TiskTask

We are committed to building the workforce pipeline by helping secondary through post-secondary students solve real-world problems faced by organizations in their community. Our solution is a platform in which students complete a series of experiential tasks to solve a real-world challenge (“a tisk”) in a “reverse pitch” to a sponsoring business. Students earn prizes and receive feedback from mentors, teachers, and sponsoring businesses as they complete a series of Design Thinking tasks. Through this problem-solving process, students develop employability skills most identified by business leaders and an awareness of area workforce opportunities. In addition, the platform provides employers innovative solutions to their unique challenges and access to a willing and able workforce. When working at scale, TiskTask will better match the needs of job seekers and job providers, build workforce connections for thousands of youth, and empower youth to solve challenges in all areas of life.

TiskTask bridges the relational and skill gap between job seekers and job providers. The Global Business Coalition for Education estimates that 1.8 billion youth worldwide will not have the skills or qualifications required to participate in the workforce by 2030. GBCE’s youth surveys reveal 79% of youth’s personal career interests do not align with jobs available in their community and 39% of youth report school inadequately prepared them for their desired job. On the business end, nearly all employers (93%) agree, “a candidate’s demonstrated capacity to think critically, communicate clearly, and solve complex problems is more important than their undergraduate major,” according to a survey by the American Association of Colleges and Universities. TiskTask works with Chambers of Commerce and other workforce development agencies to provide curriculum for area Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs, which encompass 94% of high school students and 8.4 million individuals seeking post-secondary certificates and associate degrees in CTE fields. Sublett and Griffith’s 2019 study for the Fordham Institute warns that Americans’ decreased mobility “makes it more important than ever that high school career and technical education (CTE) programs mesh with real-world job opportunities in their own and nearby communities.”

By working with regional businesses and workforce development authorities, TiskTask crafts area-specific challenges for CTE students at secondary and post-secondary levels. Our solution is a customizable challenge platform that develops the skills identified by the businesses and relevant to the types of jobs available in a given market. In its current version, the student-facing dashboard allows students to earn points and receive feedback as they complete tasks toward solving the challenge. Experts from the businesses can also offer best practices and recommendations for becoming a top solver. On the teacher dashboard (to be completed December 2020), teachers can keep track of student progress and performance on identified skills. Teacher resource pages suggest resources for responsive remediation in areas where students are performing below expectation. The platform uses Laravel, a PHP-based web application framework on the backend and Nuxt and Vue.JS, a Javascript-based reactive framework with server side rendering on the frontend.

The TiskTask platform serves three audiences - Career and Technical Education students, businesses, and teachers. Since idea inception, we have taken a user-centric development approach from the outset. Before there was a digital product, founders conducted a low-tech/no-tech approach by testing the methodology in classrooms and after-school programs. We continue to conduct pilots with various businesses, schools, and youth programs to validate product efficacy in meeting the goals of CTE students, teachers, and area businesses.

 For the businesses, we create challenges that directly address the development of the skills needed for their job openings. In addition, the challenges crowdsource innovative ideas for business operations. To date, over 10 businesses have sponsored challenges addressing issues from supply chain inefficiencies and product design to marketing and sustainability. All participating employers have reported the program as “successful” or “very successful” in identifying potential employees and solutions were reported as “applicable” to “very applicable.” From the student perspective, qualitative interviews found that over half of TiskTask participants discovered new areas of interest for employment in their area and all reported as being “engaged” or “very engaged” by the process. For teachers, the most impactful take-away reported was the connection to area businesses.

The disconnect between school and business was precisely the problem our founder faced as a certified educator and entrepreneur. The difficulty of developing relevant, project-based learning units in the classroom and the difficulty of finding qualified candidates as a business owner led to the development of the TiskTask platform. We work closely with education service providers to align challenges to their standards and with businesses to align challenges to their workforce needs. Along the way, we have created a product that engages students while developing employability skills for students and job leads for businesses. 

Part-time (2): Katie Chastain (formerly full-time, will return to full time in January), Scott Chastain (Business Development)

Contractors (5): Stephan Thompson (Sales and Marketing), Dr. Jenay Sermon (Instructional Research and Design), Justin Schroeder (Software Development), Luan Nguyen (Software Development), Chris Ellinger (Software Development)

We are committed to building an organization that closely mirrors the communities we serve. As we transition into a market approach phase, we are recruiting board members and founding team members with a race, gender, sexuality, and social class that reflect our student population. Our primary contractors to date have met this standard. 

Virtual, incentive-based, crowd-sourced solution competitions have proven successful in both the professional (xprize.com and mindsumo.com) and academic markets (futureengineers.org and designforchange.us). But TiskTask is the only online competition platform found to offer dynamic assessment, giving feedback and awarding points throughout the process and not just awarding points for final products, an important distinction in the research regarding effective 21st century skill development assessment. Further, the challenge sponsors give students access to actual business leaders and industry challenges, rather than theoretical challenges prevalent in most challenge frameworks. 

