As we develop educational products—platforms, technologies, courses—how can we ensure that we are effectively addressing the needs of learners and educators?

Qualitative research can be an useful and affordable way to ensure product quality, and fine tune deliverables to create the best learning experience possible. With focus groups and user testing, we can:

• Assess overall user experience.
• Evaluate level of engagement at specific points in a course.
• Detect points of disengagement, and areas where learning falters (i.e., places where learners get "stuck").
• Test remediation strategies in personalized learning
• Perform A/B testing on course variants to see which features deliver the best results.
• Evaluate how educators and learners value specific features in educational technology products.
• Identify technology components that will impede implementation, particularly from the educator perspective.
• Understand how your customers and prospects make buying decisions.

Just think about how these factors influence learning outcomes, and how they impact your sales!

And while qualitative research can drive favorable results for individual products, the long-term big picture outcomes can be even more beneficial. 

For instance, A/B testing is an area where we can combine quantitative (data-driven) and qualitative (opinion, perception, motivation) research to develop improved methodologies, which can then be applied across product lines.

The potential cost-to-benefit ratio here is compelling. By performing analysis on a limited set of products, we can draw broadly applicable conclusions.

For instance, perhaps the research will tell us that learning outcomes improve when we include more spaced repetition exercises in our courses. Or maybe we'll find out that the language usage in our courses is too formal, resulting in disengagement. Maybe we'll find that adding a gamification element drives significant improvements in retention.

Here's a key point: the successful edtech companies of the future will be validating their strategies with reliable data and user studies. There's no way around this fact. We're engaged in an evolutionary process, and the winners will be basing their decisions on reliable evidence.

​As an example, just this week at Mosaico Solutions we are involved in a study involving IT Directors at K-12 schools around the country. During our video interviews, we will be talking to individuals who make buying decisions at the district level. In the process, we will be learning about the technologies they are currently using, and how those technologies are deployed in the classroom.

We will also be drilling down into the processes behind buying decisions—who makes the decisions, and what motivates them, constrains them, or otherwise influences these decisions.

From a marketing and sales perspective, this kind of information leads to a real, evidence-based focus on the customer, as opposed to an approach that is based on conjecture. 

And in the long run, basing business decisions on validated, customer-centered information is the best way to grow your bottom line.

Educational technology has created a new environment of openness to reformulating pedagogies—a wider range of educational approaches are emerging, and we are increasingly able to validate results through assessment and data analysis. 

Taking a look through time, when we consider instructional strategies in the context of current and historical trends, it can be enlightening to go back to the earliest teaching and learning practices.

Doing so, we find that our new instructional trends derive considerably from very old methods!

This quote by Aristotle is echoed in today's active learning trends: project-based learning, hackathons, apprenticeships, and other forms of experiential learning.

Even before the invention of writing, we know that societies had well-developed systems for retaining information over time, and for imparting knowledge and culture to each successive generation.

These systems certainly relied heavily on developing the strength and utilization of memory. Of course, the role of memory in learning hardly diminished even after the advent of writing, In the technology and information age, however, schools seem to be placing less value on memorization and memory skills.

Memorization has been a core part of religious learning in particular, since humans began telling stories and developing oral traditions. Ancient cultures developed a range of methods to transmit knowledge: mnemonic techniques like the method of loci (memory palace), repetitive chanting, and codification of knowledge into symbolic representations, just to name a few.

The results achieved by the ancients can seem super-human. Whether we think of a classical Greek rhapsode memorizing the epic works of Homer, or Vedic scholars mastering tens of thousands of verses, the sheer volume of content that humans memorized seems beyond enormous.

Sudha Gopalakrishnan, former Director of the National Manuscripts Mission in Delhi, gives some insight into the processes used in memorizing the Vedas:

Dr. Gopalakrishnan's question is well worth considering. However, we might acknowledge that, with the steady growth of information technology, memorization is becoming less valued. If we can readily get most information on our cell phones, why memorize anything at all?

The answer—development of memory skills provide students with valuable means to learn more quickly and more profoundly.

We might consider that, in today's classroom, when students are expected to memorize content, they are often not taught how (i.e., effective methods) to memorize. Meanwhile, we know from experience and data that active recall approaches to learning produce some of the best educational results.

Moreover, studies on competitive memory athletes has shown that people who regularly use the method of loci—a mnemonic technique that originated in ancient Greece and Rome--experience beneficial changes to the brain, a strengthening of the structures that store and recall memories.

Memorization offers a specific case where students benefit from a focus on "learning how to learn." Fortunately, there are a wealth of approaches that we can draw from.

Further Reading

• How can I use the Loci Method as a Memory Strategy in the Classroom?
• ​Active Learning has an Ancient History
• Effect of yogic education system and modern education system on memory
• ​Divide and Link: Robust Memory Techniques from Vedic Learning 
• What every teacher should know about ... memory