(2020-11-28) He Embedded Education

Tina He: FKPXLS SPECIAL VOLUME: Embedded Education. The first generation of EdTech companies breaks into traditional classrooms with, well, technology. We grew up developing a love-hate relationship with Blackboard, Canvas, and Piazza.

In conjunction with classroom technology, we are also blessed with high-quality content on-demand.

The learning experience needs to be as engaging as a Youtube video or a video game. Quizlet, Duolingo, and Codecademy make learning feel just like that. Yet that alone isn’t enough. No matter how fun the game gets, learning, by the end of the day, is about applying the skills to contribute to our community

EdTech companies in the past decade have delivered a 10x product experience to the consumers through innovating on three main pillars: content delivery, learning experience, and skills credentialing

The opportunity cost of sitting through an 80-hour course load is the ability to spend it on hacking the game directly. Legends are revered and records are being broken on platforms like Leetcode that we're able to go from 0 to a $100k FANG (BigTech) offer in 3 months by hacking problem sets.

Although education isn’t just about plugging us seamlessly into an infinite machine, EdTech platforms eventually need to accommodate the skill-training demand of the market as the largest revenue drivers are corporate training and credentialing.

We want to explore our understanding with ourselves, with nature, with one another, but it seems like we don’t really know where to start. That was once the hole to be filled by a liberal arts education, which has become increasingly unpopular due to its lack of practicality

As a super-user and a beneficiary of these EdTech platforms, I nevertheless found myself wanting more. That’s when I realized that EdTech has arrived at an inflection point, and the previous generation of companies is reaching its limits.

The static content isn’t actionable enough to understand how it works under context, the learning experience only gets as interactive as what can be rendered on a web page, the credentialing can be deemed as trivial when work speaks louder than words, the community extends as far as asking questions in the Q&A session.

Learning no longer lives on an individual platform. Rather, learning happens everywhere. We’re entering a new age of “Embedded Education”.

Embedded education is the practice of educating people through encounters that they already have with systems that exist primarily for non-educational purposes.

Embedded education delivers learning at the point of getting the job done. (learning by doing?)

How do you learn about investing in stocks? Not by taking a class online, probably, but by investing with Robinhood.

How about building a website? Browser-based web design platform Webflow created Webflow University to teach everything from layout and typography to interactions and 3D transforms

How about conducting a team brainstorming session? How about starting a business? Collaboration tool Miro establishes its leadership in the industry not simply through a good product, but more importantly, a MiroVerse of educational templates for organizations to learn how to adopt best practices of group brainstorming

Shopify launched Compass to offer a wide range of marketing and business courses.

It’s not difficult to imagine that the more people acquire knowledge through using the platform, the more loyal and engaged they become, and eventually, the power users may even convert to “instructors” and contribute back to the educational content library. We know a company has created something special when we see organic lessons and tutorials being created beyond what the product is intended to do. (lead user)

Enabled by easier-than-ever tutorial creation tools such as Loom, customer experience automation tools such as Hyro, product adoption tool such as UserLane, knowledge management system such as Guru, any company can easily create educational content embedded in the customer’s journey, and the most powerful learnings are not usually how to use your product, but about how after being a part of the product ethos, someone’s view of possibilities gets enlarged and enriched. (Hero's Journey)

the vision of Embedded Education is that every time we see something that inspires us, the path to actualizing this new-found dream starts right where we find it. (Just in Time)

Some of the most insurmountable barriers don’t access to resources, but access to understanding.

As we continue to build more technology products, what if we start framing questions not only around problems, metrics, and the new set of glamorous features but around education. (rather, helping user become Bad-Ass)

Being embedded doesn’t come without its shortcomings. My backend engineer friend shared his frustration with AWS as he’s convinced that Amazon intentionally keeps the UX extremely difficult to navigate, thereby intensifying the lock-in effect its certification program continues to justify a cost of up to $300 and breed a class of consulting companies. (conspiracy theory)