Most educational start-ups are lousy.

The author of this article, Professor Reynol Junco, is a partner of the Internet and Social Research department at Harvard University's Berkeman Center. The main research on the influence of social technology on college students we are in an era of vigorous development of educational technology start-ups. From 2007 to 2011, investment in education companies doubled, to $930 million trillion, according to GSV consultancy research. For 5 years, investment in educational technology companies has quadrupled, NVCA data from the National Association of Wind Investors. The exponential growth of educational technology start-ups is not surprising, and the situation will continue for the foreseeable future. Many educational technology companies only develop their products mechanically, because the founders of the company have an inherent mindset that if there is a specific problem at school, it can be solved by a new technology or by providing an educational technology version. For example, they might think, "I always forget to take my chemistry textbook to class in class, why don't I develop a cool app that automatically sends the relevant content to the student's device before class?" (Note that this example does not come from a real startup product, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was a product that existed.) Other educational technology companies have some ideas about developing products to help students improve their academic performance, and they are doing the same. I don't want to reveal to you that ... could be a surprise for educational technology companies, but investors may no longer shoot blindly in the dark. The wonders of startups wanting to create successful students are almost impossible without a closer look at how students learn and grow and how their grades improve. In fact, technology does not create learning skills, and the way in which technology is used is the key. The educational technology start-ups are rarely communicating with educators when designing their products. For example, they often send me emails directly asking me to evaluate what they have done, preferably by giving them a "cool product" conclusion. Startups in other areas would never do that, but would it be conceivable that a genetic start-up would not talk to relevant medical researchers before producing their biotech products? No, otherwise no familiy investment company would invest in such a company. But there are still a lot of investors who are blindly hitting the money, even if the startups never read even one piece of research that is relevant to education. My colleague, Audrey Watters comments Fun Programming Network (Codeacademy), said, "Wow, that's the worst day of investment in educational technology." Educators and researchers understand that students learn nothing from interesting programming networks. Where's the data? It is problematic for educational institutions to adopt new technologies. Higher education institutions and their management have begun to doubt these educational start-ups because they have no data showing that their products reallyIt's as good as they say. In fact, in their unpublished report on educational technology potential, the Economic Advisory Council of the United States assessed that "it is hard to prove that these educational technology products are effective". It is not difficult to prove that they are effective. It's just that the startups are not willing or have yet to get the professionals involved. Let educators evaluate whether educational technology products are effective, rather than simply telling them that these products are effective in helping students. Here are some suggestions: 1. When developing products, communicate with educators more. You don't need to have an educator or researcher do hands-on coaching, but at least you have to show them what you're producing. 2. Evaluation results. In a commercial language, it means "to provide financial data to show the success of your business". Therefore, you must provide the educator with data to show whether your product is performing well. Did you develop a program to increase student attendance? Then you should show the data before and after use. 3. Improve your technology based on assessment data. This involves bug fixes and user interface design. If you work with educators, you will probably find that your product will perform better. My latest paper explains that it's easy to stimulate their interest in learning to use Twitter and student communication outside the classroom, but it doesn't work if you use Twitter in class. If your product needs some positive results, you must get some relevant data before you improve the product. 4. Publish your findings. Whether you believe in the academic publishing process or not, today's academic and cultural values have led to more scholarly publications being reviewed by peer rather than blog postings, presentations, or other methods. If you publish the data in the academic circle in time, it will be beneficial to your academic collaborators. 5, learning the culture of academia, to help the academic community to learn entrepreneurial culture. This will help startups understand the resistance to new technologies in the education sector and, of course, help startups find the best way to work better with academia. (via TechCrunch)