State of the Industry: edtech and educators

Key insights

• Educators need virtual communication tools to better simulate in-classroom experiences: Educators noted that they struggled to provide a learning experience that's similar to a traditional classroom setting—particularly with regard to enabling socio-emotional learning and classroom management.

• In-person classroom settings are preferred: Educators had mixed feelings about continuing the use of virtual teaching once allowed to return to the classroom, with most still preferring in-class teaching overall. One key concern was the quality of instruction they can provide through virtual teaching. Most educators felt in-class teaching is a better approach for more effective monitoring of student success.

• Building relationships (and trust) virtually is difficult: Aside from the instructional part of teaching, relationship building and fostering a culture of vulnerability is top of mind for all educators in our study, with one describing it as “the foundation of all that we do.” Educators find this to be much more difficult to foster since the shift to remote teaching through digital conferencing has taken place.

How virtual teaching is impacting educators

Almost all educators in our study teach in virtual classrooms, citing benefits and drawbacks to each. They note having established workarounds by adapting lessons to a digital setting, creating a culture of empathy, and building more engagement through digital collaboration.

What educators like about virtual teaching

• Digital conferencing apps allow educators to teach synchronously and asynchronously. Educators are able to teach live or they are able to record on-demand lessons for students to watch at their own pace or at a later time.

• Educators are able to facilitate engagement and remote collaboration. Depending on the class size, remote educators often find it valuable to engage students by building virtual breakout sessions into their lessons for projects and more manageable class discussions.

• Digital conferencing enables easier one-on-one communication with students and their parents/caretakers

What educators dislike about virtual teaching

• Inequalities are amplified in virtual environments: Socioeconomic and technological inequalities impact how easily students can access educators, other students, and classwork.

• Technical difficulties are common: Poor connectivity and audio/video challenges are a regular occurrence and impact the learning environment.

• Engaging students is challenging: Educators report having difficulties getting students to be honest and speak up when they need help or if they have an idea. 

• Challenges with classroom management, including:

  • Difficulties using non-verbal feedback to gauge a collective student response to the lesson

  • Technical issues with apps, platforms, microphones, and internet connections

  • Difficulties enforcing dress codes

• Learning environment distractions: Educators are unable to control the home environment of students during their lessons. Competing for engagement is even more challenging for remote primary school educators.

How educators are adapting to remote teaching

• Spending more time adapting lesson plans for digital settings and incorporating more visuals, discussions, and group-work assignments, and less time lecturing

• Integrating supplemental teaching and collaboration apps into digital conferencing

• Spending extra time to keep up with remote teaching trends (though educators acknowledge often feeling overwhelmed from vetting and learning new programs and technologies).

• Building “off-task” time into lessons to increase empathy between educator and student, and student with fellow student

Recommendations for virtual communication and edtech companies to better meet the needs of educators

 While most educators noted that they probably wouldn't use virtual communication tools—at least not for classroom education—post-pandemic, many had suggestions to help improve the experience for educators (and ultimately students).

• Provide instructional/tutorial materials for educators, students, and families to quickly learn and use new technologies and tech updates.

• Consider ways to improve the classroom-management experience by adding these features to edtech and digital conferencing tools:

  • Give educators the option to pre-assign small groups/breakout rooms prior to class (rather than during class time).

  • Allow educators to control when students can see each other as opposed to only seeing the educator (as a way to cut down on distractions).

  • Allow educators to share their screen and see all students at the same time so that educators can better read student reactions to the lesson and adjust or clarify accordingly.

  • Consider adding education-based integrations, such as giving quizzes in-conference.

  • Make a screen annotation function available on all platforms and to all operating systems so that students can interact with the educator’s screen-sharing in real-time.

  • Give educators the ability to toggle between seeing the students’ faces and the students’ screens so they can offer quicker assistance.

Hear educators talk about their experiences with virtual teaching