![]() “We wanted to have asynchronous videos that support the curriculum and developed the process to create those videos,” says David Blair, chief business operations officer for Great Minds.įast forward to March 2020 and the havoc of the coronavirus. The effort also included the formation of a media production department, one that would enable the development of videos and digital materials in house. ![]() It took about a year to create the repeatable process and develop an organizational chart for Great Minds to enable the process to continue indefinitely for all of their materials, according to McQuiston. It involved developing a complete process from original inception through delivery to students. According to Erica McQuiston, director of operational consulting for Think, this comprised gathering information from curriculum developers and translating the information into “problems” for presentation in live action or animation, in part to make the content more interesting for students. Since that initial engagement Think has managed a series of successful strategic initiatives for Great Minds in both the operations and marketing space.Įarly in 2019, Great Minds turned to Think to initiate the development of live action and animated video content to support its printed curriculum in a scalable format. When Great Minds won the contracts for EngageNY they called Think to manage the effort, and this was the beginning of a long friendship and partnership. ![]() The Great Minds-Think collaboration spans back several years. Think provides consultancy services, strategic hiring and executive advisory to mid-market clients in broadcast, educational technology, financial services, publishing, health and health science, legal, government and other sectors. Think is a privately owned technology and operations advisory firm established in 2004 in Baltimore. The success of this pivot was due in part to the work of the operational consulting arm of Think, who successfully managed a video production project for Great Minds prior to the outbreak of COVID-19. Online page views were recorded from 186 countries, according to All Hands on Deck: Serving Students During the Pandemic, a comprehensive white paper produced for Great Minds in June. A total of 1,315 lessons, 1,363 videos and 568 hours of content were produced. Students watched the videos independently and teachers used student or class meetings to discuss the lessons. Baltimore City Public Schools sent packets home for students to connect to videos shown on its public access channels. Knowledge on the Go was offered free of charge for school system use and offered online and on television, through public access channels or in partnership with local PBS stations. Great Minds rallied many of the organization’s 900-member staff, comprised mostly of educators who live around the country, to create and produce Knowledge on the Go, a series of online videos providing math, English and science instruction. Instead of proceeding as usual with these and other crucial functions, Great Minds pivoted its efforts to help teachers and students who were forced to continue with schooling – but away from the school building – during the pandemic. The operations department was preparing to open a new warehouse in Las Vegas, Nevada, to distribute some of the 25 million books the company ships each year to school systems all over the country. Humanities experts were completing a new collection of books for early readers, Geodes, and making arrangements to support 150 new adoptions of the Wit & Wisdom English language arts curriculum. Math department officials were gearing up for a 20% increase in new Eureka Math adoptions for the next school year. Great Minds, developer of curriculum and instructional materials in math (pre-kindergarten to 12th grade), English language arts (kindergarten to grade 8) and science (levels 3-5) and books for early literacy (kindergarten to grade 2), was deep in the production process for many of its educational offerings. The government shutdown forced school systems to move instruction online, leaving teachers at a loss.How would they provide curriculum without the use of physical materials and in-person contact? The answer is an innovation success story and involves a local management consulting company, called Think. The country was all but closed in late March, as federal, state and local government officials and medical experts struggled to deal with health and safety concerns for the population. Like nearly all businesses, national education leader Great Minds faced a crossroads at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. ![]() David Blair, chief business operations officer for Great Minds, and Erica McQuiston, director of operational consulting for Think
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