5 Key points to predict the future of Edtechs

Education has remained quite the same for hundreds of years — but now technology is rapidly changing this scenario.

With COVID-19 altering our lives in unpredictable and permanent ways, education and training are undergoing a tech revolution, and now Edtechs are at the center of the stage. The digitalization of the education market and the incorporation of new platforms and new ways to access and distribute content to teachers, students and families pushes us to understand how Edtechs are becoming a part of our everyday lives, the challenges they face, and how they are rising to the challenge of helping educate millions of people during quarantines all over the world.

So last April 30 we had a webinar session with leading experts in this area. Marcelo Carrullo— director at Drummond Ventures — and I welcomed our friends Alceu Costa Jr. (Take 5), Felipe Lamounier (StartSe), João Kepler (Bossa Nova Investimentos), Léo Gmeiner (AbStartups/Filho Sem Fila), Marcelo Bernal (Carnegie Brasil) and Raul Picler (Uninter USA) to discuss Edtechs now and in the future.

Here are some of our insights:

1. Edtechs are here to stay

Edtech is not about making books and training manuals available online or teaching classes via videoconference. It is about applying digital technology to deliver a new form of learning architecture, one that benefits from the social reach of the internet to deliver personalized learning and training that can adjust to an individual’s interests and routines using big data analysis to understand the best strategy for a student to advance.

And this changes everything, as Felipe Lamounier has pointed out. He told us about an article from the Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen (read it here) that said that the last major change in education happened in the 1960s when the Montessori method started to be applied in Elementary School. Since then education suffered no major developments, but now COVID-19 has us facing a new case for it—which allows us to rethink about creating streamlines for education in all forms, and Edtech is here to do so, and there’s no going back from it.

2. Edtechs are for everyone

Another insight we’ve discussed during the webinar (and we thank Raul Picler and Marcelo Bernal for bringing it up) is that for many years, education was always tied to some kind of prestige due to its high cost—which was very limiting in terms of allowing people to access it. Edtech came in and showed a way to make it applicable to everyone. Nowadays we have a lot of content out there, but we do not have the means to deliver it to the end-users—whoever the end-user is, be it K-12, High School or University students, or be it professionals. The costs involved in delivering content to students make good education a very limiting experience for many. Edtech will be the actual tool to fix that; however, now the remaining question is how to make it accessible, i.e., making internet connection, computers, tablets, or even smartphones available to every student who will use these tools.

This is an issue Brazil is facing now, with everyone from Kindergarten to Doctorate candidates having to resort to online lessons. With ENEM’s (the Brazilian version of the STA) dates unchanged after two months of classes suspended due to the coronavirus pandemic, we think about the students who don’t have access to the necessary means to attend online classes: the technology is here, but we still lack the even distribution of access to it.

3. Universities will prioritize skill sets instead of encyclopedic knowledge

Universities will have to update their curricula and make profound changes to keep up with the upcoming world. Degrees, government programs, and public education have to be modernized because they are lacking content for many of the skill sets that we’re eventually going to have. We believe that, eventually, long, specific, and detail-oriented curricula will move towards shorter, quick-paced curricula focusing on skill acquisition.

I believe that skill acquisition will have a major impact on current and future education. We will be responsible for helping our children gain skills instead of sending them to University X or Y, and that will push us to be flexible and engaged, as João Kepler mentioned. I think the fact that Edtechs are here proves that the end-user has changed a lot of the engagement aspects, so there’s no way we can deliver content without engagement. 

4. Engaging students is the main challenge ahead

Engaging students in different education levels is an issue that needs to be explored in more detail because a good level of interaction is what guarantees a good learning experience, as Leo and Alceu have mentioned. With no education specialists or teachers around to supervise lessons or even to help students deal with distractions and doubts, families need to learn how to make the best out of online learning experiences and make the end-users engage with the possibilities Edtechs have to offer.

5. How to survive in the Edtech market

Edtechs initiatives that will survive are the ones that can present a good, structured plan to make education accessible to everyone instead of offering easy solutions that are not sustainable in the long run. This unexpected situation we are facing now, with all students attending online classes only, has given rise to many low-quality Edtech programs, but only the ones who offer actual solutions will manage to still make a difference after the quarantines are over.

Edtechs are transforming the future of Education in terms of how it is resourced, taught, and consumed. As it changes the traditional architecture of education, Edtechs can ensure efficiency, lower costs, and democratize access. I highly recommend you watch our webinar and share your thoughts about it. I’m looking forward to hearing from you, so join our conversation!

Have a great day,

Bruno Drummond