7 ms·

Guidelines for Edtech Products

85 points by dwynings 10y ago

ayushgta 10y ago
Weird, I don't see any mention of accessibility.
- rhizome 10y ago
  I've been working with an edtech client for the past 5 years and accessibility is something I've had to push, if not slip into my hours marked for other things. Of course, my guy is kind of an idea guy who doesn't seem to want to tap into the larger edtech space (and thus funding, etc.), but as far as development priorities it hasn't seemed to even be on the radar. Which is weird to me, but I can't do a ton about it.
- edtech-dev 10y ago
  This is definitely an area the Feds have been stepping up enforcement of lately. A good search to get started is something like "ed.gov ocr settlement".
- gnicholas 10y ago
  Yep, even well-known (and extraordinarily well-funded) edtech companies have zero accessibility features in their products. For example, there is a popular ELA app that offer a single (small) font size, and that ignores the iOS accessibility setting for increased font size. In many cases, I think the devs figure they'll rely on whatever accessibility features are enabled by the device (TTS, zoom, etc.), but in many cases these features are not sufficient—or don't even work in the app/platform.
  - garysieling 10y ago
    Do you think this is caused by selling directly to institutions, rather than the consumers of the application? I know there are a few products oriented around specific accessibility features that would be sold directly to the people who need them (e.g. tty devices), but it seems the only progress I've seen in this area in software projects was for §508 compliance.
    - gnicholas 10y ago
      This was a product that is sold largely to institutions, so that could be the issue. Big companies go after big markets, and they tend to view accessibility as niche (and therefore not worth their time). While a particular need might be niche (blindness = .1% of children), when you add up all accessibility needs, it's actually a large chunk of the student population (at least 20%) that gets left out. I think some edtech companies improperly equate accessibility with special education and write it off as a separate (smaller) market. But the point of accommodations, in many cases, is that many kids can be taught alongside their peers in general ed classes—if they get the right accommodations. For example, a kid with bad eyesight has an accessibility need (glasses, or if he can't afford them large text). He is not someone who needs to go to a separate special education class. Unfortunately, the lack of accessibility in popular edtech solutions means that kids like this are not able to be served in a gen-ed classroom. This leads to stigmatization and lower achievement.
arsalanb 10y ago
This is fantastic. But this sounds like it's mostly intended for startups at an early/mid stage. What I mean is companies who already run a monopoly are more likely, in my opinion, to overlook these guidelines.
- tyre 10y ago
  Those companies are likely not applying to YC.
  - arsalanb 10y ago
    Does it matter? The purpose of these guidelines IMO is to improve the standards of EdTech products and perhaps the value they create for education as a whole.
markjspivey 10y ago
Would love to see similar for corporate side of learning and development, rather than just academic side.
protomyth 10y ago
As to data privacy, if one of your customers is on a reservation then you really should check to see what the data rules are for that reservation. Making an assumption that only the state and/or federal rules are in effect could be costly.
educationcto 10y ago
I'm CTO of an edtech company and I'm quite excited to see this list- outside of specialist VCs like Reach and Learn Capital, the typical level of understanding of these nuances by investors is shallow. This will up the game. However there is one glaring absence: I don't see a recommendation to show provable academic results. You could follow all of these snd still have an ineffective product that doesn't actually advance student learning. Hopefully that will change as schools demand more data driven results from their vendors.
- gnicholas 10y ago
  Yeah, I was surprised when I talked with the CTO of a large (raised tens of millions) edtech company and learned that they had done zero work on measuring efficacy for their adaptive learning solution. They literally had no evidence that their platform increased student learning in any way. To their credit, they were thinking about creating a team to look into this.
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    I've seen something like this in the marketing industry. I think it happens when success of a company depends not on the efficacy of their solution, but their ability to convince people it works. When customers can't tell whether the solution works or not (or when they can't tell if the metrics you present them are reliable or relevant in any way), efficacy stops being a variable in the business.
    - gnicholas 10y ago
      Exactly, and I think people view any educational system that is adaptive as necessarily effective. It may be that this is often true, but of course it depends on the specifics and the way it's used in the classroom. I think this company's strategy was to grab market share with a free product, then start charging for more and more features. By the time people go to pay, they forget that they never actually checked to see if the free product was actually effective in any way.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
