Back to school : How Edtech startups reinvent user learning experience ?
Holidays are over, it’s back to school time ! Or back to work with new career opportunities. With the arrival of edtech several years ago, it has never been easier to learn and train. In this article, we don’t study Edtech solutions as a simple list of tools, but rather a set of practices based on cognitive psychology to empower users (pupils, students, professionals, or lifelong learners). Indeed, Edtech startups targets different kinds of users and problems to solve (see European startups below).
Psychology behind learning experience
Many psychology theories can be useful to understand how to design the best learning experience as possible. Among them, we choose to focus on self-efficacy and the theory of self-determination.
The concept of self-efficacy was introduced by Bandura in the 80s. According to him, if individuals don’t feel capable of doing, they can’t be motivated to do. He also defined 4 sources of self-efficacy:
- past performances: our past experiences, successes and failures
- social comparison: observing other individuals considered similar to us succeeding or failing at something
- evaluative feedback given by meaningful relatives
- physiological and emotional state when doing something
In their learning environment (material and social), individuals would feel different levels of self-efficacy (low vs. high) to complete tasks. According to these levels and also expected results (low vs. high), individuals would feel more or less engaged and motivated.
Motivation is studied in the self-determination theory developed by Deci and Ryan (1980). In this theory, individuals need autonomy, skills and social belonging to be motivated to do something. Authors defined 6 types of motivation:
How Edtech startups apply these theories?
Playing is learning
In practice, Edtech startups use gameful design (more details here) to create an engaging user learning experience. In other words: with Edtech playing is serious, learning is fun. Let’s see how to use Edtech to improve traditional learning experience in a day !
9:00 / Enhancing user commitment
New year, new discipline. Some users’ are obliged to follow specific classes (K12, college students) and others can choose to learn new things by interest, for their professional path… But sometimes commitment is not strong enough, and many users drop out. That’s the big problem with MOOCs, with low completion rates. MOOCs or Massive Open Online Courses should be a revolution in education access (announced early 2010s). The solution? Ask users’ to commit to tell someone what he learnt! Inspired by Harvard edX MOOCs, the learning experience should begin with a “commitment form”. Indeed, individuals are more committed to do something if the action is made explicit in public. Make users’ say “Mummy, friend, colleague… I enroll… I will learn… so I would be able to…”.
Examples of MOOC platforms: OpenClassroom, edX, Coursera
10:00 / Accessing a variety of learning content and resources in autonomy
Thanks to Edtech, users can access many content : text, audio, video… Using different content formats avoids boredom and, above all, makes it possible to adapt to all users. Children or adults, not everyone learns and retains in the same way. A combination of formats makes learning accessible to a larger number of people, while respecting the needs of each one.
It’s time to use LMS (Learning Management System): this platform where users can find learning resources when they need, where they need. Users are autonomous in their learning experience and feel competent to use the system (if the UX is well thought out!).
Examples of LMS: Moodle, Blackboard, Google Classroom
11:30 / Encouraging social relations
Lunch time is coming and concentration in decreasing… Let’s connect to others! Following SDT and self-efficacy principles, users learn in contact with other users, professors, tutors… because they belong to a group, a community. With Edtech, users can post short videos (for assessment or questions) and received feedbacks in videos (see Flipgrid). They can be followed by renowned professors and professional experts wherever they live. Tutoring is a good way to engage and support users in their learning process (OpenClassroom). Digital or in real life ! Edtech are not really revolutionary, but increase the potential of the users and their motivation. Moreover, opinion leaders can give meaningful lessons according to their experience (Masterclass).
15:00 / Developing skills and autonomy with reinforcement
Assess knowledge can take time and be boring on paper. Interactive quizzes improve assessment time in person or “out-of-class”. In a gameful design, interactive quizzes offer engaging interfaces with symbolic rewards and automatic feedbacks. No more red marks on a copy to point out errors firstly. With edtech UX, every positive effort is highlighted on one hand. On the other hand, errors are followed up to list the points of improvement to be worked on. For an adaptive learning, advise can be given to users to improve their work. Another positive aspect: users are not assessed by human but by tech. It can reduce the fear of being judged and the fear of making mistakes
Examples of interactive quizz: Kahoot!, Wooclap
17:30 / Creating an immersive experience
If there is one place where users can make mistakes over and over again to practice, it is in video games! In an immersive experience, users experiment a flow state: their concentration is high, they lose track of time and are totally focused on the action at hand. Users can follow a mission or explore a world of content… and MAKE mistakes ! Game is over ? Try again… Users always have another chance, they connect with other players, be helped in the game, develop skills and autonomy. Video games experience relies on the previous principles discussed in the article.
Examples of video games: Minecraft, Powerz and so on here.
Other immersive experiences : virtual campus, designed like a metaverse to host every users’ avatars to participate in different aspects of campus life. And virtual reality (VR) (see Immerse) to learn skills in context.
Be careful with Edtech !
This article does not consider differences between open sourced edtech, SaaS solutions… But as other digital services, Edtech faces ethical challenges regarding users’ data (Regan & Jesse, 2019). Indeed, those services are relevant because they use personalized data: learn from the user, to adapt its learning experience. But how to protect users’ privacy and avoid discrimination (e.g. based on its profile)? A personalized interface depends on user data but also on the way the algorithm is thought by the company. Has it deliberately favored one discipline or level for one profile over another? Is this choice really beneficial and ethical (no financial stake behind)? Also, users’ progress is tracked for his own good but how to prevent insane surveillance? How to keep users’ ownership of its data? All these questions should be answered before choosing to use an Edtech service, but also before creating one.
Sources:
Bandura, A., Freeman, W. H., & Lightsey, R. (1999). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control.
Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (1980). Self-determination theory: When mind mediates behavior. The Journal of mind and Behavior, 33–43.
Regan, P. M., & Jesse, J. (2019). Ethical challenges of edtech, big data and personalized learning: Twenty-first century student sorting and tracking. Ethics and Information Technology, 21(3), 167–179.
