Read the full transcript of Episode 34 of the NAIS New View EDU podcast, which features a discussion about a project-based learning approach that empowers students to confront real-world problems and develop ideas to solve them. Host Tim Fish speaks with Saeed Arida, the co-founder and CEO of NuVu. NuVu is a unique studio-based education model that seeks to nurture students’ creative and innovative skills through project-based, collaborative design.
Tim Fish: You know, during the past few seasons, we’ve had the opportunity to talk with educators who are experimenting with all kinds of different models of learning design. From progressive learning to virtual reality-based learning, to project based and others. Well, today we’re going to dive deep into another model of learning design: the studio model. And to get there, I’m excited to welcome Dr. Saeed Arida to the show.
Saeed is the co-founder and CEO of NuVu studio and school, an organization committed to bringing creative education to students around the world. Saeed received a Ph.D. in design and computation in 2009 from MIT’s Department of Architecture, and then in 2010, he co-founded NuVu. I had the opportunity to visit the school before the pandemic, and I’m telling you, it blew my hair back! As I travel around, it’s one of the school models that I talk about the most. I think you’re really going to enjoy this conversation.
Saeed, thank you so much for joining us today. We are so excited to have you join the New View EDU podcast from NuVu School.
So thank you, my friend, for joining.
Saeed Arida: Thanks for having me here, Tim. I'm a big fan.
Tim Fish: So, you know, one of the things I find fascinating was that in 2009 you received your Ph.D. in design and computation from MIT's Department of Architecture. And 2010, you start your own school. I'm sure there are not a lot of people that go through the program at MIT that you went through and end up at the end of it starting their own school.
So how did that happen?
Saeed Arida: I mean, probably if you asked me in 2009, if I would start a school, I would think that you are crazy, you know, because that was not my plan. You know, I studied architecture in, in, in Syria and then came to MIT, you know, following on that path to be a practicing architect. And once I started doing my research in the Ph.D. program, I started focusing a lot more on the education aspect of, of architecture and, and, digging deep into the studio environment itself and looking at what makes it work and why it does not work.
And, and interviewing a lot of people teaching in a studio environment, and taking a lot of notes. And so that was, I was doing this, this research on the side, and at the same time I met an entrepreneur. His name is Michael Bronner. And at the time he had decided to homeschool his son, Nicky. You know, I told him, you know, at the time that, you know, I'm doing my Ph.D. at MIT and every week I could take Nicky to MIT and we will do a project with him. Or we will go visit these other labs and see what they are doing.
And so me and my friend at the time, David Wang, who was also doing his Ph.D. in aerospace engineering at MIT, we started meeting with Nicky every week and we were doing this project with him. And it was amazing. You know, I think the engagement level, like all the ideas that we were having, you know, we were having fun. Nicky was having fun. And it's like, oh, this is pretty awesome. I never really connected the two things at the same time, me doing my Ph.D. on creative education and also having this kid come to the MIT campus and working with us on these really cool projects. We were actually designing the perfect skipping stone at, at the time, which was—
Tim Fish: –Yeah, you were doing the first prototype, right, of, of the studio.
Saeed Arida: The funny thing with that is like, we were actually, we spent all of this time making a machine to throw a stone so we can optimize it, but we've never really got into the stone part. We've just spent all of this time making the machine itself. And so Nicky's brother at the time was going to this other school, which, which is in, in, in the Boston area, called the Beaver Country Day School.
You know, that the, that Nicky's dad, Michael, at the time was like, why don't you go meet with, with the head, Peter Hutton, there and see if something comes up with that conversation? And, and so we went there and we had this conversation and, and being a Ph.D. student at the time, like I had millions of slides explaining what the, what the studio is about, and how it works.
And you know, I did not really expect much at the time, but then it's like, oh, I can, you know, give you a few students here in the spring and you can run a pilot with them and you can write about it in your Ph.D. dissertation. And like for me that was like an amazing thing. Someone is actually going to give me some money, gimme space and gimme some students.
And it's like, go run and experiment with those kids using this pedagogy and see if it works. And that was actually pretty amazing. We were on the campus and every two weeks basically, we would run a studio with them and I will bring in some of my friends who work on, you know, either some technology piece or airplane planning or architecture or design and work with the students on a project for two weeks.
And so that was amazing enough that, you know, we started thinking about how we can incorporate this into, into a full kind of program. And we came up jointly with this idea that the students would leave the school for three months and the idea at the time to choose a space next to MIT. So the kids would leave Beaver and, and come to this other space for three months and they will go through this kind of creative innovation training. And they will go back to the school. And so that's actually what made it happen. I finished in the spring of 2010 and in the fall of 2010, we actually have space with students in it.
