HI I’M MOHANNAD ARBAJI
my friends call me Mo & I'm building in EdTech
ABOUT ME
Talent is universal but access to opportunity is not, and education is the world's greatest equalizer. It changed my life, so I dedicated my professional career to building tech that bring high quality education to the world.
GREW UP IN JORDAN
I won the family lottery by being born to the best parents in a humble Amman household. I have two amazing sisters who weren't as afraid of the bulky 90s cameras as much as I was.
In Jordan, I attended 7 different schools ending with the Jubilee School for Gifted Students.
HIGH SCHOOL IN NEW MEXICO
When I was 16, I got accepted into United World College on a full scholarship. My school had 200 students from 112 countries, all scholarship students.
I arrived in the US alone and was greeted by my roommate, Celani from Swaziland. He taught me my first word in SiSwati, Ixoxo, which meant frog. I learned it because each "x" was a clicking sound and I thought it sounded so cool.
COLLEGE IN RHODE ISLAND
After UWC, I received a full ride to Brown University. I was a Davis Scholar and graduated with Bachelors degrees in Economics, Business (COE), Electrical Engineering, and Computer Engineering.
At Brown, I invented a device that converts solar, wind & mechanical energy into electricity for remote households. I also received the Karen T. Romer Research Award where I co-authored EO100, the first triple-bottom-line standard for oil & gas extraction, currently implemented in several oil fields in the Americas.
FIRST EDUCATION COMPANY
While in college, I authored & published textbooks on SAT and ACT prep for ELL students and another book on US college admissions.
The following summer, I went door-to-door in an affluent Amman neighborhood and convinced 16 students to let me tutor them on the SATs. Each student improved 300+ points in 6 weeks.
By the time I graduated college, I bootstrapped this project from $300 to a company with offices in 3 countries.
BIG DATA SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
My first job was in PwC (M&A, restructuring, divestiture and capital events), then Ernst & Young (Transaction Advisory), then consulting.
Next I worked in software engineering. I built software that mined data from different hospital systems—such as patient, billing, labs & pharmacy—and generated business intelligence recommendations.
I remember thinking: when people learn they're producing tons of data too, can we leverage that data to help them learn better?
BUILDING A MOOC
I learned that in 2015 more people signed up for MOOCs (self-paced online courses) than they did in the first three years of the “modern” MOOC movement (which started in late 2011—when the first Stanford MOOCs took off).
So I built a MOOC for English and math. The average "course completion rate" for MOOCs is ~3.5%, but our completion rate was 8%. It felt like a vanity metric, I knew we could do better so we went back to the drawing board.
FOUNDING CHALKTALK
In order to understand how to better enable learning, I knew I had to immerse myself in the classroom experience. So I got approval from East Boston High School to teach a class and shadow other teachers, where I spent hundreds of hours observing & modeling classrooms.
My goal was to build something that fit teachers' workflow vs other edtech solutions at the time which asked teachers to change how they teach. We bought the domain chalktalk.com in March 2019 and launched during the 2019/2020 school year.
SCALING IMPACT
In 2020/2021 we closed several of the largest 100 school districts in the US and grew revenue from $45K to 7 figures with founder-based sales.
Today, we power ELA & math instruction and practice from Kindergarten through 12th grade—servicing districts across the US from New England to Hawaii.
PROBLEMS WE'RE SOLVING
My primary focus area is market design through the lens of institutions vs networks. Institutions are top-down hierarchies representing the old power structure. Networks are lateral webs representing the new power structure.
Top down institution building is how America was built. We got really good at building large hierarchical institutions between 1880-1939: mass industry, mass government, mass transport, mass media, mass politics, and mass education.
Then the internet shows up in the 90s and it’s not a top-down institution. It’s a lateral peer-to-peer network without a central node. This allows the network to expand laterally and everyone can plug in. Anybody can build an app or publish content or organize a movement.
At ChalkTalk we’re building the largest lateral network for learning—GitHub for education. Below are some problems we’re tackling:
LEARNING EXPERIENCE DESIGN
Creating blended learning tech that doesn’t force teachers to change the way they teach; rather tech that facilitates the content used by teachers and enhances the way they teach it (e.g. gradual release model, problem-based learning, project-based learning …)
MITIGATING HOMEWORK
Creating solutions that minimize or eliminate homework, while simultaneously maximizing student academic achievement and socio-emotional health. Recommended reading.
SCALING COHORT-BASED LEARNING
Studying the most impactful blends of synchronous vs asynchronous activities for different learning environments, and how these blends come together to create a unified & smooth learning experience.
MINTING MILLIONAIRE TEACHERS
Identifying how technology can personalize learning while keeping it a social teacher-led activity. Creating lateral incentive compensation systems to turn teaching into the most lucrative profession.
CONTACT
Brooklyn, NY
mohannad@chalktalk.com
