Toms 5:29
Yeah, we've been working on trying to find that sweet spot so that, you know, the price is not going to stop people from being able to come and participate, not just in a course that's going to teach them critical entrepreneurship skills in our entrepreneurship strategy course. But also that, you know, it's not going to take a big bite out of their savings or their piggy bank. And so we spend a lot of time looking at, you know, what's out there on the market, just making sure that we are priced appropriately. And then what I do want to say is, and what I haven't mentioned yet is where Ethan and I really began with Wharton Interactive is how we completely reimagine and reinvent how instruction is delivered. And making sure that we make it completely learner centric. And you know, that we're really giving folks the opportunity not just to hear those lessons, but then to put those lessons into practice in our alternate reality courses. When Ethan and I started Wharton Interactive, we actually began with a lot of conversations with technologists to and gaming studios to figure out how we could build our platform, our alternate reality courseware platform for the masses. So you know, so if you want to democratize education, you have to make sure that your door can handle all those coming in and wanting to experience what you've got to offer. And that that experience is really, you know, the quality that they expect from Wharton we are delivering at scale. And what we found is been amazing. So we run monthly cohorts through our entrepreneurship strategy, long form gamespace course, as well as our organizational leadership and innovation course, we also have shorter form courses, which are not certificate based, which are far less expensive, they're free up to $99. And we've now had learners literally on all six continents, who are playing our games, they are on teams with other players, they are taking on the role of being a founder of a high growth, high tech startup. And they're able to actually experience all the learning objectives that we are teaching in over the course of several classes within our advanced entrepreneurship MBA class at Wharton, all within this game space experience. And one thing that we weren't expecting that has happened is we've had so many players come back and want to play again, because there's so much branching happening in the game, they want to come back and experience places that they didn't get to experience in the game space course, because you know, they made decision a but decision B, C, or D would have taken them on a different path. So it's been really exciting to see as this new initiative takes off, and starts to get at sea legs.
Alexander Sarlin 8:21
That's really interesting. So you really talk to narrative storytellers and game companies and really thought about how to create an experience that was so compelling that people would want to do it again and again, even in the context of educational and business education, which I bet traditional business simulations, people aren't as compelled to sort of repeat again, and again, it's a testament to the engagement factor there. Yep. And these are cohort based courses with set start and end dates, you mentioned sort of monthly courses, and learners engage with a team synchronously, if I understand correctly, in live sessions to solve realistic business problems in this sort of alternate reality. Tell us a little bit about the decisions to make these experience team based rather than solo or paired, you know, why a team? And why cohort based rather than asynchronous, what was the some of the thinking behind that particular delivery model?
Sarah Toms 9:15
Yeah, that's a great question. So coming back to entrepreneurship, right. This is near and dear to both mine and Ethan's hearts: me because I am an entrepreneur, you know, this is now the third, if you will, start up that I have created with Ethan. He also was an entrepreneur, and he's also a faculty of entrepreneurship and innovation. And that's where his research is. And what's really fascinating about entrepreneurship research is that most ventures fail, over 60% of ventures fail not because the product is bad or there's too many competitors. It is because the team, the founding team has significant issues. And so we decided to make the entrepreneurship strategy course not about you know, all the idea generation and everything everybody teaches in entrepreneurship. Nobody talks about the really kind of wicked problems about being a successful entrepreneur. And that's why our entrepreneurship strategy course is not about the idea generation, it's about how you're actually going to move past the idea generation phase and be a successful founder. And so the game opens where it's month eight of this venture, the genius inventor of A, it's a cross morphic sensor device. So we invented this technology, where you can zap your food, and it will tell you the calorie count and the nutritional content. And this inventor has come up with this idea, but she just wants to be in the lab inventing, she needs real business people with real business acumen to help get early customers on board, thinking about testing, you just asked me about my prices, you know, you're actually going to be running price testing in the market, you're going to be doing hypothesis driven design, you know, negotiating with early customers talking and pitching to investors, all of this is coming to life in the game. Also hiring and expanding the capabilities of your team. And so those live team sessions, that's when we want you with your team synchronously working on some really consequential pivotal moments in the game together. And then the asynchronous times, that's where you are able to catch up. We're delivering lectures, we're delivering expertise to you within the game, so that you're going to be prepared for the next phase, the next live team session. And we're also giving you adaptive feedback, you know, you made all these decisions and here's where you did well. And here's where you probably need to go back into the game and keep practicing until you gain mastery.