Tim Fish: So this concept of the studio, right? NuVu studio, and certainly in architecture, we know of the studio concept of work. But from a pedagogical perspective, from a learning perspective, how is a studio different from a classroom?
Saeed Arida: I think the big thing about it is that it's open-ended in a sense that, you know, the studio starts with, with a, with a problem brief. So it's not a textbook where the teacher is trying to kind of—
Tim Fish: —So it doesn't begin with content. It doesn't have this idea, like this is the stuff we have to cover. It begins with a problem.
Saeed Arida: Yeah. It begins with a problem. And obviously there is a lot of prep that needs to go into it in terms of, you know, how on the coaches kinda we, we call our teachers coaches, on the coach's side in terms of, you know, what the brief is, what, what the context of that brief is, and also doing a lot of kinda inspiration work.
A lot of context, a lot of precedents just to kind of prep the students in a way that would allow us to engage with the students in a creative problem solving process that is engaging to the coaches and to the students. And once you know, we go through that initial phase, we do a lot of brainstorming.
The students come up with the, what we call seeds of ideas. Initially, the kids who don't have a lot of training in this, usually the first idea that they come up with is really the final idea. And so it's always helpful to call it a seed so that, you know, they don't get attached to it that much. So we come up with those seeds of ideas, we make up teams.
And so this idea of collaboration is also really big for us. And it does not always come easy for the students. It does not come easy for the adults, you know, so you can, you can imagine for the kids too. It, it can be hard, but we feel like it's, it's a really important skill for them to kind of learn at that, at that young age.
And then they start basically developing this idea through this iterative process. And this is really the whole mark of the studio environment is this iteration that happens on, on that initial seed idea to get it to a point where you can really present it as a, as a fully formed product.
Tim Fish: So it's this constant iteration, constant—
Saeed Arida: —It's a constant iteration.
Tim Fish: Learn, try, learn, try, adapt.
Saeed Arida: Exactly. And the main thing that the students are actually learning is, is this concept of synthesis, and this is actually the, the hard part about the studio sometimes. It takes a little bit of a mind shift for a lot of our students to get into that. Because they are working on an idea, and I don't know, I, I have not figured out this, exactly why this happens, but their expectation is that when they are working on this idea, is that you give them only the technical feedback.
They don't want you to talk about the conceptual framing of the idea. My explanation for this is that, you know, in our kind of traditional schooling system, the only thing that we give the students is content. We never really talk about ideas and their ideas, and it feels very personal and vulnerable. So they have usually severe reaction to it the first time. They just like, why are you criticizing me? Although you are criticizing the idea—
Tim Fish: But they feel that you're criticizing them.
Saeed Arida: Exactly. So creating that separation between them and the idea is really key to learn throughout this whole process. And this, this, when we talk about like a mind shift, you know, some kids can learn this in a, in a span of a month, and some kids takes them two years to kind of realize that this is, you know, to create that enough space between them and the idea, where it becomes really exciting to get feedback. It's not just like threatening. It's actually on the, it's the opposite. It's like, oh, this is amazing. I'm like getting all these ideas. And then I have the capacity to basically filter that feedback into my own thinking and come up with the next iteration.
And then once this next iteration is produced, I'm happy to take that iteration to everybody and show it to them, so I can get all the feedback that I need and, and produce the next one.
Tim Fish: So this idea of the studio, right, is where the, the students are working. They start with a problem, they develop seeds, they iterate, and then they eventually have a product. And that takes place, if I'm not mistaken, in these sprints that are kind of six weeks-ish, something in that neighborhood.
Saeed Arida: I mean anywhere between two and, and four. I mean, it could be six. It does not matter.
Tim Fish: Between two and four weeks, and then you do another one and do another one.
So like this period over the course of a year or even three months when you're working with Beaver, you can develop a lot of very powerful lessons about learning and design and about how you move forward. What I'm curious about is, so as this thing iterated and as you started the project with Beaver Country Day, which that's when I heard of your work and was just inspired by what you all were doing and had a chance to visit when you were in the early stages of also turning this into a school, turning—it wasn't just something you did as part of school, it was school, or is school. And that was an evolution that you went through.
And so tell me a little bit about the sense now. What do you have? You have the NuVu school essentially, and what grades does this serve? How many students are there, that kind of stuff.
Saeed Arida: So once we, we created what we called at the time an innovation center. You know, we wanted to explore how we can basically deploy the same model in, in different places. You know, initially we just assumed that, you know, a lot of other schools would be open to the same arrangement, where we will have basically schools send students for three months at a time to go through this kind of innovation bootcamp.
