Ed before Tech before Capital, always.

Imagine a car manufacturer designing and building a new model of automobile.

Thanks to a recent breakthrough, AI technology has advanced the capabilities and potential for a more autonomous vehicle. However, the purpose of applying this breakthrough to traffic management and transport is not clear, while the benefits to the driving public are not articulated.

Worse still, the car manufacturer in question has not used human test drivers throughout the design process to ensure human factors engineering is the primary consideration. The result is a car that is difficult to drive and difficult to integrate into a modern city.

Sound familiar? Of course not, because any technology manufacturer that did this would be finished in no time.

And yet in EdTech this is often the case; products that educators struggle to integrate day-to-day because the pedagogy or method has not been put at the core.

When we first ask EdTech startups about their product, it always begins with what it does. We are always shown the tricks and how amazing the graphics are, but to be honest, we don’t care. In fact, teachers don’t care about this either and after a few tries, students also don’t care for that matter. And that’s the problem with EdTech. We are emphasising what it does rather than how students will learn.

Focusing on the tricks that the EdTech can offer is creating a negative impact on the EdTech scene. 58% of teachers feel it doesn’t help and 70% of EdTech licenses have not been activated in US schools.

Rather on focusing on gimmicks, we should focus on how students learn using this product and how a teacher’s time used is a good investment. So yes, the app may be fun to play with and look great but it doesn’t really concern the teacher if it doesn’t create a thorough understanding for the student.

Because of this core issue, teachers are getting burnt. Empty promises have created a wall between EdTech and their users. And it’s not just teachers: Students share the same frustrations. When students pick up an EdTech product, they want to learn. If they aren’t learning, then what is the point? They have games on their phones more entertaining than any EdTech product. Therefore, if it doesn’t help them LEARN then what is the point. And too many Edtech products are focusing on keeping students engaged through aesthetics rather than keeping them engaged through education.

However, in designing EdTech, teachers and students are underrepresented. Sure, we may be here and there but at an education event, to have as little as 10 percent of the users present, isn’t this the problem in the first place? There’s a gap between the Ed and Tech and it’s no more clearer than walking around an EdTech fair.

Teachers are masters at keeping students’ attention so to allow something else to do it, it needs to be really good. They would rather use books, as at least they are pedagogy-driven. Though students may hate school books, at least each page is different. If I was a student and had to do that same math page 3 times I would be bored of it and sometimes the apps are one trick ponies. For an Edtech product to succeed, it needs strong offline materials and capabilities. Why put 25 people in the same room for 25 hours a week if they’re not going to interact and collaborate?

But how have we come to a point where educators are rejecting so much of what EdTech has to offer?

There is a reason for everything and the number one reason is money.

Back in the late 1990s, many people were saying that all commerce would be done via the internet. This era was known as the ‘dot com bubble’, when the value of companies was based upon their potential revenue, thus attracting speculative investment. In the 2010s we have those who say that all education will happen via technology. ‘Scalability’, that one-size-fits-all business phrase, has been unleashed upon education like a bull in a china shop.

In its excellent December 2018 report ’10 charts that explain the global education market, HolonIQ points out on page 5 that only 2.6% of global education expenditure is on technology.

Even more mouth-watering is page 3.

The chart on this page reveals the following opportunity:

1. The ratio between global GDP and global market cap is 1.125:1.
2. The ratio between global healthcare market cap and global healthcare spend is 2:1.
3. The ratio between the global education market cap and global education spend is 40:1.

In other words, education is 20 times more undercapitalised than healthcare at 2.5% market capitalisation compared to 50%, respectively.

And with the advent of cloud computing in 2010, in tandem with the expansion of cheap money via quantitative easing (QE), the Global EdTech scene has been flooded with speculative finance, looking to capitalise on the opportunities that education digitalisation brings.

Thus, the EdTech explosion of the 2010s can be reduced to this directional flow:

CAPITAL-TECH-ED

Finance capital released after the worst of the Global Financial Crisis has poured into technological capabilities, which in turn have been grafted over centuries-old education practices.

The result is products that are far removed from the capabilities that teachers look for every day, namely planning, teaching and assessing.

We have seen Edtech that has no pedagogy, Edtech companies that haven’t a single educator working for them, apps where the learning goals are not clear and products that are graphic games with zero curriculum integration.

In response to this situation, EDvisor Finland aims to put ed before tech, thereby inverting the above directional flow as follows:

ED-TECH-CAPITAL

Educational theory, needs and capabilities should be challenging technology to come up with solutions that benefit learners, educators and education systems.

Hard questions should be asked on Day 1 of an Edtech startup, such as;

• What everyday need of teachers are you addressing?
• What is your pedagogy and
• Why this is the correct approach?
• Besides engagement, how will your product help students learn?
• What research is your product based upon?
• What are the main learning goals of your product?
• What offline and face to face capabilities will your tool have?

To this end, EDvisor Finland has developed a balance of 12 capabilities, each with their own levels of sophistication to form a heatmap for EdTech integration and longevity.

This emphasis on pedagogy first avoids the scenario of the car manufacturer above, by forcing EdTech companies to focus on learning goals, applications, benefits and piloting in educational environments by users. Our education-first incubation process focuses on the human factors engineering required to make what teachers already do easier. Without putting pedagogy first, we will keep ending up with apps that get binned after a few lessons.

And after 10 years of money chasing educational value, isn’t it high time that educational value chases the money?

Marcus Sheehan & Neil O’Toole

Enjoyed reading? Then, please ‘clap’ and share it among your network :)

Do you have a story to tell? Let us know at ashmeet@theedtech.world. We’d love to share it on our publication!