Educators must set up for success in a virtual world to provide the best possible education to students and reach their own professional goals.
The threat of the COVID-19 pandemic has shined a light on how difficult it can be for education professionals to connect with students in wholly and partially digital learning environments. However, in the long term, distance learning is only growing more common as digital infrastructure supports increasingly enriching and immersive learning environments.
Edtech companies can enhance ease of use and engagement in their programs and applications to provide more relevant, practical, and effective solutions for virtual learning. Let’s consider some common pain points for educators, students, and parents as a springboard to identifying potential areas of improvement in your offerings.
Common digital learning concerns for educators “Among educators’ top concerns: successful remote activities and identifying struggling students.”
THE Journal, a technology-focused education publication, shared the results of a University of Phoenix and Edelman Intelligence survey that helps identify critical concerns for educators related to virtual learning . For example, educators were most interested in opportunities to learn more about and implement processes for:
Creating successful remote activities. Identifying struggling students. Encouraging interactions with and connections between students.
Enriching and valuable remote activities This shared concern for educators is aligned with the offerings of edtech companies. While not all edtech products are intended to be used in remote learning, nearly all are built on the idea of a student using a computer or mobile device to interact with the program or application.
Your business can carefully review its offerings for instances where an in-person learning environment is assumed and make adjustments to better align with virtual education. One potential strategy could be changing prompts that instruct students to raise their hands instead of guiding them toward sending a digital message to their teachers. As detailed by eLearning Industry, you can also make more substantial improvements, such as incorporating microlearning segments . — and increasing personalization. These strategies can address shorter attention spans and the potential for increased distractions in nontraditional learning environments.
Identifying struggling students In-person education offers plenty of context clues and closer connections to students that allow teachers to identify the problems encountered by learners readily. However, remote learning can remove some valuable and implicit indicators of potential issues.
While edtech products already provide essential information to educators, broadening the types of data shared can help teachers identify and support struggling students. One option is to offer more granular information, such as highlighting outliers in terms of the amount of time it takes. In addition, educators can start more specific discussions with learners and provide more targeted and relevant assistance by providing more details related to student challenges.
Encouraging interactions and connections between students Collaboration, discussion, and similar activities are valuable for students, learning about specific course material and, more broadly, developing interpersonal skills.
Edtech companies can look for opportunities to expand on existing avenues for collaboration and discussion in their products and services and implement new ones where appropriate. Of course, every platform and learning solution is different, making it challenging to provide broadly relevant examples. But the underlying principle is the same: Identify ways your product or service can encourage student interactions and implement them.
Reaching the right audience with an exceptional edtech offering
    Contact a Rep Having a great product or service can only take you so far — your company also needs to connect with the exemplary educators in the right place at the right time. Agile is here to help your business do that with accurate, current, and regularly updated contact data for education professionals. To learn more, get in touch with us  today.
