How Much Power Do Teachers Have in Education Technology?

Edtech is now ubiquitous in classrooms, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic accomplished the previously unthinkable. It sent almost every school into the deep end of edtech, beginning with remote learning.

The stakes are high when it comes to tools that instructors use to boost student performance. Congress is allocating millions of dollars in relief funds to address COVID-19 learning loss, and everyone—from kids to teachers to administrators—is frazzled as schools struggle to reestablish some kind of routine, whatever that means in the midst of a pandemic.

Despite these difficulties, the worldwide edtech sector has crossed the $100 billion mark. And there are expectations that the expanding market would help students get back on track.

That got us at EdSurge wondering, how are edtech businesses ensuring their products function best for teachers, the individuals in charge of incorporating them into classrooms every day? How much say do instructors have over the educational technology tools they use? And what, if anything, can we gather from the amount of former educators in edtech company leadership?

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Designing Education Technology

Dan Carroll would have been astonished to come across an edtech product that showed any evidence of teacher participation in its creation. It was a period when edtech businesses coped with the rigamarole of getting into schools by emphasizing strong sales teams and ties with district leaders.

"And hopefully the product was useful by teachers at the time," he continues, "and maybe the district paid for a lot of assistance that could help instructors learn how to use these incredibly complicated and non-intuitive tools."

It used to be assumed that no matter how hard a district worked to assist integrate a new technology, around 10 to 30 percent of its teachers would still refuse to utilize edtech, according to Carroll.

"They'd simply reply, 'Sorry, I don't do technology,'" he remembers.

Things have changed dramatically since then. Schools have had to become one-to-one device suppliers, ensuring that every student receives a tablet or laptop to ensure a consistent experience. Carroll also co-founded the learning platform business Clever, where he currently serves as chief product officer. He claims that when businesses embrace a "teacher-first approach," anything they create is simpler to implement in the classroom.

"And we've found that if you use this technique, you can be extremely financially successful," Carroll adds.

Because if instructors are enthused about a product they discovered on their own, he believes it will be a good match for other teachers in the district as well.

"When you think about these sorts of things that are created for instructors to pick them up on their own, without any training, without any requirement," Carroll adds, "the adoption is simply so much simpler." "You don't need to spend hours teaching teachers on which buttons to click. It's simple."

What Do Investors Desire?

Carroll, a former teacher, was already familiar with the challenge his firm was attempting to tackle. But what about the investors that fund edtech startups? Do they need to see previous educators in positions of leadership to be sold on the product?

In a nutshell, it depends.

According to Jessica Millstone, co-founder and managing director of Copper Wire Investors, investors want to know that the firms they support are building communities around their goods. The fund invests on female-led technology startups and includes numerous edtech businesses in its portfolio.

More specifically, she believes that corporations must find a method to include the opinions of stakeholders, notably teachers, into product creation. According to Millstone, instructors are expected to use social media. Companies such as Google and BrainPop have shown success with their educator certification programs, where instructors may be recognized for their skill with a product, get early access to updated features, or test new ones, she says.

"Building a network of educators may not only help the firm understand more about their customers' requirements, in or out of the classroom," Millstone adds, "but it can also help you establish an ambassador crew, who can be power users of your product and magnify new features to that community."

But, do edtech businesses require former educators on their advisory boards or in their executive suites? According to Millstone, it depends on the sort of edtech product. "It's extremely vital to have educators who are highly educated about special ed and the instructors and youngsters your goods could serve," she says of a firm focusing on the special education sector.

"When it comes to a digital firm, there isn't necessarily a big overlap between an educator and the abilities that would be required to produce a successful product," Millstone adds. "I do believe that edtech products must walk the line between being able to recruit talent that is relevant to the technology they are developing and having checks and balances of educators to speak to the community."

Another thing to consider is that when educators leave the classroom to work for an edtech startup, their knowledge with what instructors need on a daily basis becomes stale with time, according to her. Companies that connect directly to working instructors, which Millstone says might be difficult due to educators' hectic schedules, are getting a continual supply of new thoughts.

"One of the purposes of user research is to understand the demands of any type of consumer or audience," she explains. "I believe that the more established edtech businesses are developing UX research teams that can source information from instructors, rather than depending on educators within the organization to instinctively know what teachers want or [how to] serve kids best."

According to Tony Wan, head of investor content at Reach Capital (and a former EdSurge editor), although seeing educators in an edtech company's leadership boosts trust in the product, a lack of them isn't always a deal-breaker for investors.

He claims that edtech businesses frequently solicit teacher feedback in different ways, such as by forming advisory boards or ambassador programs. His organization does want to know if a company has people with proper subject-matter training, and it speaks with educators who have used a product as part of its own due diligence before investing.

"If it's going to be actively utilized by teachers," Wan adds, "the majority of firms have either a former teacher on their team or teacher outreach in product development." "It's difficult to explain it in the school budget if it's not used."

However, for back-end edtech solutions that aren't directly utilized by instructors, having an educator in leadership isn't a top priority for investors, according to Wan.

Trenches Perspective

Alfonso Mendoza, Jr., has been utilizing educational technology for over two decades, first as a teacher and now as an instructional software expert for Sharyland, Texas schools. He also broadcasts the podcast My EdTech Life.

Mendoza is unwavering in his belief that edtech firms must include educators at the leadership in some capacity.

"It does make a difference when you can speak our language and we feel like you've gone through the trenches like we have," he says, "because you're able to connect not only at that business level but at that teacher level." "[Teachers] have more trust that someone who knows what they're going through can take the input they're seeking... and communicate it back to [the firm]."

He claims that teachers are typically eager to join edtech businesses' ambassador programs, where they may earn a free t-shirt, sticker, or other incentives in exchange for spreading the word on social media or at conferences.

Mendoza says he's been an ambassador for over 20 edtech businesses over the years, but he now declines such invitations. The model's flaw, he claims, is that teacher ambassadors often have little or no control over the product.

"A lot of edtech businesses are leveraging educators as that free voice and advertising as a 'ambassador,'" Mendoza says. "Because we may not get that recognition in our districts, we often go to an edtech business that will offer us a shirt or a sticker." They'll go out there and sell a product, but it might not be the ideal thing for a given teacher or kid."

Even edtech certification programs have lost some of their luster, according to him, since corporations have reduced the bar for receiving these seals of approval in order to attract more instructors to wear their company's name or badge on their social media pages.

Mendoza sees the edtech social media realm as a barrier now that he's been on both ends of edtech implementation—first in the classroom, then as a teacher trainer.

Teachers may want to employ a product that is gaining a lot of attention on the internet without giving a fair shot to district-selected products that may be just as effective or better, he adds. Furthermore, if instructors use a different program on their own, the district loses access to kids' performance data.

"It's not how many tools you use; it's how well you use those tools," he argues.

Investigating Further

So, where do we go from here? As you may expect, there are a few more questions.

We're still curious about how many educators are at the top of edtech businesses. What may their presence—or absence—tell us about how well a technological instrument would function? How do instructors influence the goods that end up in their classrooms and, eventually, in the hands of students?

EdSurge is conducting a poll of edtech businesses to learn more about how instructors affect their products. We intend to gain a better understanding of how edtech companies bring products to market that are utilized by millions of students by studying the data we gather and speaking with industry professionals. Beyond that, we'd like to learn more about the attention they put into their goods so we can understand how they fit in with the resources instructors need to operate their classes successfully. Our findings will be available in the following months.