Alexander Sarlin 11:49
That feedback is a really core piece of any learning experience. And you mentioned that you sort of use pedagogical research in your design factors. One thing that stood out a lot to me and I thought was really interesting is that even though this is a synchronous experience mostly with peers, you actually also get access to Wharton professors. There's an office hours, you get a live debrief from the professor. So that's a method of feedback, and lessons from Wharton professors and experts. The games are offered both to individuals and to companies. Tell us about how the professor adds value to a gaming experience like this. How do you combine the sort of traditional business school professor teaching students with this immersive game experience?
Sarah Toms 12:34
Yeah, so what we've done is so going back to your question about the pedagogical science, so we take this really seriously. And what I mean by that is that, you know, there has been an explosion of incredible research telling us, you know, how we learn why we need to be, you know, reimagining the education format. And really, as I mentioned, before moving that learner into the driver's seat. The problem is, is that education has not adapted to what the science is telling us; number one. The other problem is that we, as consumers of education, are not very savvy. We don't know what the science of education is really telling us on mass, right. And so what we have created at Wharton Interactive in our platform, is going back to the pedagogical science and making sure that you know, we are deeply seated in all of those ideas. So what do I mean by that? One is that learning requires metacognition, which is, you know, thinking about thinking. So what does that mean? That means, coming up with pre assessments, and meeting the learner, where they are - every learner who comes into our ultimate reality courses has varied backgrounds, they may have different education - and so making sure that we are meeting that learner where they're at, but they're also meeting us and saying, you know, we force them to really think about where their expertise is, as they come into the experience. The second thing on the metacognition side is, you know, what don't they understand. So this concept of the muddiest point, for example, and then as they come through the experience, we really are having them go through points of reflection, you know, so going up a level, and it doesn't really matter what you're learning, and making sure that you've got a lot of that taken care of. The second thing about learning is that it does require prior knowledge. So you can't just sort of push somebody through the third floor and say, Okay, you're here, figure it out, and not sort of scaffold them into where you need them to be. And so that's something that alternate reality courseware platform will do: it will sort of test the learner where they are, and then it will adapt the narrative and make sure that we scaffold them to where we want them to be in the experience. The third thing is is that there needs to be some struggle with learning and in order to, you know, get good and build expertise and really have the skills that you need coming out of a learning experience. It can't be passive. You can't sit there and just listen to a professor blah, blah, blah you to death, and not have a point where you have your knowledge tested, number one, you just mentioned, Alex, feedback, you need feedback every step of the way. And it needs to be critical, you know, it needs to tell you what you're doing well, and where you need to improve this idea of your, you know, your faculty or your instructor or teacher really being like a coach right on the sidelines, helping you get better. And then last but not least thinking about this idea of deliberate practice, you know, and so this was really, this term was coined by Anders Ericsson, in, you know, the science of expertise, where he's laid out these phenomena, and he's been researching this for several decades, you know, what does it really take to become an expert in anything? And so that's also what we've leveraged his science specifically. And we've brought that into our alternate reality gaming platform. And so in a nutshell, going back to your question about Wharton faculty and other experts who pop up in the game, is we've created learning loops. So everything starts with a lesson, we're very specific about what the best practices are, what the lessons areq just like all of us have experienced in real classrooms or on MOOCs. And then you're immediately immersed back into the game, where, you know, we've recreated interfaces that you're very familiar with, everybody's familiar with, you know, inboxes, with email messages where non player characters are challenging youq zoom calls, data, dashboards, even real code, real data analytics, all of this is coming to life in the game. Youq sometimes as a single player, sometimes in multiplayer games with a team, you're taking all of those ideas from that Wharton faculty or expert lesson, and you're applying that knowledge into the game. And then the last step of the feedback loop is getting actual feedback, which is personalized. So our learning analytics are really, really specific about things you did well, things you need to improve, and giving you the opportunity to come back into the game and re practice areas where you might need a little bit more help.
