Guest Post: Learning is the Product

Marion Trigodet on how EdTech can benefit from greater mutual understanding between educators and technologists.

👋 Matt here: In my first guest post, the former Head of Learning for OpenClassrooms and Tomorrows University Marion Trigodet explores the need to bring together the worlds of teachers/educators and technologists/product people and the opportunities it creates to build more successful learning experiences.

She reflects on her own journey and offers some thoughtful advice on how to bridge this often tricky cultural divide.

I’m delighted that Marion is also my partner in building the EdTech Fellowship community where we are creating a space to engage in these conversations.

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I’ve been lucky enough to work with many people who are extremely passionate about the subject of learning.

But so often it’s a real challenge to align on “simple” questions such as :

• What’s the product?

• Who is our audience?

• What’s our mission?

I believe that this is especially hard in EdTech where often Learning and Tech/Product teams are often siloed.

I started my career as a Teacher.

Then I became a Learning Designer.

And now I’m a Learning Product Leader.

Each time, I decided to jump the fence and discover a new job, it was because I was frustrated. Yet frustration brings action, right?

I became a teacher because I was a frustrated student. A student who received a dozens of PDFs and little other guidance than an appointment for the exam 6 months later while doing “distance learning”.

Then, I got frustrated as a Teacher. I had to teach curriculums that weren’t focusing on my learners’ main challenges.

Then got frustrated as a Learning Designer. This time it was because the product features and platform development were not aligned with learner needs and backed by learning science.

My mission is now to build bridges and reduce the gap.

So how do we do that?

EdTech = Education + Tech?

The very word “EdTech”, with its capitalised T, already hints at this tension: Education + Tech. Two separate worlds meeting each other, often with electrical storms in the middle.

If you were being harsh, you might say it resembles a 'Clash of Clans' scenario.

Between techno-phobia and techno-centricity: the beautiful world of EdTech.

On one side, the educators: teachers, educators, parents and government!

These people are generally are passionate about their learners’ success… yet lack digital literacy and technology competencies. Sometimes, they express fear about the use of technology, either thinking it could replace them or hurt their kids.

On the other side, the techies: software engineers, AI aficionados and entrepreneurs!

These people are digitally fluent and see the potential of doing tech for good... yet often come with an agenda to “fix education” with apps, AI and VR. This can be seen as arrogant and by promoting lines like “learning should only be fun & effortless, take 5 minutes and provide badges!” it can suggest a lack of understanding about what actually helps people to learn.

Of course, it’s a caricature and I’m deliberately over schematising. There are EdTech entrepreneurs who are pedagogy fluent. And there are teachers who have been capably implementing tech in their classrooms since the very beginning.

But so often, this divide exists to greater or lesser extents.

Education by Tech? Tech for Education? Tech Education?

One of the reasons is that the definition of ‘EdTech’ is unclear.

In the conversations I have with professionals working in this world, I’ve realised the problem is that people are often unclear or have different perspectives on what we’re trying to do.

Is it about:

• Bringing technology systems to learning and education?

• Supporting and improving education with technology?

• Teaching technology and digital skills?

Or a mix of the three? A continuum where tech enablement, learning efficiency and digital literacy sit comfortably together at the same round table. This broad church is something that I would like to be part of.

The key is making sure everyone in your team, has a shared understanding.

The product is learning. And learning is a product

Next you need to bring together both a product mindset and learning science.

There are two mental framings that help to do this:

1. The Product is Learning. Not the app, not the hardware nor the platform. We are building a learning experience for people to improve their life. That’s what we sell.

2. Learning is a Product. We can leverage product methodologies and tools to improve our learning experience.

And before anyone gets mad about the word ‘product’ being applied to education, I’d echo Matt’s observation that the secondary definition of the word ‘product’ is helpful: "A result obtained from experiencing something.” This should help heal some wounds.

The product is learning

To dig a bit deeper, here are some suggestions as to how this framing can help you be successful. I’ve also written follow up articles about each.

1. We need to take more field trips to see what learners and educators are already trying to do. I’ve written more about this here.

2. The product strategy needs to be driven by the real-life outcomes of learners. Check out this article out for more.

3. Pedagogy, andragogy, didactics & cognitive sciences are our allies and need to be intentionally leveraged while building our experiences. More on that here.

Learning is a product

I also suggested that learning should be managed as a product.

During the last few years, I’ve discovered so much about product methodologies and numerous techniques that - with a twist -can be applied to learning.

Here are my recommendations:

1. Learner-centricity is critical. We are responsible for building learner-centric mindset & systems for our teams. We need to get away from the sage-on-the-stage mode and think about feedback loops. Read more about that here.

2. Create product metrics adapted to suit learning. Well framed metrics can help teams make decisions and deliver on the strategy. More on product analytics with a learning twist here.

3. Steal design tools from other disciplines. We need to build systems that help us make intentional learning design choices. Discover how we built Learning Design System at OpenClassrooms and how you can build your own here.

Let’s build these bridges together

As we all navigate the evolving landscape of EdTech, it's clear that we need to create a harmonious blend of tech and pedagogy that empowers learners and educators alike. To be successful and ensure that learners’ remains at the heart of all our efforts, we need to bring together the people and methods and build bridges between these worlds.

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If you’d like to join Marion to discover how you can do this and apply these techniques to your product, you can join her new course Designing Efficient Learning in the AI Era.

You can find her on LinkedIn and join the conversation as part of the Edtech Fellowship community.

This article is based on a talk that Marion was invited to give at the EdTech Next Summit.

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