KeatonDunsford 10y ago
To be honest, I'm extremely disappointed in these guidelines, given that this is coming from YC. Why? They divert focus away from doing whatever it takes to make something incredible for users: underserved students in a failing system that's becoming exponentially costly and disconnected from our modern society. Even if that means challenging convention and breaking some rules. Think of where Airbnb, Uber and Bitcoin would be if they had stuck to standards, to name a few big examples. This post goes completely against the "naughtiness" YC (PG) has always looked for in founders. For some reason edtech to date has been an exception to this rule. Disclaimer: I just submitted a YC W2017 nonprofit application as the solo-founder of Bloom, a new education system powered by software. I'm not sure if this comment will help or hurt me if I get responses, but I think something needs to be said. I put my app up on Dropbox for you to check out if interested. Still searching for a great cofounder. If this is an issue you really care about, feel free to DM me on Twitter. I'll fly out anywhere. Bloom YC W2017 application: https://www.dropbox.com/s/1szvs6o4qs15djj/KD%20%26%20Bloom%20profiles.pdf?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/1szvs6o4qs15djj/KD%20%26%20Bloom%2... The cost efficiencies of conventional public and private education today are abysmal. Teachers don't scale. Campuses don't either and are physically isolating. And Common Core, courses, grades, tests, and degrees are arbitrary practices that could by replaced by something completely different, something designed for the digital age. Something not only better than public schools, the most prestigious private prep schools and the Harvards and Stanfords, but something that could scale to everyone in the best and worst of areas of the world. Education is a lifelong right that everyone clearly needs and deserves as technology continues to advance exponentially. Yet for some reason, edtech hasn't been able to look beyond the current state of things and build something completely new. There isn't an "Uber" or "Bitcoin" of edtech. And I believe the reason why is solely because of posts like this: advice that places too much importance on working with inefficient systems, industry best practices, laws and trying to fix a broken system instead of ignoring all of that unimportant stuff to just focus on users and build a new one from scratch through software. As a result, current edtech solutions are fragmented, inflexible, slow, general and boring, just like physical schools. So what will education look like in the future? In my opinion, it will be a cohesive system that’s modular, peer-to-peer and mobile. That’s the only way an edtech platform can both scale to ->7.5 billion users and support arbitrary specializations adaptable to the future. I think a good parallel to the approach I'm talking about is what Urbit has been trying to do to re-decentralize the Internet. Instead of trying to solve each problem one at a time, they've built a cohesive system from scratch on top of the old, broken Internet, which solves all of its problems in one go. This is the approach I think edtech needs to take, and ignore everything else. Yes, clear product vision and implementation ease are important for edtech startups. But you could say the same about Uber and Airbnb. Yes, viral current content is important. But you could say the same about Netflix and Twitch. Yes, flexible, optimized pricing is important. But that can be solved in other creative ways. Yes, exceptional customer support, respect for privacy and organization transparency are vital, but that's expected of any great YC startup. I'm just shocked software hasn't eaten the education system yet, because ultimately the quality of kids' entire lives are on the line. I would know.
kylelibra 10y ago
Seems like there is an opportunity for a company to be the certification layer verifying companies do these things and do them in a consistent way.
garysieling 10y ago
Are products used by public libraries considered "edtech", or is there a separate set of terminology?
- tyre 10y ago
  Not edtech, govtech. Public libraries are run by local government municipalities and are generally a department (Libraries, not each individual library) within a city. (We work with local governments, including libraries.)
  - garysieling 10y ago
    Awesome, thanks. I've seen a couple articles that referenced librarians and edtech together, but this gives me something else to look for.
- gnicholas 10y ago
  There's overlap, at least in CA. My company has a license with the CA public library system, which includes some educational libraries. Libraries also perform educational functions—our tools are used by literacy tutors in libraries, in much the same way that they are used by teachers/students in classrooms. So for some products, these guidelines are probably relevant, but for other (e.g., infrastructure) products they're probably much less relevant.
  - garysieling 10y ago
    That helps, thanks!
revelation 10y ago