We faced a lot of hurdles during that time. I think we were, we tried to do it for, you know, three, four years and it was just hard to convince schools that they can let the students leave for three months to do something else and then go back to the school. And so in some ways what I thought was an easy thing in the beginning, it was like an anomaly really.
And, and this is coming from someone who did their education in the US, K-12 education. So, I was, also, as I was kind of working on this idea of the Innovation Center, I was also learning the kind of the ins and outs of how the K-12 system operates. And so we spent, you know, four and five years with my partners David and, and Saba, trying to figure out how we can iterate on the model itself so it can be deployed easier in other places. And so two things happened at that time. One, we started having students coming out from other places other than Beaver and deciding to stay for all of their high school. And we are not a high school.
So that, you know, that created a lot of friction.
Tim Fish: They didn't want to leave. I remember when I was there, I was talking to a student and he was, and he was like, look, I'm doing this for X number, but I don't want to go back, like I want this to be school.
Saeed Arida: We were, you know, optimizing for students staying for three months, and now we have to change the focus or add another focus, students who wanted to stay for four years.
And so that happened. And the other thing that happened is that over those like four or five years, we've had a lot of schools that came and visited the place and there was always a desire to kind of do something with them. Since this initial idea did not work, to kind of create a hub in a city and have schools kind of subscribe to it.
You know, we had this other idea when I was visiting a, a school in Lakeland, Florida called All Saints Academy. When I was talking with the head Carolyn Baldwin at the time, you know, we also jointly came up with this idea to send like NuVu fellows, basically, inside the school. And these fellows will become kind of the agents of change.
And so we kind of brainstormed this idea together and we used All Saints as kind of the first prototype for, for this idea. And so we created at the time, NuVuX. And we started sending fellows to, to a lot of these schools. I think by 2019 we had around 15 schools that we are working with that are all the way from a refugee camp in Turkey to Kamehameha School in, in Hawaii. And we had Scotland and a lot of other schools in the US.
And then the pandemic hit, you know, and that I think forced everybody to kind of, not just us, to kind of rethink what their, what their model is. I think what, what the pandemic did for us is that first it's like supercharged this idea of the school. So now it's, it's, we really have to take this seriously and, and, and, and design the school, or kind of re-envision it in a way that would work better for schools who wanted to do four years and, and not just like, do like a trimester, trimester, trimester. And, and so we started working really hard on it early on. That's in 2019 and 20. And now, you know the school that we have in Cambridge, we have around 55 students.
Tim Fish: Congratulations.
Saeed Arida: Thank you. We are graduating around 12 students this year, which is kind of amazing. you know, trying to figure out like really everything on the fly because we don't, you know, have subjects. We don't have grades, we don't have any of that. And so, you know, getting these kids ready for the next stage of their life, whether it's go to the workplace directly or go to college or do something else, you know, like we have to be able to kind of do all of that.
And so that's been really an exciting journey for the school. I feel like it'll never be kind of a finished thing. Like every year we have new ideas that we want to incorporate and it never feels, it's exhausting on some level because it never feels like we have a finished product. There is always something better we can do with the school.
So I think the, the whole idea of iterating on it. Like it's always alive and in our minds, and everybody is hyper aware that we don't want to stagnate into a model and just to stop kind of innovating on it. And so the second piece with NuVuX. I think what we started realizing too later on, that the idea of sending a fellow in the schools was a little bit too kinda complex, in a sense that you are really taking your own staff and embedding it in, in a whole new organization where they have to learn the dynamics of that organization.
And these, these, these are not just random organizations, like these are particular schools and you know, every school has its own culture. and, and so it took them a while to learn the culture, took them a while to learn how to be effective. And I, and I like feel like looking back at all the cases we've had, we've had fellows who were so effective in bringing all the other teachers with them and, and impacting change.
And in other instances, because of a lot of reasons, not because nobody wanted to do it, it's just, you know, these are complex organisms, and in other cases it was a little bit harder to do that. And so the pandemic too forced us to kind of really change that model into what we call now, like an X one or a fellowless model, and the ideas that we work with the teachers directly.
And that model is a lot more efficient. It's a, it's a lot cheaper for the schools, and we are starting to realize that it's even more effective than the previous model, because this is, you know, we are really empowering a whole kind of new generation of teachers to kind of teach the way we teach. And we give them all the resources that they need to kind of make that happen in a very effective way.
