About the Guest
Chris Hull is the Co-founder of Otus, an education platform built to help schools and teachers understand students more holistically. A former seventh-grade social studies teacher, Chris brings classroom credibility and a deep empathy for the realities of teaching at scale. His career shift was driven by a simple but stubborn problem: with 150 students a year, how can a teacher truly know each child and act on that knowledge? Otus is his answer—uniting data, context and tools to make teaching more effective and sustainable.
Episode Summary
In this episode of Shape the System, host Vincent Turner digs into how schools actually “run” and why the systems behind them matter as much as what happens at the front of the classroom. Chris Hull explains how Otus consolidates scattered student information—attendance, standardised assessments, classroom-level skills, interests and what’s worked before—into a single, living profile that follows each learner across years and teachers.
Why it matters: teachers juggle six classes and around 150 students, making it hard to personalise learning or even keep up with who’s progressing on what. Otus acts like a Fitbit for learning—wearing it doesn’t improve outcomes by itself, but it gives visibility, saves time (often 1–2 hours per week), and shortens the loop between instruction, evidence and adjustment.
Under the hood, Otus integrates with existing student information systems (no “rip and replace”), supports classroom assessments, and layers in AI to answer plain-English data questions, recommend right-time resources from content partners, and help educators build assessments faster. Commercially, Otus is bought at the district level; implementations are measured to ensure apples-to-apples comparisons, with onboarding possible inside 30 days.
Market-wise, the US has ~15,000 districts and Otus reports adoption in 300+ and growing—pointing to a network effect that’s emerging but not yet fully realised. The near-term roadmap is about speed and scale: connect more systems, compress time-to-insight, and make the “every student has a plan” feature a practical norm for schools and families.
Key Takeaways
Unify the data that matters: attendance, assessments (state and local), classroom skills, interests and proven strategies live together in one student profile that travels year to year.
Save teachers real time: districts report educators reclaiming 1–2 hours per week, redirecting effort toward instruction and differentiation.
Meet schools where they are: Otus integrates with existing SIS and testing platforms, enabling crawl-walk-run change rather than rip-and-replace.
Put AI to work usefully: ask data questions in plain English, get recommended resources, and generate assessments—speeding up the plan-teach-measure loop.
Scale through districts: the US has ~15,000 districts; Otus is in 300+ today with ~30-day onboarding, building momentum towards broader adoption.
Notable Quotes
“I had 150 students every year.” — Chris Hull
“What Otus does is it puts all that information in one place and… allows you to have that articulation from one person to the next so that you’re not starting from scratch.” — Chris Hull
“Learning is hard. It takes effort. So how do we get to that part more quickly?” — Chris Hull
“We make it more discoverable and deliverable by using AI to just allow you to ask it in plain English.” — Chris Hull
“We can get them onboarded within 30 days.” — Chris Hull
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