When exporting grade level data, denote kindergarten with a number 0 (zero), not a letter K, and denote transitional kindergarten with -1 (negative one). What. What on earth is this set of "guidelines". Is there a color scheme recommendation somewhere in here, too?
Fanndango 10y ago
This is a fantastic list, but having experienced many interactions with districts and schools that wanted free pilots over the last 15 years, I would strongly encourage any company to insist on some fee associated with the pilot, even if discounted (assuming you are not doing a freemium model). Pilots don't succeed unless district and school staff are committed and provide the necessary implementation support. In Edtech, your success is critically dependent on effectively engaging with the people using your technology. In many cases, there are people you need to engage who were not part of the decision making process and may even be annoyed that they have to squeeze in yet another one of a zillion initiatives on their plate (perhaps true in any B2B but 10X true in Education). Charging money increases the likelihood that district staff will take your product seriously and put the resources and time behind it that will greatly increase the odds of success. Free pilots are especially tempting in the early days when you are trying to prove yourself, but if your product is truly valuable, a couple successful reference implementations will far outweigh a bunch of fizzled pilots with ambiguous outcomes. Charging for the pilot also helps you weed out schools and districts that are not really serious about solving the problem you solve. Especially in the early days, you want to find those evangelists that will go to bat for you within their bureaucracy and with their more risk averse peers in the market. The serious ones will find the money if you're product is the real deal. Just my two cents based on what I've seen. Never had a single free pilot turn into a school or district sale. For my company, a strong full-price implementation at one or two schools in the district laid solid groundwork for a full-price district deal down the road.
xiaoma 10y ago
As someone whose career has revolved around education, I have to say I'm a bit disappointed with these guidelines. The focus is entirely on formal schooling as opposed to education. The problem is that "widely accepted standards", especially in the US are sub-optimal in terms of educational outcome. Even if Common Core were great (which is not the case), continuing to improve pedagogy and curriculum should be ongoing goals. Similarly, why push people to use a closed system such as Lexile® for rating the difficulty of reading material instead of something open? On an even more basic level, should edtech offerings be limited to children living in the US at all? I would say no. Most Americans aren't children and most humans aren't Americans.
- ht_th 10y ago
  Agreed. And I would even go a step further. Most often ed (tech) companies focus on education as opposed to learning. It is all about efficiency, organization, administration, and improving conventional education or schooling processes rather than improving the learning processes of the student.
dasmoth 10y ago
This doesn't really seem to cover products aimed at homeschoolers or independent learners at all -- are those considered a separate field from "edtech"? And/or are these things YC aren't terribly interested in?
- DasIch 10y ago
  That market is small to non-existent. If you're creating a startup that doesn't seem like the audience you want to focus on, at least not at first.
  - dasmoth 10y ago
    Government stats [1] suggest well over a million homeschooled children in the US. This is towards the low end of various estimates out there. Certainly not non-existent. It varies a lot from country to country, but the YC guidelines are clearly US-centric, and I don't think you can write homeschooling off there. [1] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d13/tables/dt13_206.10.asp?current=yes https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d13/tables/dt13_206.10.a...
    - DasIch 10y ago
      This is still not that many compared to the children going to school. Additionally that's a very heterogenous group, homeschooling their children for a variety of different reasons, using different approaches following different curricula. There is certainly space for companies who want to sell educational products and there are companies already doing so. What that means though is that you already have quite a bit of competition in a market that you're not going to completely capture. If this is your target audience you have a relatively low ceiling and you won't be able to push past it. Additionally you can't scale to different countries or even states that easily. You need different materials to account for different languages, cultures and curricula. You need to account for regulation and a sales teams to approach the various homeschooling groups.
  - garysieling 10y ago
    Aren't there specialty publishers for home schooling? I was home-schooled for a year as a kid, and we used to get catalogs of specialty curriculum (classical education in greek, latin, religious books, etc). Perhaps not material for a "start-up", but there is definitely a very enthusiastic customer base.

