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In the education sector, cutting-edge technologies that assist and accelerate student learning are always in high demand, but teachers and administrators are mostly in the dark when it comes to finding them. Even though U.S. educators currently spend $12 billion on EdTech each year, buyers have poor access to information about which software and tools create the best student outcomes.
“Right now, we really don’t know what works, and this drives a lot of people crazy. