In recent years, a plethora of edtech companies have launched new technology-enabled tools to enhance instruction and learning in schools. These innovations are part of an expected shift in the education landscape to enhance efficacy ectiveness and learning outcomes. However, not all schools have the funding and resources to access these tools. Between well-resourced schools and underserved communities, there is a growing learning gap. Today, more evidence has emerged that this gap grew even wider during the pandemic when digital tools became essential to learning.
LingoAce believes that one solution to overcoming these learning gaps is partnerships between private companies and the public sector, like schools, non-profits, and other educational institutions.
Sharing our key learnings on what it takes to find and forge winning partnerships, we led a panel discussion at the international SXSW EDU 2023 conference with our partners: Stay Lyon, Director of Utah State public schools’ Chinese Dual Language Immersion Program, Shenzhan Liao, VP of Education at China Institute, and Min Fan, Executive Director of the United States Heartland China Association.
Here are key learnings and takeaways from our successful partnerships with these organizations.
Developing free digital tools to encourage summer reading
LingoAce partnered with the Utah Chinese Dual Language Immersion program in 2022 to provide a free e-book app to more than 1,000 Utah students from 36 elementary schools. Through our partnership, our e-book app helped bridge the learning setbacks in reading and listening skills that often happen when students are outside of an immersion classroom for three months.
How did you decide on how to work together?
LingoAce and Utah’s Chinese Dual Language Immersion program both took time to understand each other’s goals and pain points as part of a thoughtful exploration before deciding on how work together. For Utah, finding Chinese language books for children that were age- and level-appropriate was a constant challenge. For LingoAce, we wanted to better understand the U.S. language learning market and how to adapt our product offerings for non-heritage students learning Mandarin Chinese as a second language.
With help from Utah’s Chinese language teachers, LingoAce redesigned our e-book app, originally built for Chinese-speaking families, for English-speaking students learning Chinese as a second language. To put the app to use in the real world, we co-hosted a summer reading contest to encourage students to use the app, helping them maintain their Chinese language reading and listening skills over the summer break. Students read an average of 56 books over the summer, totaling more than 48,600 books and 3,661 hours of reading.
#WinningPartnerships Tip #1: Great partnerships start with ‘why’
Stacy Lyon, Director of Utah Dual Language Immersion program, reminded us: “It’s not just knocking on someone’s door, writing an email, setting up an email and then you’re a partner.” Partnerships are a collaborative process and both parties must start with communicating their goals and pain points: essentially their “why.” Great partnerships are built on a foundation of adding value to each other and addressing pain points or achieving mutual goals.
Providing cultural workshops to low-income New York City Public Schools
In 2021, LingoAce partnered with China Institute, a NYC-based nonprofit, to provide 90 free We All Live in the Forbidden City (WALFC) Workshops to over 2,000 children attending low-income, New York City public schools. Through our partnership, the workshops helped bridge a gap in educational content and resources to teach world history and culture. Through the lens of China’s Forbidden City, one of the world’s most iconic cultural landmarks, more New York City school students, including those underserved, were able to expand their worldview by learning about Chinese culture, history, architecture, and life.
How did this partnership benefit each partner?
China Institute had been delivering the WALFC workshops to schools since 2014. In working with partners like LingoAce, China Institute was able to expand the reach of the workshops and make them available for free to schools. As the leading online Chinese language learning platform for children, the company felt aligned with workshop’s goals to spark an interest in learning about world cultures, which would hopefully inspire more students to learn other languages.
#WinningPartnerships Tip #2: Be open and flexible
Working with a new partner can open new opportunities, but it also requires both partners to be open to each other. Shenzhan Liao, VP of Education at China Institute, shared that “any new partner would bring new energy, but it also puts us out of our comfort zone to certain degree.” She recommends keeping an open mind and open line of communications about what you want to accomplish and what’s possible.
Growing demand by honoring outstanding teachers
LingoAce partnered with the United States Heartland China Association (USHCA) to recognize and award grants to outstanding Chinese language teachers in the 20 states between the Great Lakes and Gulf of Mexico for the inaugural Heartland Chinese Teacher Award. Through our partnership, this award helped bridge a gap in resources and recognition.
What was key in the execution that made this partnership successful?
A key component of this teacher award was the requirement to secure nominations from each teacher’s local mayor and school leadership. This extra step was essential to encourage government ownership and support for Chinese language learning as it helped recognize teachers who were working to build cultural bridges through language learning. As both organizations aim to make learning Chinese language and culture more accessible, honoring the teachers that are leading this effort was an essential part of our partnership.
#WinningPartnerships Tip #3: Learn together. Your partners may see value where you didn’t.
Working with partners from different sectors can potentially offer a different perspective on your own organization. “What we learned is no matter how big or small you are, you have value that the other side doesn’t have,” says Min Fan, Executive Director of USHCA. For example, USHCA works with many mayors’ offices throughout the US heartland region. This may not be a big deal to other nonprofits who do the same. But LingoAce quickly saw these relationships as being key to amplifying our teacher award.