85 points by dwynings 10y ago

ayushgta 10y ago

Weird, I don't see any mention of accessibility.

rhizome 10y ago
I've been working with an edtech client for the past 5 years and accessibility is something I've had to push, if not slip into my hours marked for other things. Of course, my guy is kind of an idea guy who doesn't seem to want to tap into the larger edtech space (and thus funding, etc.), but as far as development priorities it hasn't seemed to even be on the radar. Which is weird to me, but I can't do a ton about it.
edtech-dev 10y ago
This is definitely an area the Feds have been stepping up enforcement of lately. A good search to get started is something like "ed.gov ocr settlement".
gnicholas 10y ago
Yep, even well-known (and extraordinarily well-funded) edtech companies have zero accessibility features in their products. For example, there is a popular ELA app that offer a single (small) font size, and that ignores the iOS accessibility setting for increased font size. In many cases, I think the devs figure they'll rely on whatever accessibility features are enabled by the device (TTS, zoom, etc.), but in many cases these features are not sufficient—or don't even work in the app/platform.
- garysieling 10y ago
  Do you think this is caused by selling directly to institutions, rather than the consumers of the application? I know there are a few products oriented around specific accessibility features that would be sold directly to the people who need them (e.g. tty devices), but it seems the only progress I've seen in this area in software projects was for §508 compliance.
  - gnicholas 10y ago
    This was a product that is sold largely to institutions, so that could be the issue. Big companies go after big markets, and they tend to view accessibility as niche (and therefore not worth their time). While a particular need might be niche (blindness = .1% of children), when you add up all accessibility needs, it's actually a large chunk of the student population (at least 20%) that gets left out. I think some edtech companies improperly equate accessibility with special education and write it off as a separate (smaller) market. But the point of accommodations, in many cases, is that many kids can be taught alongside their peers in general ed classes—if they get the right accommodations. For example, a kid with bad eyesight has an accessibility need (glasses, or if he can't afford them large text). He is not someone who needs to go to a separate special education class. Unfortunately, the lack of accessibility in popular edtech solutions means that kids like this are not able to be served in a gen-ed classroom. This leads to stigmatization and lower achievement.

arsalanb 10y ago

This is fantastic. But this sounds like it's mostly intended for startups at an early/mid stage. What I mean is companies who already run a monopoly are more likely, in my opinion, to overlook these guidelines.

tyre 10y ago
Those companies are likely not applying to YC.
- arsalanb 10y ago
  Does it matter? The purpose of these guidelines IMO is to improve the standards of EdTech products and perhaps the value they create for education as a whole.

markjspivey 10y ago

Would love to see similar for corporate side of learning and development, rather than just academic side.

protomyth 10y ago

As to data privacy, if one of your customers is on a reservation then you really should check to see what the data rules are for that reservation. Making an assumption that only the state and/or federal rules are in effect could be costly.

educationcto 10y ago

I'm CTO of an edtech company and I'm quite excited to see this list- outside of specialist VCs like Reach and Learn Capital, the typical level of understanding of these nuances by investors is shallow. This will up the game. However there is one glaring absence: I don't see a recommendation to show provable academic results. You could follow all of these snd still have an ineffective product that doesn't actually advance student learning. Hopefully that will change as schools demand more data driven results from their vendors.

gnicholas 10y ago
Yeah, I was surprised when I talked with the CTO of a large (raised tens of millions) edtech company and learned that they had done zero work on measuring efficacy for their adaptive learning solution. They literally had no evidence that their platform increased student learning in any way. To their credit, they were thinking about creating a team to look into this.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  I've seen something like this in the marketing industry. I think it happens when success of a company depends not on the efficacy of their solution, but their ability to convince people it works. When customers can't tell whether the solution works or not (or when they can't tell if the metrics you present them are reliable or relevant in any way), efficacy stops being a variable in the business.
  - gnicholas 10y ago
    Exactly, and I think people view any educational system that is adaptive as necessarily effective. It may be that this is often true, but of course it depends on the specifics and the way it's used in the classroom. I think this company's strategy was to grab market share with a free product, then start charging for more and more features. By the time people go to pay, they forget that they never actually checked to see if the free product was actually effective in any way.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

