The software equivalent of don't work with children or animals is: don't work with teachers or doctors.
Why Ed-Tech Startups Don't Scale (2022)
31–40 of 74 posts
Re: Why Ed-Tech Startups Don't Scale (2022)
#32I'm surprised it didn't do more than touch on probably the biggest reason: we already pay a huge amount for education out of taxes, so the educational budgets are allocated by bureaucrats, and not by education consumers (or their parents).
I think you're missing the fundamental mechanic here. Spence signalling[1] won the econ Nobel back in 2001. It says that the cost of signalling in a market for imperfect information ends on the one emitting the signal. For education and jobs, the signal is your degree (hence the huge career difference between dropping out one week before getting a degree and completing). The cost of the degree will fall on the studen…
Blah blah blah. This is way forest-for-trees stuff.
I work in higher ed and have used this stuff forever. What OP said is simpler and closer to the easier answer.
The person PAYING isn't the consumer; the actual consumer (me and the students) have very little say or influence in how these things work.
If you wanted to make effective, I don't know, mops, you'd INTERVIEW JANITORS AND GET THEIR FEEDBACK, and somehow make that feedback actually matter.
This industry DOESNT DO THAT.
Re: Why Ed-Tech Startups Don't Scale (2022)
#33K-12: from kindergarten to 12th grade
Had to look it up,
Re: Why Ed-Tech Startups Don't Scale (2022)
#34there is also not that much money in the state run that the majority of people education follow. Teacher salaries are already squeezed. Its ironic, everyone says get a good education, old grumps complain the kids don’t know anything, but when it comes to actually paying for it its crickets. Software could help make teaching more efficient but requires up front investment that no one wants to make. State run software…
(School)teachers used to have that kind of social status, not even a hundred years ago. It would be interesting to understand how that changed into the current situation (up to the worst case of the parents calling out for the lynching of a teacher).
Re: Why Ed-Tech Startups Don't Scale (2022)
#35I'm not holding my breath on edtech until we see teachers teach their students about Anki in school, personally.
Some of the teachers I have worked with do this; and there are some great teachers(lecturers) like Martin who teach effective studying techniques: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlU-zDU6aQ0
Flashcards and Anki were incredibly effective for me. I am building a study tool which automatically generates them from lecture slides. Beyond that, it applies other psychology of learning techniques - It breaks up content into manageable chunks you can see your progress on (to boost your confidence of exam coverage) and has an exam-conditions like mode where it shows you relevant slides, then asks you questions and to freely recall by blurting onto a blank page everything you remember. It's then able to give you a realistic judgement of your learning and this way of learning by actively recalling freely is, though more intense, ultimately more effective than either reading, watching or quizzing in the long term.
The part of learning that other flashcard apps miss, even Anki, is that students must be motivated. They must enjoy, visually engage, and be confident as they study. They must feel they are on a sustainable realistic path as they gather knowledge when on the way to their goals. And they don't have to study every day to do that - they just need to genuinely learn and be able to see the state of their progress...
I am excited to be working on EdTech now[Revision.ai] which unveils and detects misconceptions to aid the student in eliminating them. Misconceptions are a massive opportunity - as much as spaced repetition itself [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVtCO84MDj8]. We believe they will genuinely learn, feel comfortable and see their progress, when they overcome misconceptions with tech. Other tools really aren't identifying misconceptions; answering is still a "scale of wrong-to-right". And that's a big opportunity. To truly reduce Test Anxiety by studying and building your confidence. I think Tech can be useful in this way, even without teachers intervening, if enough of the learning content is there.
Re: Why Ed-Tech Startups Don't Scale (2022)
#36Isn't this just a subset of "all educational innovations don't scale". Education is chock-full of things that looked great at small scale and then fail to replicate at large scale. Given that long established reality, which is well known within the education field, the alleged scaling nature of software no longer seems like some great win, since you're likely just quickly scaling out something that doesn't actually w…
Are there some examples of this from the past few decades?
Re: Why Ed-Tech Startups Don't Scale (2022)
#37> See, when you build an education product, you’re competing against two massive institutions: the formal education system (schools, colleges, state universities, etc.), and the laws and cultural expectations around that system.
What you’re competing against is the natural tension between these things and the demands of the market.
You get a good sense of this after 5 years at a math tutoring startup that’s always grappling with the dual expectation that you give the kid the answer quickly (“the customer is always right”) vs. you patiently sit with them until they learn (the goal of formal education).
Re: Why Ed-Tech Startups Don't Scale (2022)
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you're missing the fundamental mechanic here. Spence signalling[1] won the econ Nobel back in 2001. It says that the cost of signalling in a market for imperfect information ends on the one emitting the signal. For education and jobs, the signal is your degree (hence the huge career difference between dropping out one week before getting a degree and completing). The cost of the degree will fall on the studen…
I think another huge factor is that you are making a prediction on the future value of your degree over the next 40-50 years as a 17 year old who is probably more focused on succeeding socially and sexually. You add in the student loans that may or may not be forgiven at some time in the future and the free market is not in play. Same with Healthcare, insurance clouds all free market mechanics. I'm a huge capitalist…
I've been a student at my local university for 19 years now, most of that part time. Sometimes I end up with degrees, other times not. When I'm taking classes that are either too niche or too hard to be on the easiest path towards a degree, it's fantastic.
But if my wanderings take me in a direction which is on the easiest path to a degree (sometimes necessary because the things I want to take have prerequisites that I'd rather not get waived) it's like I've entered some parallel dimension where I'm the only one who is willing to engage with the content. Like wow these kids are getting nothing out of this besides a grade.
So it sounds like we agree that it's not working, though I suspect we'd disagree about how much capitalism belongs in the solution.
Re: Why Ed-Tech Startups Don't Scale (2022)
#39I’d want to see extensive research on the benefits of Ed-Tech products before they are unleashed on classrooms full of actual students. “Making things easier for teachers” is often not the case and simultaneously creates costs for training and support at these institutions along with the exponential growth required to administer these new roles. And then of course are the students themselves. How do iPads compare to…
I worked with a lot of schools in my last company and unfortunately I don't think extensive research is the best road either. While I totally understand your position, this excuse is also used for only allowing pen and paper for math in highschool by teachers. It takes a crazy amount of time to extensively research and prove things in education for a few reasons: There is opposition to doing the research because teac…
My wife is an active, publishing education researcher who is currently doing in-classroom research related to technology.
It's really hard to make random control groups because schools want to put kids in classrooms by their process, not the whims of the researchers.
IRBs won't let this happen in actual classrooms. The allowed approach is typically extracurricular summer schools where everyone is aware of the research component. But this is only for a certain kind of quantitative research. Qualitative research doesn't necessarily need nor benefit from a control group as it can be carried out in situ.
Isn't it worth the effort to do the research instead of just seeing what happens when venture-backed companies introduce their for-profit wares into the classroom?
Re: Why Ed-Tech Startups Don't Scale (2022)
#40K-12: from kindergarten to 12th grade Had to look it up,
The more common nomenclature is P-12. Pre-school has been accepted and included as "school" for a while under public education funding in many areas.