教育科技的鸡与蛋问题
我在教育科技领域工作了将近10年，涉及B2B、B2C和非营利组织的背景。我见证了真正的产品市场契合，也看到了许多不佳的产品市场契合。
教育科技是互联网时代最大的技术失望之一。互联网改变了人们学习的方方面面。我总是开玩笑说，YouTube实际上是最好的教育科技产品。现在，我想ChatGPT和其他大型语言模型（LLMs）也是如此。但这些产品存在许多问题，特别是在准确性、教学法和缺乏评估方面。（研究表明，低风险评估往往是学习发生的时刻。）
在“教育科技领域”，我认为许多产品都失败了。我所构建的最佳产品是免费的在线科学模拟（虚拟实验室）。
我曾参与过一些在财务上成功的产品，但是否真正帮助用户学习则值得商榷。
向家长销售的教育科技公司实际上是在为家长制作产品。其目标通常是让家长对为孩子做出的选择感到满意。例如，给孩子一个带有教育游戏的iPad，这样你就成了更好的父母。
向企业销售的教育科技产品则是在为雇主制作产品。这些产品往往更多地关注员工的追踪，而不是实际的技能发展。
为教育工作者制作产品在学习成果方面更有效的原因在于大多数教师的激励是一致的——他们希望学生能够学到更多并能够应用所学知识。
这引出了一个“鸡与蛋”的问题——因为教育是一个系统，技术要么必须适应这个系统，要么就会破坏这个系统。破坏系统可能会带来高昂的成本和许多不良的副作用。我想这与医疗保健/健康科技很相似——你不能仅仅快速行动并破坏事物。
教育科技产品的采用（通过教育工作者）比纯B2C更复杂，但比B2B的利润更低，这使得其成本高昂且痛苦。
从产品/背景和商业模式的角度来看，这都很困难。这部分是我认为非营利模式在教育领域效果最佳的原因（如可汗学院、Phet等）。在不需要优化利润的情况下，你可以自由地构建更适合现有系统的产品。你可以服务那些无法支付费用的人，或者没有能力说服他们的管理层为你支付。
然而，我仍然认为我们做得还不够——下一步是什么？
如果有人问我下一笔20亿美元的教育科技资金应该投向哪里，我会建议一些高度专业化的非营利组织，每个组织都有一个专注的目标，比如在小学高年级教授有意义的阅读技能，或让孩子们对中学数学产生兴趣。让这些非营利组织专注于教育工作者，关注那些在现实世界中试图解决这些问题的教育者。
最终，为了实现真正的成果，所有这些产品需要是免费的或得到赞助的。我确实认为向学区销售的付费产品是可行的（这些企业确实存在），但这增加了很多摩擦，减缓了产品开发的速度，当然也干扰了激励机制。这些付费产品往往希望拥有强大的护城河——因此它们将学区锁定在多年合同中，然后停止改进产品。它们生成管理者喜欢的指标，而教育者被迫使用但并未改进的产品。非营利组织则拥有“无护城河”的神奇自由。
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I've worked in edtech for almost 10 years now in B2B, B2C, and nonprofit contexts. I've seen real product market fit, and a lot of poor product market fit.<p>Edtech has been one of the largest tech disappointments of the internet era. The internet has transformed everything about how people learn. I always joke that Youtube is actually the best edtech product. And now, I guess chatGPT and other LLMs. But these products have a lot of problems, specifically around accuracy, pedagogy and lack of assessment. (Research shows low-stakes assessment is when the moment of learning often happens.)<p>Within the "Ed tech space", a lot of products have failed in my view. The best product I built was free online science simulations (virtual labs).<p>I've worked on products that were financially successful but its debatable if they helped helped users learn much.<p>Edtech companies that sell to parents are making a product for parents. The goal is often to make parents feel good about the choices they are making for their kids. For example, give your kids an ipad with Educational games, and now you're a better parent.<p>Edtech products that sell to business are making a product for employers. Much of these products end up being about tracking employees rather than real skill development.<p>The reason making a product for educators ends up being more effective in terms of learning outcomes is because most teachers have their incentives aligned - they want their students to learn more and be able to apply that learning.<p>Which leads me to this chicken and egg problem - because education is a system, technology either has to fit into that system or break the system. Breaking the system can be costly and have lots of undesirable side effects. I imagine this is a lot like healthcare / healthtech - you can't just move fast and break things.<p>Adoption of products in EdTech (via educators) is more involved than pure B2C but less profitable than B2B, making it costly and painful.<p>From both a product/context and business model perspective, it's hard. This is partly why I think the non profit model has worked the best in education (Khan academy, Phet, etc). Without having to optimize for profit, you have the freedom to build products that fit better into the existing system. You can serve people who can't afford to pay you, nor do they have the power to convince their administrations to pay you.<p>However - I still think we haven't done enough - what is the next step?<p>I think if someone asked me where the next 2B in edtech funding should go, I would suggest highly specialized nonprofits each with a focused goal like teaching meaningful reading skill at the late elementary level or getting kids excited about math at the middle school level. Focus these nonprofits to have educator obsession - the educators trying to solve these problems in the real world.<p>Ultimately, for real outcomes, all these products need to be free or sponsored. I do think paid products selling to school districts work (these businesses do exist) but this adds a lot of friction that slows product development down, and of course, mucks up the incentives. These paid products often want strong moats - so they lock districts into multi-year contracts and then stop improving the product. They generate metrics administrators like, with products educators are forced to use but aren't improving. Nonprofits have a magical freedom to be "moat-less."