RichDadsPoorSon

Do you think traditional schools / colleges shifting to online mode during COVID messed up the EdTech space ?

Just a random thought which popped in my mind that when you say online classes most people tend to feel uneasy due to how online classes were conducted by our traditional schools / colleges which to be very honest the faculties are technologically challenged and lack the tools or knowledge to conduct them. It was just a joke tbh.

Now however people have that idea of online education in mind which means they are completely against online education and EdTech even though these are companies who have the knowledge and technology to conduct them well and are made for online education.

How can we fix this mess and do you think EdTech will survive as an industry or become obsolete in India ?

17mo ago

MetalMan20

Stealth17mo

Well agreed with @WittyFeed on their pointers! Having been in the space, sharing a bit more excerpts from my experience and industry research (again based on my personal understanding and context, so don't generalise it 🙂)

For extracurricular: This should never have been done. As an active musician and artist, extracurriculars have always been about peer learning and touch n feel. You cannot replicate these things online completely given the drop outs for hobbies are higher when done in silos! That's an inherent psychological behaviour of humans, and this is why I always found these ventures to be absolutely not scalable (can be proven wrong maybe for arts or others if there is more integration of AR/VR but it will still not find takers, like you can never be a guitarist without having felt your instrument or an artist having felt your paint and build your own style into it)
You may see a rise in Ed-tech focused on improving the current infra. To give you some context, most of the colleges right now lack the expertise and understanding of how to evolve their curriculum to make it more meaningful. This opens up a great space for companies that can bridge that gap, think orgs providing a virtual environment for software projects, or 3-D printing sessions for prototyping. These could well be paid for from colleges fund to foster innovation or entrepreneurship.
Bootcamps will be replaced with more real-time training. Think of an ed-tech that essentially not only gives you fundamentals available so widely but also brings you real life projects from orgs. This can be a win win for orgs and ed-tech alike, while young professionals get to build relevant PoW, orgs can get new initiatives rolled out at lesser costs and also use that as a baseline to hire these individuals full time
B2B Ed-Tech- This definitely needs a big overhaul if companies are to retain employees and want to attract talent. So far ed-techs have been acting centrally as the course designer

MetalMan20

Stealth17mo

Contd.

As a course designer, rather than providing industry a plug n play model where companies can build their own modules to make the apt program that suits their needs. This solves for intent among candidates and also creates a more aligned funnel for them. Mismatch in talent requirements vs talent available via higher ed start up is massive and everyone is taking a generic approach to it.

K-12 education has and always will be a very touchy area for Indian consumers. It's an aspirational notion, one that cannot be broken by trying to build your brand. It very well needs personalization with more focus on outcomes. Outcomes is what has made the Allens, Bansala of India. It's sad, but that's the reality of the market. Most of these players went ahead in building brand first outcome second in a country where the optics of ranks still trump over anything else. This is exactly why all ed techs are considered supplemental in nature rather than a primary source of education

Elon_Musk

X.com17mo

Any takes on chatgpt or similar bots as a tutor? I have seen some very convincing post from a colleague using chatgpt to teach him french and I think khan academy also has a bit to teach now but I haven't personally tested it out

WittyFeed

Venture Capital17mo

I don’t think so I’ll give some examples of what is doing well, what isn’t:

Kids Extracurricular - Did not work post covid. Kids needed to be engaged during covid, learning had to be continued. Then, parents wanted them to go out, do things physically. It failed.
Small group educational classes (school) - Does not work unit economics wise. CAC too high, with teacher costs included, making ROI became tough. It failed.
Scaler/Coding Bootcamps - I still feel these are doing well. There’s a reason, these are adults, they have purchasing power (post their first job), they have a strong willingness to learn (WITCH has taught them life is unfair). Here, great faculty cannot be found offline, and hence online worked

At least from my learnings in the space. It needs to be a mix of students who can afford (not true for BYJUs), students who have willingness to learn (not true for courses sold to most college students), and some reasons for why online > offline (learning dance offline is just obviously better, but coding can be done online better)

I think fundamentally well thought Edtech models will continue to do well once this lack of clarity dies down