Tim Fish: That is so exciting. And I love the way the school is actually almost, in many ways, it's a true model. It's a super important part of what you do. It's also a place where you can, you can test and learn every day with the students what's, what's working, what kinds of projects are working.
You're developing new problems to be solved, new projects for students to do and, and I'm sure that that also is incredibly helpful.
You know the school, the high school with 55 students in Cambridge, Mass. I know that it's quite different from a traditional high school environment. You had mentioned just a couple minutes ago, like no subjects, no classes. Like not different classes. Not longer classes, but no classes. So tell me, Saeed, what is a day like at NuVu School?
Saeed Arida: When, when you are asking me, I'm, I'm thinking at the same time, like, which version should I tell you? You know, of where our thinking is at the time. Up until two years ago, we were actually running studios basically from nine to three with the students.
So that's the only thing that we do. This is the format of learning that we are experts in and, and this is that the only thing we do. And then if the students basically wanted to do subjects or any extracurricular stuff—it's kind of funny to call the subject extracurricular, but that's how, how it is for us.
Tim Fish: So if they wanted to study calculus, right? If they wanted to take the BC Calc exam at some point, that would be an extracurricular in, in your model in some ways, right, which is totally flipping it on its head.
Saeed Arida: And we will basically work with the students and their families very closely to find a provider, you know, and mostly an online provider, that would help them kind of fulfill that. And some of the kids elected to do that in the summer, and some of them elected it to do, to do that at night. And so we had, you know, very different kind of cases of what students wanted to do. I mean, fast forward to now, we don't just have five or 10 kids. We have 55. And we needed to bring a lot more structure to this process without really kind of changing kind of what we call the soul of the place, which is really the studio.
And so now the way we do is that we run our studios from 9 to 11 and then from 1 to 3. And we have this block from 11 to 12 that is open-ended. Some, some of the students elect to do this coursework also online, some kids elect to do seminars, and we try to bring these amazing people to kind of engage with the students in conversations around many different topics from this 11 to 12.
And so students have the option to do that. It's like, we call it almost a mini studio. So it's, it just happens every day for, for one hour as opposed to four hours. And some kids they like to do the subjects in that period. And so, so that allowed us to kinda embed that unit, but also at the same time allowed us to just keep the studio intact.
Tim Fish: Okay, so now you're, there's more of a blended model now where there's some ability for students to do class, traditional course work, and then there's also the studio as a major component of what they do. When they're doing the coursework, whether they're taking calculus or history or philosophy or economics, do they do that with a teacher in a class environment, or is it largely independent or collaborative and online?
Saeed Arida: I mean, so it's mostly online and only as a, a group of, you know, could be 50% of the students who are doing those subjects. The other 50 would be engaged in seminars that we teach, you know, around gender and identity, around, you know, like climate change or around like AI and stuff.
So we try to kind of bring in these interesting topics, and that will be what the students are doing in that block. The other block I would say we have, you know, a big focus on, on math and English. This is where, you know, like if they want to ultimately apply to college, if that's really the route that they want to take, what a lot of universities going to require that.
And so the students who want to go that route, ultimately that's what they do during that, that block.
Tim Fish: And how are your students doing with getting into college? Are they finding their way to their next step? The ones who want to?
Saeed Arida: The simple part of it is that all of our kids who wanted to go to college are getting to these amazing places. So that has not been really an issue. It's usually a, for us, it has been kind of basically a transcript issue. So if you write a transcript in a way that will be legible to the colleges, that provides adequate kind of, image of, of the learner, basically, then that will be everything that the colleges would need. The complex part of it is that things are also changing from the college admission, like the pre pandemic, during pandemic, post pandemic. I feel like there are like all these different phases. During the pandemic, people did not care too much about tests and all of that, and now there is a little bit of a rebound around that.
And so for instance, this year, we submitted the same transcript that we did last year for the students, but we received a lot more calls from the admission officers asking what this is.
Tim Fish: Oh, interesting.
Saeed Arida: It's all kind of gray. It just, the, the only issue here is just, it takes more time from us, you know, talking to all these admission people and explaining to them, but it does not really change the fact that the kids are still getting into the places that they want to get into.
Tim Fish: Okay.
Saeed Arida: It just, it needed kind of more, yeah, more explanation. And, and so I think like for us moving forward is like, how do we continue to optimize that, that kind of legibility of the, of the transcript. Like, yeah, the kids are doing this, you know, very different type of work, but you know, obviously they are learning a lot of the skills that a lot of the colleges are looking for. You know, so how do we translate that into a transcript and, and plus a portfolio, and make a strong case for these kids to, to, you know, join the colleges that they want to join.