In Alive In The Swamp: Assessing Digital Innovations in Education, Fullan and Donnelly posit that technology, pedagogy, and system change combine to make successful digital innovations in education. While the core technology is not new, we have used the Javascript-based reactive framework to implement evidence-based pedagogy and innovative systems change. We use the technology to allow for instructional fidelity and scalable connections between businesses and students.

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Our theory of change rests on the development of two longer-term outcomes: 1. Improved employability skills in students and 1. Increased workforce connections between job seekers and job providers. To achieve these outcomes, the platform facilitates authentic instruction, student-industry connection, and dynamic assessments. 

Our learning progression methodology uses authentic instruction, an evidence-based intervention with positive influences on student achievement. According to Lam et al, authentic instruction is “teaching and assessment that requires students to construct and organize knowledge, consider alternatives, apply inquiry processes to content central to the discipline, and communicate effectively to audiences beyond the classroom and school” (2016). Our platform assists teachers in implementing these learning strategies through immediate outputs like scaffolded instruction, real-time reporting of student progress and performance, and suggestions for remediation and student feedback. 

Across the country, states education agencies are requiring schools to connect directly to the business community. In our own state, TiskTask meets the recommendations of the Georgia Employability Skills Task Force to “explore alternative work-based learning options to overcome transportation issues or age requirements” and “expand opportunities for students to develop employability skills and career readiness experiences beyond work-based learning.” The immediate output provided by the platform is a digital space in which students increase their awareness of workforce providers and practice communication with business leaders and where companies have access to available talent and innovative ideas. 

Finally, to ensure quantification and qualification of student skills, our teacher dashboard is being designed to include dynamic assessments, an evidence-based approach to assessment and feedback. Quellmalz, Timms, Buckley, Davenport, Loveland, and Silberglitt (2011) argue for greater development of 21st century dynamic assessments, which they go on to define as those that “capitalize on the affordances of technology to: (1) focus on complex, integrated knowledge structures and strategies; (2) provide rich, authentic task environments that represent significant, recurring problems; (3) offer interactive, immediate, customized, graduated scaffolding; and (4) analyze evidence of learning trajectories and proficiency.” When developed, an immediate outcome would be options like skill badges to show student competency in areas like communication, critical thinking, empathy, and creativity.

We are taking a phased approach to growth to ensure product efficacy at scale. This year, we will host 500 student users and 10 businesses at the local level. In 2021-22, we will grow that number through regional use with 1800 student users and 30 businesses. From there, we will focus on growing other regional bases as regions tend to be the building blocks of workforce pools.

As a middle-class, female founder in a rural area, I an outside traditional innovation ecosystems and venture capital pools.

In developing a software product, we have sought help from nearby university-based incubators at Georgia Tech and Florida State University. We have also relied on talent from out-of-market. We will continue to pursue partnerships outside our rural area to overcome research and development talent gaps. We have taken part in other challenges, similar to MIT SOLVE, to help facilitate success in the education technology and workforce development market. We were recently selected as a Semifinalist in Milken Penn's Education Business Plan Competition. Through that, we received valuable mentorship and research partnership opportunities, as well as connections to venture capital when we are ready to scale. 

On the student side, we would like to be collecting data on specific student employability skills, such as communication, critical thinking, empathy, and creativity. From teachers, we would like to collect data on their use of platform resources and features. From businesses, we would like to collect data on their use of platform-generated solutions as well as numbers of students employed after participation. 

Katie and Scott Chastain co-founded TiskTask as a solution to challenges facing education and business. From teaching Social Studies to first-generation high school students in Philadelphia, PA to teaching Creative Problem-Solving to Gifted students in rural Georgia, Katie helps students to make real change by solving complex problems. She has led students in competitive and community problem-solving challenges, including coaching Odyssey of the Mind world champions and driving student voice in city projects from parks to street design. As CEO, Katie has led strategy and instructional design.

Dr. Jenay Sermon (Instructional Designer and Education Technology Researcher) has consulted on instructional design, moderator/facilitator training, and product research. She will likely be the first salary position as Director of Sales and Support.

Stephan Thompson (Sales and Marketing) has a 20+ year career in sales of technology product and a deep interest in improving accessibility of high-quality education. He joined the team after the recent sell of a software company he co-founded. 

We are running two programs for them, a youth leadership (iLead) and career readiness program (Project Purpose) for the Thomas County Chamber of Commerce and Payroll Development Authority. We are working with four area education service providers, including Thomas County Schools, Thomasville City Schools, Brookwood School, Tallahassee Community College, Southern Regional Technical College and Thomas University. Florida State University has provided instructional design and research assistance. 

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