Alexander Sarlin 17:14
That's an amazing answer. So I'm hearing a number of different pedagogical concepts in your design. There's metacognition, productive struggle, activating prior knowledge, deliberate practice, which is usually done with a coach. So the idea of a professor giving feedback as well as personalized feedback from the system itself. And then of course, consistent, meaningful feedback for everything you do. So you're actually applying and seeing the results of your work. Those are all really powerful educational techniques. And it's very amazing that you found a way to sort of get all of them into one system. I'd love to understand, is this coming from your personal background? Or is this you know, that kind of design done in conjunction with some of the Wharton or Penn instructional design staff.
Sarah Toms 18:04
So we have our own pedagogical expertise on Wharton Interactive's team. And you know, these are folks with EdDs, and PhDs, you know, so we are really building the first of its kind team that it's, you know, we've got this very strong pedagogical practice, number one. Number two, we also have interactive fiction writers, games designers, games producers, technologists, it really requires this cross collaboration. And then we bring the Wharton faculty expertise to the table. And this magic happens, right? Because it really does require a bit of everybody in order to make what we're creating.
Alexander Sarlin 18:48
That collaborative approach is really exciting. And in my experience, actually pretty rare. Bringing people together from different backgrounds to build a consistent product and really work together is really exciting. I hope that more you know, did more teams work that way. I'd love to ask you a little bit about the storytelling. You mentioned, sort of interactive fiction experts and and how narrative storytelling is a big part of this product. And this idea of the the inventor of the, you know, there's a whole backstory to the entrepreneurship. What is the value of having a really extensive and engaging story, when it comes to keeping people engaged in a game? How did games and narrative work together?
Sarah Toms 19:28
For all of us were just naturally, you know, when you think about a movie, or a TV show that you've been engaged with, you know, you do get pulled into that narrative. We're storytellers naturally, right. What we care about within alternate reality courses is that narrative helps with that retrieval process. Because you become so engaged. So when you get immersed into a narrative, you start and you get drawn into all of these high stakes decision making situations, and you are really playing the starring role in this experience, those connections start to really come to life. And we've, you know, Ethan's had Wharton MBA students who have gone through earlier versions of this game, come back, you know, 2-3-4-5 years later, and quote, chapter and verse within the game, you know, so the names of the characters, the specific situation that happened, and say, you know, wow, that just saved me, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars, and where I would have made a really bad decision. And so it's because it's just so memorable. When we're working on any of our narrative, before we write anything to do with the world, or the characters, we really always start with the faculty experts. And we say, Okay, we're going to go beyond the learning objectives, right? Learning objectives, of course, very important for anything, you're doing an education. We also want to talk about the practice objectives, which means what is the specific experiences learners will encounter, so that when they see them in the real world, they will know what to do. And third of all, what are the thinking objectives? So that goes back to that metacognition, you know, that we want to make sure is, you know, there as a thread throughout the entire experience, which is, what are the mental techniques that are applicable outside of the context of the course? Yeah, so it is narrative, the narrative is so powerful also as a retrieval mechanism. But you know, at the end of the day, under the hood, we're also caring about some other things that you see in the serious game space, such as appropriate fidelity, you know, so when will we use humor, that's going to be when we want the learners engaged, but not necessarily paying attention to what's happening with those interactions. So we have a free game called Blue Sky Ventures. And basically you step into this, and it's a 90 minute entrepreneurship game. And the person you're helping is a bit of an idiot, you know, he needs your help, you know, you need to assess six companies and tell him who you should be investing in. This is a venture capital company that you're assisting. And, you know, there's a reason Tommy's a total idiot, we want the learner to feel like they're better than he is. And that anything they do is going to be the better than if you hadn't helped him, you know, so we're using all of these little techniques. And from an appropriate fidelity standpoint, in that game, specifically, we have you paying attention to the financials to the pitches of the founders, etc, etc. Those are all really important points. And less important is what's going on with poor Tommy.