Tim Fish: Yeah, so tell me more about their skills. Right, so they, they have a four-year journey. You know, if they come in as freshman, four years of every day, half their day, they're invested—at least half their day, they're invested in deep studio work. Tell me what emerges, what kinds of students come out the other end of that.
Saeed Arida: I mean, we get all sorts of kids, which is really the amazing part about it. It's not like one type. One thing that is, that all of them have in common is, is that kind of creative energy and creative confidence. This ability to kinda take any issue and any problem and figure out like basically a process of how you can address that.
You get this like really some, like especially as, as the kids kind of get to the, to the senior year and they are working on their thesis project and this is where you see that ultimate version of that. And you know, you get kids who are really not afraid of engaging with, with really difficult problems. And at the same time, you get kids who are really engaged, I feel like, engaged in the world in a, in a much more meaningful way because they've been basically working on these problems for four years.
And so there is an empathy to, to that, there is a, a creativity aspect of it. There is a lot of innovation.
Tim Fish: Those are like, I mean those are the things that people, when you ask people what do you want your kids to have? What kinds of things are going to be there? And then, you know, I wonder how much sort of traditional school helps kids develop that. Right. What do you find when kids come in who have been in traditional schools and they start off in either ninth or 10th grade, what do they have to unlearn in order to thrive in a studio environment?
Saeed Arida: I mean, maybe like, it goes back to this like the agency piece, the ideas that like you, you are not just taking four or five classes every semester, and one of them has to be math and science and, and English and elective and arts and stuff. Like, and then, you know, by the minute you go into your ninth grade what the rest of the road almost is. And so, so there is, you know, I feel like maybe a lack of agency in that.
And, and for us it's, it's like we are framing the problems to the student, but then within that, it's really all about their ideas. And this is, I, I failed probably to mention this about the studio. What, you know, what makes it so unique and why initially, when I started working on kind of understanding the studio environment, what got me really excited about it, seeing how all these architecture students basically sleeping under their desks during the night.
You know, because they are so engaged with the work. Like you don't see this anywhere else in, in a university. It's very unique to architecture.
Tim Fish: It's not because they're stressed out and it's not because they, I mean, there probably is an element of stress, but they're all in, like they are all in to the work.
Saeed Arida: So there is a level of engagement that you don't really see anywhere else. It just, yeah, there's full commitment to the work, because ultimately it's their ideas. It's, it's their expression. And, and so I think for NuVu, the reason why, like you see that energy and you feel it when you come to our space, because the students are just walking with their ideas. You know?
Tim Fish: I felt it when I was there. I felt it like very few other places.
Saeed Arida: So there is a level of engagement that is very unique.
Tim Fish: But, but then when they come in having been more conditioned in a traditional school environment, they have to, I would imagine, have to learn how to be in that space, how to be given the ambiguity that comes along with the challenges.
Right. I said in another episode of the podcast that when I was teach, I first started my career teaching fourth grade, and I used to think, we used to set up these science units that were very hands-on. And I would stay there till 9 o'clock at night, the night before. Pouring all the liquid into the little cups and putting all the materials in the cups and putting all the little spoons on the trays.
And so that, I thought great teaching was when I hand them a tray with everything prepared and all they have to do is add the pre-measured little bits, right? And, and now, I've come to believe that that was not it. I was stripping out—it was like I was boiling the vegetables, I was stripping out all the vitamins that come in that kind of learning environment, right?
But I was trying, I was trying to remove ambiguity. And I, I think now that the proper structure that creates that ambiguity and the students' sort of navigation through it, collaboratively, is what leads to the construction of deep learning and deep understanding and curiosity and engagement. Right? That it's, it's sitting in the problem where all that stuff comes from.
Right. And I think that as a teacher, I too often try to get, step in the way, to take away ambiguity, if that makes sense.
Saeed Arida: So why did you do that? Why did you feel the need to do that as a teacher?
Tim Fish: I think I felt that... well, I think it's a really good question. I think I did it because I was, I wanted them to be quote unquote “successful.”
I think number one. I wanted, I think now that I'm actually thinking about it, I wanted the lesson to go well. Do you know what I mean? I wanted to feel like it was organized and it was controlled, and if my principal walked in the room that it would look like it was going the way it was supposed to go, that it wouldn't look like chaos.
Right. And the other thing was, I think I wanted to, I think I believed that, deep down, I think as a first and second, a third year teacher, I think, I believe that I had to structure the learning in little bite size bits. And I think my fundamental philosophy was that I give learning to students, not that they construct it themselves.
