Grade shock: Edtech businesses failed on Student Behaviour 101

Investment companies poured millions into these businesses. Some edtech entrepreneurs became millionaires in a short span of time. But for the past few months, things have been different. We hear very little positive news about edtech firms. 

At least one prominent edtech enterprise is on the verge of insolvency. How did this industry that promised so much so recently reach this level of despondency?

Edtech companies had several advantages over the traditional ways of imparting education in a classroom. They held the potential of huge scale. They could reach millions of learners around the world. Another superiority was their quality of content. 

Also read: Edtech funding crisis sucks in two-decade-old firm and its thousands of students

While lessons in most classrooms were delivered by ordinary teachers, edtech lessons could be delivered by eminent teachers of each subject. And instead of concepts being explained by using chalk sketches on a blackboard, the audiovisual technology-aided content developed by edtech companies was superior.

Given the above, the present situation of the edtech business has caught many by surprise. But the irony of it is that the very factors that made the model a success have also contributed to its decline. Edtech industry leaders, basking in all the hype around their business prospects, did not take any steps to alleviate the weaknesses that were building up, alongside their successes.

Let us take the ease of accessibility of edtech content. These digital packages could be run in a smart classroom, on one’s personal computer or even on one’s smartphone. As compared to traditional education, where the student must travel a long distance to school and spend most of the day in a classroom, edtech provides access to learning anywhere, anytime. 

This freedom to learn is useful, even though it is supplementary to regular schooling towards a secondary certificate. Edtech, as an educational option, is alluring. But this very advantage provided by digital technology has also contributed to its post-pandemic undoing.

It is a basic principle of human behaviour that the effort one puts into any activity is directly proportional to the commitment one has towards its outcome. In the traditional educational system, the student endures a lot of pain to travel all the way to school, sit in an assigned spot in a classroom throughout the day, and then travel back home in the evening. 

But the truth is that these painful efforts that students are forced to undertake non-consciously increase their commitment to the learning they receive in a classroom.

Also read: Edtechs have a reality check moment. Will they survive it?

With school unavoidable, a lack of commitment to online learning is evident in the huge number of students dropping out almost immediately after joining an online course. 

While edtech majors have clearly developed well-recognized brands, and saw waves of sign-ups in their boom phase, they seem to have paid little attention to what generates brand loyalty. Real-world points of convergence, for example, can make a substantial difference (as in the case of religious pilgrimage spots).

A physical classroom, however dilapidated it is, has an environment of learning. Benches, blackboards and all the rest form a shared experience for students who converge here in a learning context. This air is not easy to create even in the poshest study room of an individual learner. 

Edtech companies provide content even on smartphones, which are usually fun devices for teenagers that do not host a studious environment. Context is a big determinant of human behaviour. Edtech firms, while developing their products, seem to have wholly ignored the important role of context in generating particular behaviours.

Integral to learning is an authority figure who controls the process of imparting of knowledge. In the traditional education system, even the teacher in a village school can play this role. But edtech has no such figure who can nudge students to learn. 

In the edtech world, the onus to learn rests entirely on the shoulders of the individual learner. While the student has the freedom to learn as one pleases, it does not always work out well. So here is another irony. 

The teenage brain has a fully active reward system, but the cortical areas that control important behaviours are not yet fully developed. The freedom to learn as and when one pleases can be a perfect recipe for learning little, if anything.

Also read: Byju’s bankrupt: Is the edtech crisis deepening?

The present fate of edtech businesses holds many lessons for other technology companies. Achieving scale is a laudable business objective. But achieving scale should not be at the cost of sacrificing the core objective. 

Anywhere anytime effortless learning, which made edtech attractive, cannot match the painstaking learning processes of a regular school. As a supplementary aid, the dedicated-use levels it can achieve are also limited.

There is a mistaken belief in the technology world that once a technologically superior product is created, its adoption is an automatic outcome. Human behaviour is often overlooked. While developing tech products, one should take into consideration not just the benefits of the technology for humans, but even the negative emotions of those affected by it. 

Tech leaders should not brush these aside as ‘soft’ or ‘emotional’ issues. Ideally, these concerns should be addressed at the very design stage of every technology.

The success of any technology product is partly determined by the understanding its creator has of all the human behaviours around that offering. That is the biggest lesson taught by the slide in the fortunes of edtech companies.