Alexander Sarlin 22:42
That's so interesting. So the storytelling makes it more memorable, and makes it more metacognitive and it allows people to transfer the experiences inside the game, to their real world experiences outside the game. I love that instructional design framework of learning objectives, practice objectives, and thinking objectives. That is really, really a fascinating way to break down a learning experience. You just mentioned the serious games movement, and you are a veteran of the serious games movement, in which games are designed for purposes other than entertainment, and that we've seen games for military defense for scientific exploration, healthcare, politics, and of course, education. For listeners who might not be as familiar with the serious games movement, can you just give a little overview of how it came about and some of the serious games that stand out to you as great examples?
Sarah Toms 23:32
Yeah, starting with, you know, the end of your question there are the serious games movement has been around, quite literally for thousands and thousands of years. So if you look at why we have chess: chess was to teach war maneuvers, right, that's a perfect example of a serious game. And as you move into more contemporary times, you see, especially the medical field has really leveraged you know, this idea of moving in and using simulation. So simulations are a form of serious game, where you're actually getting to practice different techniques. So for example, now that we are moving more into virtual reality, the medical field is getting even better because of that immersion. Letting for example, brain surgeons practice different, you know, strategies in the operating theatre, before they even get to the point where they have to do this on real people. Another great example is how we have trained commercial pilots. So we started to bring in simulations of flight training simulations in the mid 80s. And since that time, the pilot errors have actually reduced by over 90%. So the one thing we know and the scientific research on bringing simulations into different pedagogical Spaces has been phenomenal. It's just rock solid. And so it's something that we are just really, really excited about. And as I said at the big Beginning. What's incredible to Ethan and AI is just how little technology and real serious games, the potential of serious games has been tapped into for the business field. And that's where we really want to push the boat out with Wharton Interactive.
Alexander Sarlin 25:16
Yeah, it's a really exciting movement. And I think simulations and games, you know, both are more effective in many ways, and are much more engaging. The idea the difference between listening to a lecture and just hearing a few ideas, you know, sent over the transom to you versus actually being able to get your hands on and fly a plane or operate on a brain, it just seems like no contest, and the fact that we have the technology to do it is just, it's such an exciting time for our tech. So I wanted to zoom out a little bit and talk about online business school, from a little bit of a, you know, a 10,000 foot perspective. Because, you know, one really interesting piece of news this week came from Inside Higher Ed is that as of this week, online MBAs overtook residential MBAs for the first time ever, there are more people taking MBAs online than in person. And as somebody who has been working at Wharton, doing labs doing interactive, you know, how do you see this trend playing out? Do you think that's going to continue to happen? Will there be a snap back to in person after the pandemic is completely over? How do you see the future of online versus residential MBAs?
