Paul Kim (academic)


Paul Kim is currently a Korean-American chief technology officer and assistant dean at the Stanford Graduate School of Education and has held this position since 2001.
While at Stanford, in addition to teaching graduate level courses in the School of Education, he has been leading projects involving the design of learning technologies, educational research, and community development.

Career

Kim received his Ph.D. in educational technology at the University of Southern California in 1999. Since completing his doctorate, he has held posts such as the advisor for the National Science Foundation Education and Human Resources Directorate, the advisor of Grand Challenges in International Development for the National Academies of Science, executive director of information technology at the University of Phoenix, the vice president and chief information officer at Vatterott College, and the chairman of the board for the Intercultural Institute of California.
He has been chief technology officer and assistant dean at the Stanford Graduate School of Education since 2001, the Founder and Advisor of which is a Nonprofit Global Education Institute Funded by UNESCO since 2006, the advisor of Asian Development Bank since 2019.
In all of these positions, Kim has focused on improving access and equity in education throughout both developed and developing countries.

Projects and research

Kim leads initiatives involving the design of learning technologies, educational research, and community development. Kim is also working with numerous international organizations to develop mobile empowerment solutions for extremely underserved communities in developing countries. In his recent expeditions to Latin America, Africa, and India, he investigated the effects of highly programmable open-source mobile learning platforms on education programs for literacy, numeracy, and entrepreneurship. As part of his research, he is also exploring mobile wireless sensors in simulation-based learning and ePortfolio-based assessment to promote creativity, critical thinking, and problem solving.
Kim launched a Massive open online course titled in 2012. The course was geared towards empowering education enthusiasts of all backgrounds to cultivate the understanding necessary to create a cutting-edge 21st century learning environment that is both innovative and sustainable. The course invited 20,000 students from 170 different countries, and over 6200 students received a certificate of completion. The average completion rate for MOOC is 5-15%, compared with 30% for this course.
Kim founded a voluntary501 non-profit organization named XRI in 2006 and an accompanying initiative named . This project aims to provide an opportunity to empower children and meet their needs by utilizing innovative mobile technology and educational research from Stanford University. The now includes three projects.
1.Stanford Mobile Inquiry-based Learning Environment : The SMILE server software is designed to create a highly interactive learning environment that promotes higher-order learning opportunities, engage students in inquiry-based learning sessions at a global scale and generates real-time learning analytics. In addition to SMILE, the includes software such as Wikipedia for Schools, Khan Academy videos and exercises, software for teaching coding skills and more. The SMILE project was mentioned as an innovative solution for the future of education in the 2016 UN report titled .
2.: A mobile storytelling program facilitates the creation, development, and gathering of stories from local communities around the world. The 1001 Stories Program conducts storytelling workshops that build on children’s natural potential to become original storytellers.
3.: A learning model aligns with the extended version of Engineering Design Process — Discover, Define, Explore, Ideate, Create, Test, and Evaluate. HALO curriculum uses UN Sustainable Development Goals to develop and supplement curriculum topics.
His recent representative projects and researches include as follows: the University X, a design of future university based on an entrepreneurship global incubator network sponsored by The . The University of Oman, design advice for the establishment of a new national science and technology university Sponsored by Sultanate of Oman; Design and development of programmable open mobile internet for education 2020, sponsored by National Science Foundation; National online education strategy development advice, Sponsored by Ministry of Education ; Evaluation of mobile learning initiative for public schools Sponsored by Telecom Argentina; Evaluation of Plan CEIBAL Sponsored by Universidad ORT Uruguay.

Professional activity

Kim has been actively encouraging the students in his graduate classes at Stanford to take classroom projects to the real world, and some of the work that has come out of Seeds of Empowerment work has succeeded to the final rounds of global competitions sponsored by organizations including the Sesame Workshop, WISE by the Qatar Foundation, and the Marvell 100K Challenge.
In higher education, he advises investment bankers and technology ventures focused on e-learning, knowledge management, and mobile communication solutions. His due-diligence engagements include early-stage angel funding and also later-stage private equity-based investments for large enterprises such as Grand Canyon University, Northcentral University, NCA/HLC accredited online universities, and Penn Foster College. His recent international advisement cases include the Saudi Arabia national online university initiative, a global online education program sponsored by Deutsche Telekom, institutional development for Universidad Tecnológica de El Salvador, and WASC accreditation for the CETYS Universidad in Mexico.
In his keynote presentations and publications, he often presents a value-centered ecosystem borrowing Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. In his view, individuals and organizations must evolve in order to stay competitive and that any advantage in the ecosystem is always temporary. His unconventional education models have been referred as future education systems.

Selected publications