And I think since then over these many years, I've come to this sort of notion that that never, that doesn't work. I can't build it for them. They have to build it themselves.
Saeed Arida: Yeah. I think like when I was, like for instance in like recounting my, my experience in high school, I never really questioned why I am learning what I'm learning. Like I was really good at school. I feel like I mastered the game of the school and you know, I ended up, you know, coming all the way from Syria to here.
So clearly I, there was something to understanding that, that piece. I never felt that I engaged with these subjects in a way that was really meaningful to me. Like I love, like now, like 20 years after, like I love chemistry and physics and math and calculus and, and I think I had to do a lot of relearning of a lot of these things later in my life because I started realizing, you know, how, how amazing that stuff is.
But at the time when I was a kid and learning these things, it just, you had to do them because this is how you pass the test and this is how you go to college. And they did not really mean a lot to me. And, and by extension, I, once I started, you know, studying architecture, I think by my second year, I forgot everything I learned in high school.
You know, because I was not really, it never really, I never really learned it that deeply, or I never learned it for a purpose. I just learned it because this is what everybody does. And so this, this is, I feel like the difference when, when you are working on a project and you have this idea that you are a hundred percent committed to, and you want to make it happen, and then like, but you need to know calculus to calculate how much fuel engine you're going to need to kind of get that to Mars. Or you know, you are designing these micro homes for, for homeless shelters in California, and you, there's a client and you are working with this understanding a lot of the social structures and what's going to take, and you need to understand the history of, of the place and why it is the way it is, and understand about poverty around economics and all of that.
And then you will, like, they are asking us to learn this. Like, we don't have to go to the kids and tell them like, you have to, it's like they come to us, asking us that we need to know this so we can build the project. And that is when it sticks.
Tim Fish: That's when it sticks.
Saeed Arida: But to assume that they're going to, like, you know, by the end of the four years that they're going to learn everything that is, that's being kind of taught in these textbooks, it's not going to happen because anyway, I think by the time, you know, like they, they, you know, there are a lot of studies about these subjects and like after six months, basically a lot of the kids fail on them anyway.
A lot of that info is not sticking anyway. You know, so it's like, why are we committing to this idea that we need to learn all of that stuff in four years? If at the end of the day none of the, like, not, or a big part of it is not sticking.
Tim Fish: I, I'm with you. You know, especially now. In this world of ChatGPT, right, that we're in, right?
We are in a new world of generative AI. We're in, you know, we've just, we just turned a very big corner that is only going to accelerate. In my mind, exactly what you described about the studio model and the kind of thinking and creativity and iteration and sitting in the ambiguity, that's what we need to prepare our students for.
That's the kind of thinkers we need in this new world. And in fact, how are you all dealing with ChatGPT? Are you banning it from the studio or are you embracing it?
Saeed Arida: I mean, for us it's always really exciting, you know, to have a new tool. You know, like I think when we started, like in 2010, that was like the early days of 3D printing and this whole movement of maker spaces and, and the idea that you can have these, used to be like complex machines now that the fingertip of, of, of your hand. You know, it made it possible for us to prototype things faster, to really see the stuff that we are making in a fairly refined way and it's safe. Then, you know, laser cutting and all of these, like, since all of these machines are like, you are not with your hand basically with a saw doing or using a circular saw.
Like you could still do that, but like there were a lot of other machines that made a lot of that easier and I think that improved the work that we have tremendously. And now we get to this new tool. And in some ways it's, it's like the more tools that we have like this, the better, because that will just empower kind of the creative process.
And we just actually did, our students just did a studio kind of looking at, at the, you know, ChatGPT and Midjourney and all of these, also the text to image engines. And you know what the surprising piece to me is that we had a few students who were really skeptical of it, which was really amazing to, amazing to me.
It's like, you guys are so young, you should be embracing this like a hundred percent, you know, and, and I think that there was this concern, which a lot of, I think the people in the artist community kinda share now. It's just like, what makes, what, you know, Midjourney or Dali tours that they're producing, is this art or not art.
And the students who had that critical distance, they end up producing really good work. But you can see it was not like affected too much by those new AI engines. It was like still their kind of thing, like it, it kind of maintained their kind of, I, I would say, like their artistic coherence with, without having those infringes of the AI.
But then the people who went into it saying that we are, I'm not an artist. Like that was liberating in a way because it allowed them to use these tools in actually what I thought like was like some amazing ways. It was very liberating and it's like they ended up with the projects that are really quite amazing, where they introduce a little bit of a prompt and then ChatGPT is writing a story about it and then Midjourney is producing images about it.
