Learning Psychology: The Ultimate Guide to Build Next-Gen EdTech Products (2/2)

Thinking EdTech Products by First Principles

Part one of this series revolved around two themes that will help us to build better educational software:

First, we need to focus much more on the desired learning outcome than on the technology we want to use.

Or to put it more tangibly, instead of asking ourselves: “Should we use gamification, VR- or AI-based learning?” we should rather think about: “What type of knowledge or skill do we want to foster? And how do humans learn that most effectively?”.

Then, we found that psychological learning theories provide a holistic answer to that question. We can view them as a guidebook on how to build software that teaches a topic in the most effective way.

In case you haven’t checked it out yet, you can read it here:

Now, let’s put that into practice.

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Bringing Learning Psychology into EdTech products

You might be wondering, how we can make use of these scientific findings in learning software?

I’d propose a three-step process ventures can use to develop or refine their product:

1. Identifying the Underlying Learning Goal:
   This needs to be clear to choose relevant educational techniques.

2. Developing a High-Level Teaching Approach:
   We define the psychological mechanisms we want to employ in our product.

3. Deriving a Product Concept and the Technology to be used:
   We choose learning formats and tools directly based on scientific findings.

Next, we look at each step in detail.

1. Identifying the Underlying Learning Goal

I’ll give an example for what I mean by that.

Say, we have a product in language learning: Do we want to teach grammar and vocabulary or the actual ability to speak a language?

Knowing words and sentence structures will for sure benefit the learners. But in itself they will not yet make them talk fluently. In fact, both are only proxies for the underlying, final learning goal: speaking a language proficiently.

Which of them we set as our desired outcome will fundamentally shape what kind of product we are going to build: If we go for mere vocabulary, we will find digital flashcards are great. But if we go for language proficiency, we will realise that this approach is neither sufficient nor even compatible. The decision that we make in that regard will determine to a large degree, which trajectory our product gets on.

To build truly innovative education software, that really(!) changes the way we teach, we need to start the thought process with the ultimate learning goal in mind.

Getting there is really straightforward: We can simply ask ourselves “What are we actually learning this for?". We just repeat that question until we reach a reason that is not just a contributor to a higher goal anymore but which is attractive in itself.

Let’s see where we end up when we actually approach language acquisition that way.

2. Developing a High-Level Teaching Approach

Choosing the right psychological methods is really a case by case issue. But generally it makes sense to start by looking at how comparable things are learned naturally.

So, to develop a completely new approach to picking up a second language, we can take inspiration from decoding how we develop our mother tongue. What is especially interesting, is to ponder upon how children make such rapid progress, despite their comparably low cognitive resources.

I suggest, it is a combination of observational learning and an unparalleled degree of motivation, that is largely responsible for the phenomenon:

• Children have an incredibly high incentive to learn: being able to communicate their needs is simply necessary to survive

• Hence, they intuitively use all of their cognitive ability to observe how the people around them speak — and over time they grasp the underlying patterns

• Lastly, they have a constant reason to test and apply their skills, as they try to express their demands

This doesn't fully explain how we acquire language, but it does shed light on why we learn it so quickly.

In the consequence, resembling these mechanisms in a digital learning set up, could be a very promising approach to reach our goal.

3. Deriving a Product Concept and the Technology

Let’s see how we can implement these drivers into an EdTech product for children. For this step there are no general rules we can follow. It is purely a matter of our creativity, how we make use of the mechanisms we found earlier. Accordingly, the example that follows is only one way to do that and not a definite solution.

To say it straight out: This is a prime use case for gamification. However, I don’t mean it in the way it is commonly done; by simply integrating experience points, levels and in-game rewards into a normal learning app. We should work with actual games, people genuinely enjoy playing. Only that way we can resemble the motivational drivers of developing our mother tongue.

Replicating the Dynamics of Native Language Learning

What would such games look like?

I’d suggest they need to fulfil three characteristics:

1. Players Need to Talk to Each Other

There has to be constant exchange between the participants, e.g. for coordination within the game. That can be between AI-based characters or within a real multiplayer environment, where all people speak the desired language.

2. There Should Be an Obvious Benefit to Participate in the Communication

Reaching the goal needs to be much easier when all players align on a strategy and exchange information. For the learner that creates a huge incentive to pick up the language the other players are speaking. This is not confined to a specific type of game. We can create a need for coordination between participants in all sorts of them; be it multiplayer action or strategy games.

3. It Must Be Easy to Pick up the Meaning of Words from the Context

In most games that is the case naturally: The content of the conversation is related to actions in the gameplay anyway most of the time. This ensures there is always a connection between spoken words and observable events. Over time, learners will find patterns behind what was said and what they experienced. Accordingly, players will be able pick up the meaning of repeating formulations.

Harnessing the Motivating Power of Gaming

If all characteristics are met we have a perfect environment for observational learning. For this to work though, it is decisive whether the game design can evoke a high degree of motivation:

The goal that players try to reach needs to be so desirable and attractive that they are willing to invest great amounts of effort into it.

And if reaching that goal benefits from understanding the language the other players are speaking, the learners will automatically dedicate a part of that energy into it. Just like a child has to pick up word by word from its parents, the learners need to grasp what their teammates are saying in order to be successful.

All together, this resembles the factors that also drove initial speech acquisition. Of course the degree of motivation can not be compared to when our survival instincts made us learn our mother tongue. But those who were truly sucked into a game once will confirm the impressive amount of energy they can evoke.

This self-guided approach could also be paired with a more formal learning environment. That would create the space to actively teach formulations and sentence structures. By using possible in-game scenarios as exemplary cases we can maintain the connection to the original motivator.

Closing Remarks

Naturally such a sketch leaves tons of open questions.

For example, is it necessary for learners to have some initial understanding of the language? Or should we just throw them into cold water? Do we need to create entirely new games? Or can we also build this as a layer over existing ones? And until which age is learning through games suitable?

Nevertheless, keep in mind that the purpose of the example was merely to illustrate the approach suggested earlier.

I genuinely believe we shouldn’t think about the method we want to use too early. Instead we should start thinking about the goals we want our learners to achieve and see it as an open ended process to find out how we best do that.

Most likely, we will end up with solutions we didn’t have in mind when we started the thinking process.

Want to discuss how to implement Learning Psychology into you EdTech product?

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