Sarah Toms 26:26
This is such an interesting question. And I think that, you know, this could go in so many different ways. So first of all, I like to even go one level above that, and think about sort of that entire learner journey across their career, their lifetime, etc. And also looking at how quickly, you know, the skills gap keeps expanding, and then closing and then expanding, you know, just trying to keep up with all the new skills that you know, somebody needs across their career. And so I think that the online business mode offers so much potential to keep up with and provide lifelong learners with the opportunity to keep their skills sharp, given that their business environments are changing, and transforming so rapidly. So what I would love to see is that the MBA itself moves from being two years to lifelong, that it just it has to happen. Number two, what I'm super, super excited about is the idea of starting to do more digital credentialing, that allows people to have digital CVs where they can start to stack their credentialing and show that, you know, they have expertise that continues to be relevant as time moves on. The one thing that is really challenging with the online business delivery of, you know, MBA curriculum is the culture: you miss out on when you're not there in person, right. So those connections that you have those more natural kind of, you've got a coffee break or lunch break, and you get to just have a meeting and a conversation. So the social aspect of your MBA, which is also very important, you know, that new network that is coming to life, over the course of those years getting your MBA, that is the one challenge that does worry me about moving fully online.
Alexander Sarlin 28:21
And it strikes me when I hear about the immersive gaming that you've been doing, and how it's live and synchronous that that might be at a step in the direction of continuing to build social connections and culture even in an online distributed environment. You mentioned having people from six different continents working together on business cases, I would imagine maybe that's a little bit of a harbinger of where things may go in the future. I did want to specifically ask about the culture of business school, because you know, everyone who I've ever met, who has attended Business School tends to say that, you know, the most valuable part of it was the network you get or taking these trips to different places or attending social events. It's exactly the cultural things that you just said. So what ideas are there out there, whether it's at Wharton or in the online environment, generally, that are starting to bridge the gap that you just mentioned, you know, how can we create online learning environments that don't lose the social connections that people are used to, especially in places like business schools?
Sarah Toms 29:26
Yeah, I mean, I think there's always going to be this balance, Alex, you know, you've got obviously the great promise of technology. So when you think about something like XR and what it might offer, where you can immerse yourself and actually feel like you're walking around you Penn's campus even if you are in Malaysia or Thailand or Timbuktu, right? And so you have this connection to a place in this, you know, hyper immersive world where you can sit on a lawn a virtual lawn and have conversations with people I think it's important in this sort of Zoom world that we've all landed in, that we create, air in the curriculum. And we add value into the less structured conversations and making sure that there's opportunities for your learner's to get together and get to know each other so that they can support each other over the course of their career, right. So I think it's about, you know, valuing this extracurricular time, even if it is within this immersive environment. I also think that it is increasing the technological capabilities across teams. So you know, a lot of folks in the curriculum space or in the admission space, or, you know, if you're in an organization in the l&d space, you know, they really sort of the technologists are sort of sitting over there. A lot of these teams, they need to embrace, you know, the future of technology, and actually have that capability in house and start to nurture it and make it their own. So that would be the other thing. And just going back to the example of my team, the fact that we are all in house together, and we are building something with similar goals in mind, we're able to move so much more quickly. And we're able to adapt to what our learners are telling us so much faster. And so I just as folks are looking more and more developing online business curriculum, I just hope that those across the board are making sure that they've got multifunctional teams working together on those solutions.
Alexander Sarlin 31:35
That's a terrific answer. I particularly appreciate the emphasis on making, as you call air, you know, making space inside a curriculum where it's not just all about consistent minute, by minute learning, you actually create, you know, opportunities for people to talk to one another the way they would at a water cooler, or the coffee shop or, you know, between classes or at a social event. I think that's something that instructional designers, myself included, sometimes overlook, when we think about designing a curriculum is that, you know, when you're replacing an in person experience, it doesn't mean you're just replacing the class time, you're actually offering an entire immersive experience with multiple different types of interactions. So everything you said there is really resonates with me. And I think it's great advice. I have one more question for you. It this has been such a fascinating conversation. And I personally can't wait to get into these Wharton Interactive immersive experiences, I'd really like to try it. But so you know, on this podcast, one of the trends that we often see in higher ed, is that some of the most innovative technological moves often come from schools that are not the most elite institutions. And in some cases, that's because they sort of have more to gain and less to lose by differentiating and trying new modalities. We look at Southern New Hampshire University or the University of Illinois, which was the first one to do an MBA on through MOOCs. But UPenn and Wharton, definitely do not fit the category of less elite institutions that sort of need to adapt. So I'm curious from the inside, why does a school at Wharton want to keep innovating and adapting and moving forward at such a quick pace given that they're never going to have a shortage of candidates wanting a Wharton degree?