And you are looking through this binocular and you are seeing a whole different story that is written by AI and they wanted to understand the difference between how a human, when they look at an object, they will construct a story, whether it's a narrative or an image, and how the AI will see it, and start kind of comparing that.
Tim Fish: It's fascinating. What also, you know, it's interesting because in this case you're embracing it. It's just another tool. It's a tool that has limitations. It's a tool that has, that has opportunities. It's a tool that will work differently for different people and different problems. And as your students are approaching the world, as they ask questions, they think through challenges, they design, then you want to have access to as many tools as you can have access to, to help you produce and make progress. Right?
And for me, the big thing is like when, when the student doesn't have that agency, when they're not bought in, when they're not fully engaged and they're just doing a thing because a teacher told them to do the thing. Then that's where you get this sort of ChatGPT cheating, right? Because I don't care about this thing I'm being asked to do, so why not just hand it to an AI? Let it do it and I'll just pass it on as my own, right? Because I was never engaged with it in the first place. But when I'm all in, when I'm like you described in the architecture studio and I'm sleeping at my desk, literally or metaphorically, I'm going to be more critical of the AI because it may not give me the quality that I am in pursuit of.
Saeed Arida: Yeah, it's really interesting. I mean, it's, it, for me, it, it says a lot about our culture to see that upheaval, that this ChatGPT caused in education. Because for me it like almost should be a celebration of it. Like this new tool that is powerful that would allow us to do a lot of things that we were not able to do before.
It's a moment of celebration. It's like computer is not as dumb as it used to be.
Tim Fish: Yes, the internet got a lot smarter, right?
Saeed Arida: Yeah. But now suddenly it's like, oh, there's cheating. You want to, and it's like, it's completely kind of the wrong conversation that we're having.
Tim Fish: But I think it also, because I think it messes with the paradigm, right?
I think the paradigm has been about compliance, and I think the paradigm has been about you do what I tell you to do, right? And in that paradigm, It's a disruptor. It's a big time disruptor. Right. But if the paradigm is more how you are running your studio, I think it, it becomes a liberator.
Saeed Arida: I mean, the big question here, is it actually going to be a tipping point though?
That's going to, we've had a lot of, a lot of moments before, but the system has the weight of the, the kind of that traditional system is, is just so much that... you know, these things just like get deflected from it, you know, somehow. And, and it, and, and this is powerful enough that it could be a tipping point, but it remains to be seen if it can really change the core of what we are trying to do in schools.
Tim Fish: So one of the big questions that I think, I know teachers who do deep project work with their students at various ages. One of the things they often talk about is the challenges associated with assessment and the challenges associated with assessment, both individually and assessment of a group. And how do you get at that?
And so I'm wondering the philosophy of quote, unquote, “assessment” at NuVu.
Saeed Arida: I'm glad you asked this question. I'm like, I'm obsessed with the, with the whole notion of assessment. I can't find necessarily an answer to it, you know, that would be...
Tim Fish: Just ask ChatGPT.
Saeed Arida: I know like, exactly. you know, and I think like a lot of the conversations that I have with my team around assessment revolves around the idea of designing a system that would help our students grow.
Like that's the only utility of it. Like, it's not really to judge the students, like the whole, because we don't really do that. Like our students are all different. We want to get the best out of them. Each one has, it's their own best and it's just, you know, like there is no point of having a standard that goes across like the, the whole school.
And so ultimately I think like we keep going back to our reference point when we are talking about assessments, like how do we design a tool that would help us attract the growth of the students and help the students themselves look at that and it's like, yeah, I am missing this or I need to this. And, and we've designed a lot of systems on our platform and we continue to kind of prototype with ideas, you know, where we ask the students about the areas that they want to grow in and it becomes a conversation between the, the advisor and the coaches and the students about where they are lacking, what they want to address this year. And basically throughout the year we look at these kind of things and we keep track of them. And if there's growth that's been happening in there or not. And so, so for us, that is ultimately the, the you know, what the utility of it. You know, there are other aspects of it that we discuss all the time is like, do—what is the minimum that our students need to have to be like NuVu graduates?
And that's a, it gets a little bit more like harder because our students are really different. I mean, we can say we want them to have a level of understanding of the creative process and the studio process, but that can also get very complicated very quickly. It's, it's a difficult one. And the last piece about it is that, how do you also take that and translate it into something that colleges would understand, which is the transcript piece?
Tim Fish: So you're on this journey. Have you gone down the mastery transcript, mastery credits, competency-based learning sort of road in some of this?