KeatonDunsford 10y ago

To be honest, I'm extremely disappointed in these guidelines, given that this is coming from YC. Why? They divert focus away from doing whatever it takes to make something incredible for users: underserved students in a failing system that's becoming exponentially costly and disconnected from our modern society. Even if that means challenging convention and breaking some rules. Think of where Airbnb, Uber and Bitcoin would be if they had stuck to standards, to name a few big examples. This post goes completely against the "naughtiness" YC (PG) has always looked for in founders. For some reason edtech to date has been an exception to this rule. Disclaimer: I just submitted a YC W2017 nonprofit application as the solo-founder of Bloom, a new education system powered by software. I'm not sure if this comment will help or hurt me if I get responses, but I think something needs to be said. I put my app up on Dropbox for you to check out if interested. Still searching for a great cofounder. If this is an issue you really care about, feel free to DM me on Twitter. I'll fly out anywhere. Bloom YC W2017 application: https://www.dropbox.com/s/1szvs6o4qs15djj/KD%20%26%20Bloom%20profiles.pdf?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/1szvs6o4qs15djj/KD%20%26%20Bloom%2... The cost efficiencies of conventional public and private education today are abysmal. Teachers don't scale. Campuses don't either and are physically isolating. And Common Core, courses, grades, tests, and degrees are arbitrary practices that could by replaced by something completely different, something designed for the digital age. Something not only better than public schools, the most prestigious private prep schools and the Harvards and Stanfords, but something that could scale to everyone in the best and worst of areas of the world. Education is a lifelong right that everyone clearly needs and deserves as technology continues to advance exponentially. Yet for some reason, edtech hasn't been able to look beyond the current state of things and build something completely new. There isn't an "Uber" or "Bitcoin" of edtech. And I believe the reason why is solely because of posts like this: advice that places too much importance on working with inefficient systems, industry best practices, laws and trying to fix a broken system instead of ignoring all of that unimportant stuff to just focus on users and build a new one from scratch through software. As a result, current edtech solutions are fragmented, inflexible, slow, general and boring, just like physical schools. So what will education look like in the future? In my opinion, it will be a cohesive system that’s modular, peer-to-peer and mobile. That’s the only way an edtech platform can both scale to ->7.5 billion users and support arbitrary specializations adaptable to the future. I think a good parallel to the approach I'm talking about is what Urbit has been trying to do to re-decentralize the Internet. Instead of trying to solve each problem one at a time, they've built a cohesive system from scratch on top of the old, broken Internet, which solves all of its problems in one go. This is the approach I think edtech needs to take, and ignore everything else. Yes, clear product vision and implementation ease are important for edtech startups. But you could say the same about Uber and Airbnb. Yes, viral current content is important. But you could say the same about Netflix and Twitch. Yes, flexible, optimized pricing is important. But that can be solved in other creative ways. Yes, exceptional customer support, respect for privacy and organization transparency are vital, but that's expected of any great YC startup. I'm just shocked software hasn't eaten the education system yet, because ultimately the quality of kids' entire lives are on the line. I would know.

kylelibra 10y ago

Seems like there is an opportunity for a company to be the certification layer verifying companies do these things and do them in a consistent way.

garysieling 10y ago

Are products used by public libraries considered "edtech", or is there a separate set of terminology?

tyre 10y ago
Not edtech, govtech. Public libraries are run by local government municipalities and are generally a department (Libraries, not each individual library) within a city. (We work with local governments, including libraries.)
- garysieling 10y ago
  Awesome, thanks. I've seen a couple articles that referenced librarians and edtech together, but this gives me something else to look for.
gnicholas 10y ago
There's overlap, at least in CA. My company has a license with the CA public library system, which includes some educational libraries. Libraries also perform educational functions—our tools are used by literacy tutors in libraries, in much the same way that they are used by teachers/students in classrooms. So for some products, these guidelines are probably relevant, but for other (e.g., infrastructure) products they're probably much less relevant.
- garysieling 10y ago
  That helps, thanks!

revelation 10y ago

When exporting grade level data, denote kindergarten with a number 0 (zero), not a letter K, and denote transitional kindergarten with -1 (negative one). What. What on earth is this set of "guidelines". Is there a color scheme recommendation somewhere in here, too?

