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Deep customer knowledge and real-world product testing are valuable to founders in any industry. In education, with numerous classroom variables and the high stakes of learner success, these elements take on new levels of importance, making EdTech development particularly challenging.
User testing in education often requires careful planning and deep insights into learning science. The good news is that more faculty members and educators are open to partnering with EdTech companies to test products and gain access to more effective, usable, and desirable solutions.
We’ve invested in over 20 EdTech companies through our EdTech Fund and Accelerator and partnered with many others to conduct research during product development and design. In those engagements, we’ve learned lessons that EdTech founders can use to build stronger products and refine their user testing process.
Flourish Labs: Insights into Broadening Reach
Flourish Labs helps address the mental health crisis in higher education by training college students to be peer supporters. The training required of the peer supporters is significant, with most states requiring a minimum of 40 hours of instruction. At its launch, Flourish Labs partnered with a third-party provider to deliver the training in person. As the company scaled, it wanted to give more students the opportunity to be trained. They recognized that busy schedules and a diverse geographic reach made face-to-face training less efficient. As part of our investment in Flourish Labs, we worked with the team to develop an online, competency-based program. By making the shift to online training and using a CBE model, Flourish Labs broadened access to the peer support training program.
Key Takeaway: Evolving key features of a product, such as delivery format, can help EdTech companies expand their reach, both in terms of market and geographic coverage, leading to greater growth.
KnowFully: Insights into Reaching New Demographics
Users of a product can evolve over time. KnowFully, an EdTech company recognized for its engaging and innovative learning solutions, provides opportunities for workers in the accounting, finance, and healthcare sectors to gain credentials, fulfill credit hour requirements, and stay updated on industry trends. Customer feedback revealed a desire to use KnowFully to attract and train younger employees. Consequently, KnowFully engaged us to assist in pivoting toward this younger audience. We aided in developing a more interactive format, incorporating hands-on learning experiences, and streamlining the content development process.
Key Takeaway: Maintaining a strong customer feedback cycle allows EdTech founders to stay apprised of changing demographics and needs.
Boost: Insights into School Technology Culture
Boost, an educational app designed to nudge students to complete assignments, is aimed at being a resource educators could use to motivate students. The company wanted to test the efficacy of its app in a real-life setting and worked with us to do so in middle and high schools. We learned that while students found the tool easy and fun to use, many missed the important notifications and motivational messages sent to their phones. Some students missed the messages due to school policies restricting device access during the day, while others, particularly middle school students, did not receive the notifications because they did not have a phone. The company has since closed.
Key Takeaway: EdTech companies need to understand both user preferences and needs as well as the rules, regulations, and policies of education institutions.
SkillCycle (formerly GoCoach): Insights into Taking a Whole-Person Approach
SkillCycle (formerly GoCoach) was interested in understanding how students use career coaching and guidance resources to improve the experience. They engaged us to explore student motivations for full use of these services. We learned that students rarely use career services at their institution. The 2023 College Innovation Network (CIN) EdTech Student Survey corroborated this, showing only one in three students accessed online career services and one in four used in-person career services. Additionally, our findings with SkillCycle indicated that students, even those currently employed, typically do not consider career development until after completing their courses. With busy lives filled with school, work, and caretaking responsibilities, seeking out career coaching felt like an additional burden. Our research concluded that any career coaching services must clearly articulate the benefits of career coaching, tailor messages for individual student needs, and be delivered in a way that makes it easy for students to participate, such as embedding it in coursework.
Key Takeaway: Students have busy lives outside of school. Considering their entire life, including job and family responsibilities, and how they view their current goals can help EdTech founders understand limitations on product interest and use.
WGU Labs: Insights into Preferences for the Familiar
WGU Labs develops small-scale pilots through our Solutions Lab initiative. The pilots are an opportunity to understand the impact of specific tools or approaches before an institution invests in large-scale adoption. In one pilot, we tested the effectiveness of an AI chatbot trained in educational material. During the first phase, we focused on faculty, however, adoption and usage of the tool were low. For the second phase of the pilot, we engaged students. To reduce adoption barriers, we switched from a relatively unfamiliar AI chatbot to ChatGPT Team, giving students unlimited access to the chatbot, along with other GPTs trained on open-source content specific to the course. Adoption improved when we provided this familiar tool.
Key Takeaway: All people form habits that are difficult to change. Developing EdTech based on a familiar model or technology may be an easier entry point than developing something new.
Unmudl: Insights into Institutional Context
Community colleges have unique learner contexts and require specific tools that understand those environments. Unmudl, a Skills-to-Jobs™ Marketplace, recognized that need as they pursued a mission to develop paths to learning and employment while reducing time, cost, and uncertainty for working adults. To closely collaborate with the community colleges it serves, Unmudl created the Unmudl Steering Council (USC), consisting of the presidents of Foundation Colleges. The USC leads Unmudl’s work by providing insights into how to best support the working learner, which then become features in the company’s product roadmap.
Key Takeaway: Unmudl is distinct from other online program managers, such as Coursera or Udemy, because it was developed by community colleges with specific learners in mind. EdTech companies need to understand the different contexts, motivations, and goals of learners at different institution types and narrowly focus on their target audience to achieve widespread adoption.
Developing, testing, and pivoting are crucial for startup success. These lessons underscore the need to commit to understanding learners and their educational contexts. Developing processes to collect customer and user insights, conducting pilot studies, and establishing robust feedback mechanisms are essential strategies. These practices provide EdTech founders with the insights necessary to develop robust solutions and enhance the educational landscape.