Saeed Arida: And so what we have is a mastery kind of transcript, not necessarily MTC, but you know, since we, we started developing our studio management system to kind of run our studios, you know, it's a different form of a learning management system. We started building a lot of tools on top of it that would help us kind of do the assessment and the tracking and, and all of that. And so we've been building our own version of the mastery transcript. and a lot of actually our partner schools that we work with, they use it and they are happy with it.
For me, it still does not really address the central question whether this tool is ultimately helping the students or not, which is for me why we are doing—like there, there is no reason to do any tracking or an assessment unless it becomes a really empowering tool that would help the students kind of grow.
Tim Fish: That's a powerful statement, Saeed. There's no reason to be doing any of this unless it helps the student grow. What if we just in school made that the guide for how we think about assessment? Because I think, I think a lot of the ways we do assessment historically, we wouldn't keep doing, if true student growth was the only thing we were thinking about.
I know my, I know the school I went to and my teachers, there was a whole lot wrapped up in assessment that wasn't about my growth. It was about, again, kind of compliance, control, sorting, putting some kids on the top, some kids on the bottom. There's a whole lot going on there. And never, little of it was about my growth.
Saeed Arida: Which is amazing to do as a, as an institution to do that. For me, I've never really liked that, that piece. I was like, yeah, I never understood.
Tim Fish: I, I tell you, there's a lot of people having a lot of conversation– If you really, I always found if you want to get it going, you gotta just go at assessment because assessment is a place where, that's where the rubber hits the road in terms of are we living what we believe?
Saeed Arida: For me, like really the story that I still remember today that really changed my whole thinking on this is that early on, that was probably our second year, we had kind of the, the, a draft version of what this assessment piece at the time is. And you know, it's, it's like what you would think tradition, is like the coaches get together and it's like oh, this student did well or it did not do well, and it was like this one directional kind of process. Where, you know, the teachers are basically deciding where, where the students are at.
And so our job was to basically track or assess where the students are at, and that was the end of it. And then like that particular student that I thought did not do well, like based on the work that I saw and based on how they talked about the process and, and based on talking with their coaches, and then I was, you know, accidentally having a conversation with that student. And that student blew me away about like how much they were basically telling me how much they learned about the studio, and it was amazing what they learned. It's like the coaches did not necessarily see it because they probably never had that conversation, but for them, the amount of growth that happened and it's like listening to that, the only thing that came through my mind, it's like, who am I to be judging this kid? Like who am I? Like, am I like, yeah, I'm like, they are in my school and stuff, but like am I…? Like I cannot be and should not be the one who is just judging this kid without really knowing everything that goes into the brain of that kid.
And that's when we kind of stopped doing that.
Tim Fish: One of the things I take away from this conversation is how really what you're doing is based deeply in a philosophy.
It's based deeply in beliefs. It's, and it's, it really started, grew out of the studio concept and what studio looks like and how studio can transform an individual in a learning environment and a community and collaboration. And then I think the way you're implementing it is fascinating. And I think other people could take studios in other kinds of directions, right?
And so for me, like this idea of studio learning is, I've seen schools use the term studio. It's kind of another way of—and I think art studios certainly have been around for a long time. But I think there's really something to this idea of studios, and I just want to thank you for both, all the work you're doing, the impact you're having on so many students' lives and families' lives, the impact you're having around the world with your model and your, and what you've been sharing, and certainly the impact you've had with the New View EDU listeners. This has been such a great conversation.
Saeed Arida: Thank you. I think one, one last thing, like, because I just heard the word transform, because that's, you know, something that probably did not mention earlier. But this is going to, I think the power of the studio is really to transform how the kids think about themselves and the world around them.
This is ultimately what it does. Like it gives them that agency back. It makes them believe that their ideas matter. They, they have a position in the world and they are able to tackle all these issues in front of them. And I think that is very empowering compared to like sitting in a classroom and just taking all these courses without understanding exactly why you are doing it.
And once you flip that equation, it becomes really, really empowering to the kids. We had a lot of kids who come from schools with a lot of behavioral issues, different reasons why they are not engaged. And you know, sometimes it takes like six months, sometimes it takes a year, sometimes takes more. But ultimately they reach that point where, no, this is my own learning.
I know that I can contribute a lot to this world. And they start acting like it. And it's, it's really amazing to see. That's like, I think if I want to summarize kind of like what NuVu is about. It's actually seeing that, that growth within the students.
Tim Fish: That's right. Seeing that transformation. And it's what we all want.
When you just described that, I'm like, yes, that's what we all are trying to do. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. What a, what a great conversation.
Saeed Arida: Yeah. Thank you, Tim. This, this has been great.