Sarah Toms 33:23
So I think to answer that question, you know, we have to start by going back to Penn's roots, right, the University of Pennsylvania's roots and their Quaker, right, it's Benjamin Franklin. It's that multidisciplinary approach to education. It's understanding that knowledge exists, you know, in so many different capacities and so many different ways and has so many different purposes. And there's so much different value. And we have strong Quaker roots at the University of Pennsylvania, we have an openness, we have an open-sourcesness Yes, we pride ourselves that, you know, we're the best in a lot of what we do, quote, unquote, whatever the best might mean, but we're not necessarily comfortable with being elite. We believe that from the standpoint of the Wharton School, you know, we're the oldest business school in America, is that just a small amount of quality business education can transform a life. And there's no reason why that should only be experienced by a few 100 people, especially in this day and age where we have platforms that can reach millions, if not billions. And so for us at Wharton, yes, we pride ourselves in the education that is happening in our classrooms is by far the best in the world. But we also recognize that it does not dilute what we are doing in our classrooms by opening up our doors and bringing this to the rest of the world. And that's why Penn has invested in Wharton Interactive.
Alexander Sarlin 34:54
That is a fascinating answer. A very inspiring answer. I hope everybody in the higher ed space who was listening to this, here's the amazing combination of the democratizing roots, the need to that it does not dilute your in person education to offer high quality online education. I think that's something that the EdTech world needs to hear. And I think that's a it's a beautiful note to end on. So we always end each podcast with a couple of questions. First, what is the most exciting trend that you see in the EdTech landscape right now that you think our listeners might want to keep an eye on something that sort of just breaking out and might be something to watch for the future?
Sarah Toms 35:37
Well, I would be remiss if I did not say that it is alternate reality courses, I think. So we are just getting started at Wharton Interactive with our platform with our approach, we are massively expanding our catalogue over this next 12 months, we are looking at moving into other capabilities for the platform, and other really, really exciting partnerships. So I think what you're seeing in the Ed Tech landscape is partnership, partnership, partnership, you know, you're seeing organizations, corporations, universities, NGOs, we are all trying to do a better job at getting education out to the masses, and helping those who are affected by digitization, just be successful. So at the end of the day, you have to ask yourself, why does education exist? Why do we need edtech? Why do we need this? You know, so it really is about supporting the learner and making them the most successful that they can be.
Alexander Sarlin 36:38
Terrific answer. And lastly, what are some books or blogs or newsletters that you would recommend for people who want to go deeper into some of the topics that we talked about today?
Sarah Toms 36:50
Yeah, so I'm gonna double down on some of those, you know, the pedagogical science and science of expertise that I mentioned earlier in this talk. So one great book is by Ulrich Boser is called Learn Better. Second amazing book is called Being Wrong. And this is by Katheryn Schultz. And this is we as humans being so flawed at seeing when we're wrong, and she has spent a lot of her career just researching the science of being wrong, which is really phenomenal. And third is Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise by Anders Ericsson and Robert Poole. So those are three phenomenal books that I would highly recommend to anybody listening.
Alexander Sarlin 37:34
Absolutely. Those sound fantastic. And as always, we will put the links to each of these books in the show notes for this episode. And you could hear Sarah's incredible grasp of instructional design and metacognition and I think these books may be behind some of this really, really deep and interesting applied knowledge. So thank you, Sarah. This has been incredibly interesting, and I hope everyone on the pod takes a look at what Wharton and Wharton Interactive is doing from game based learning. Thanks for being here.
Sarah Toms 38:05
Thank you, Alex.
Alexander Sarlin 38:07
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