Fanndango 10y ago

This is a fantastic list, but having experienced many interactions with districts and schools that wanted free pilots over the last 15 years, I would strongly encourage any company to insist on some fee associated with the pilot, even if discounted (assuming you are not doing a freemium model). Pilots don't succeed unless district and school staff are committed and provide the necessary implementation support. In Edtech, your success is critically dependent on effectively engaging with the people using your technology. In many cases, there are people you need to engage who were not part of the decision making process and may even be annoyed that they have to squeeze in yet another one of a zillion initiatives on their plate (perhaps true in any B2B but 10X true in Education). Charging money increases the likelihood that district staff will take your product seriously and put the resources and time behind it that will greatly increase the odds of success. Free pilots are especially tempting in the early days when you are trying to prove yourself, but if your product is truly valuable, a couple successful reference implementations will far outweigh a bunch of fizzled pilots with ambiguous outcomes. Charging for the pilot also helps you weed out schools and districts that are not really serious about solving the problem you solve. Especially in the early days, you want to find those evangelists that will go to bat for you within their bureaucracy and with their more risk averse peers in the market. The serious ones will find the money if you're product is the real deal. Just my two cents based on what I've seen. Never had a single free pilot turn into a school or district sale. For my company, a strong full-price implementation at one or two schools in the district laid solid groundwork for a full-price district deal down the road.

xiaoma 10y ago

As someone whose career has revolved around education, I have to say I'm a bit disappointed with these guidelines. The focus is entirely on formal schooling as opposed to education. The problem is that "widely accepted standards", especially in the US are sub-optimal in terms of educational outcome. Even if Common Core were great (which is not the case), continuing to improve pedagogy and curriculum should be ongoing goals. Similarly, why push people to use a closed system such as Lexile® for rating the difficulty of reading material instead of something open? On an even more basic level, should edtech offerings be limited to children living in the US at all? I would say no. Most Americans aren't children and most humans aren't Americans.

ht_th 10y ago
Agreed. And I would even go a step further. Most often ed (tech) companies focus on education as opposed to learning. It is all about efficiency, organization, administration, and improving conventional education or schooling processes rather than improving the learning processes of the student.

dasmoth 10y ago

This doesn't really seem to cover products aimed at homeschoolers or independent learners at all -- are those considered a separate field from "edtech"? And/or are these things YC aren't terribly interested in?

DasIch 10y ago
That market is small to non-existent. If you're creating a startup that doesn't seem like the audience you want to focus on, at least not at first.
- dasmoth 10y ago
  Government stats [1] suggest well over a million homeschooled children in the US. This is towards the low end of various estimates out there. Certainly not non-existent. It varies a lot from country to country, but the YC guidelines are clearly US-centric, and I don't think you can write homeschooling off there. [1] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d13/tables/dt13_206.10.asp?current=yes https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d13/tables/dt13_206.10.a...
  - DasIch 10y ago
    This is still not that many compared to the children going to school. Additionally that's a very heterogenous group, homeschooling their children for a variety of different reasons, using different approaches following different curricula. There is certainly space for companies who want to sell educational products and there are companies already doing so. What that means though is that you already have quite a bit of competition in a market that you're not going to completely capture. If this is your target audience you have a relatively low ceiling and you won't be able to push past it. Additionally you can't scale to different countries or even states that easily. You need different materials to account for different languages, cultures and curricula. You need to account for regulation and a sales teams to approach the various homeschooling groups.
- garysieling 10y ago
  Aren't there specialty publishers for home schooling? I was home-schooled for a year as a kid, and we used to get catalogs of specialty curriculum (classical education in greek, latin, religious books, etc). Perhaps not material for a "start-up", but there is definitely a very enthusiastic customer base.