Edtech trends: Edrolo co-founder Ben Sze on what to expect in 2023

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the adoption of technology in the education sector. Schools had to scramble to support remote learning and teaching, and that trend continued as schools opened back up. Over the past 18 months, schools have been battling with added pressures of teacher shortages, student absences, and getting used to operating in a new normal.

Now, and as we move into 2023, there’s a hope that a sense of normalcy will return and the school year will run smoothly — without mass disruption. Schools are likely to want to double down on fostering exceptional student outcomes and increase the focus on engaging students with their learning, to counter some of the challenges they’re seeing from disrupted schooling across 2020 to 2022.

We also believe schools will be trying to actively support teachers to effectively manage their workloads after such a tumultuous time. In our opinion, schools will want to achieve these two goals by finding ways to ensure students rekindle their love of learning, and empowering teachers to find solutions that give them back time so they can do more of what they love to do — teach.

The need for high-quality resources

When it comes to technology adoption in schools, we believe this will play a role in achieving these goals. We believe that while technology adoption is certainly going to be key, it’s actually innovative and extremely high-quality resources that are most needed.

Flexible content that spans online and offline environments to meet the needs of every school and classroom, is critical. Our commitment has been and will continue to be building the highest quality resources we can, for teachers and students to use in the most flexible way possible.

Conceptual understanding

We believe education plays a substantial role in every individual’s life journey, and we’re laser-focused on improving educational outcomes as a result. As we move into 2023 and beyond, this will continue to act as the north star for the products we develop, and guide how we serve and interact with teachers, students, and school leaders. Content that has the necessary depth, quality, flexibility, and accessibility — and is centred around conceptual understanding — can have vast benefits to one’s educational experience, and ultimately, their life journey.

We believe that there are limitless opportunities for innovative businesses to improve educational outcomes — and have an ever-growing list of ideas to explore that sit adjacent to our current product roadmap. Our strategy is centred around ‘growth at reasonable cost’ not ‘growth at any cost’. After all, sustainability truly does breed longevity: our vision is to be a company that endures for 100-plus years.

We hope that 2023 will be the year that normalcy resumes in the classroom. And even if it doesn’t pan out that way, quality, flexible resources that support both students and teachers will still need to take centre stage.

Ben Sze, is co-founder and co-CEO of Edrolo, an education technology company founded in 2011 that builds learning resources for students and teaching tools for teachers.