The challenges of EdTechs in the face of the education sector’s anachronism

By Filipe Colpo, CEO & Co-founder, Flexge

Technology is inseparably integrated into most people’s daily lives. Many activities cannot be performed without the support of some kind of technological tool; we live in what is called the Digital Age, a self-explanatory term that needs no further definition.

Technological solutions, present in various activities, solve many problems, optimize processes, enhance methodologies, strengthen skills and improve human efficiency in their tasks and projects. But, the education sector continues to be reluctant to effectively incorporate technology into its teaching-learning structure.

For example, in an extensive 2016 research that studied 132 thousand students in Brazil (Source: Nossa escola em (re)construção), 57% of young people described the use of technology in schools as “regular or bad,” and 51% stated that “schools should have the technology not only in computer labs.”

This study states that “technology is part of young people’s lives, and they want to use it in all school spaces, not just in computer labs or specific classrooms.”

But is this really what happens in classrooms? I understand that schools and universities have not yet grasped the true educational potential derived from using technologies within the classroom, even though students say so.

It is up to EdTechs to persist in transforming our educational reality, revolutionizing teaching to make it more efficient and suitable for the Digital Era.

Often, we create an environment in which the teacher is in front of a classroom of 40 or 50 students, intending to teach everyone in the same way, and we keep demanding an effective result. We know that every human being has different abilities, interests, and emotional and cognitive structures and, logically, learns differently.

However, we ignore this reality and, in a practical way, demand that the teacher do things beyond human capacity. It is common to hear that the teacher is a superhero, gifted with superpowers, or an alien from another planet, capable of dealing with unimaginable situations. In this context, we often compare them to Superman or Wonder Woman. But is this the most accurate comparison?

Teachers are human beings just like you, and yet they still have to be able to deal with a lack of resources, rigid methodologies by educational institutions, and mandatory content that is not attractive to students, and yet still achieve their goal: teaching.

At an internal meeting held by EdTech Flexge Global English, I heard for the first time the comparison of the teacher with Iron Man, an ordinary human being who is not from another planet, who does not have superpowers but can do the impossible using cutting-edge technology. This analogy seemed perfect and got me thinking.

In this way, technology behaves as an armor that strengthens the teacher’s skills, increasing their intelligence and capacity to act. Despite the promising potential that technology has for education and with many cases of success in the use of educational tools, there is still a massive anachronism in this area.

This is a paradox of today’s society. In education, where transformation and innovation are most needed, the technology faces much resistance and obstacles. It is not restricted to one country or another because of some regions’ culture or socio-economic conditions.

In poor regions, the implementation of technology in the classroom has many more challenges in terms of infrastructure. There are many cases where even the basic infrastructure necessary for teaching does not exist, let alone the tools for innovative and qualified learning through technology.

Yet, even in most developed countries or developing countries with adequate resources to use accessible educational technologies, further obstacles can be observed.

The long-standing traditions of this sector, which have maintained the same format since the industrial period that began in the middle of the 18th century, are another example of the barrier imposed on technology. Any transformation desired in education faces resistance due to the old model, which continues to exist today.

At the same time, other barriers can be seen, such as bureaucratic processes, the lack of qualified workers to handle the tools, and even the mindset of the educational agents involved in the whole process. Many fear the replacement of their roles by technologies and, as a result, make little or no effort to technologically improve their teaching environment in an attempt to adapt it to the new context of the Digital Era.

In general, we continue to behave in a way that replicates the educational process we are living, without giving much space to rethink whether this is the most optimal model.

Despite the existing anachronism within this market (or because of it), many startups saw an excellent business opportunity, given the numerous technological solutions offered to this sector. EdTechs develop tools that can improve schools’ and institutions’ administrative processes, billing systems, and classroom management, and contribute to their own teaching-learning process using personalized teaching and gamification, for example.

Another example of technology’s benefits for education that is worth mentioning is Big Data. With it, teachers can monitor students’ academic performance, use apps that transform data into information, identify learning patterns, and provide instant feedback.

The contributions of technology to teaching and learning cannot be covered in a single article. For this reason, the intention is not to address all the aspects of this topic but only to show how this anachronism causes students and teachers—who are the leading players in this process—to miss the opportunity to go much further than what is being done today. In the end, society as a whole suffers the consequences of outdated and not-so-efficient education.

Hence the relevance for EdTechs to face the obstacles and keep seeking opportunities in this market, offering technological solutions to transform education. Proof of this was the health crisis triggered by Covid-19 at the beginning of 2020, when hundreds of millions of students could not study due to the imposed lockdowns.

The situation could have been worse if there were no tools on the market. As a result, 58% of education professionals began to have positive opinions about EdTechs, according to research published by EdWeek.

It is crucial to say that the teacher’s figure will never lose its value despite the potential that technology has for the teaching-learning process. The tools must serve as an instrument to help, or as said before, as an armor for the teacher, enhancing their skills. A suit of armor alone has no value for education. The combination of technology and a human being—just like the superhero Iron Man—is the key to a more efficient educational process.

This is what we want to do with teaching new languages at Flexge Global English. Instead of developing a tool that removes the intervention of the teacher—which we consider a substantial factor in the learning process—we have created a technological solution to support them in the teaching process, backed up with data, methodologies, and other resources capable of turning them into Iron Man: a human being with exceptional capabilities.

The acceptance of educational technologies took a step forward in the pandemic, and now we must be careful not to go backward. Within this scenario, EdTechs have an essential role to play in correcting the anachronism of this sector, which will be possible with the development of and investment in this market.

Based on 2016 data from Statista, the e-learning sector represented US$ 46,67 billion in global market share, and by 2022, this figure should exceed US$ 243 billion. In the same way, according to a study by Holon IQ, as of August 2020 and until 2025, the global education and training market will be worth $7.3 trillion. The expected growth of this sector gives us indicators that this educational anachronism will soon be a thing of the past. It is up to EdTechs to persist in transforming our educational reality, revolutionizing teaching to make it more efficient and suitable for the Digital Era.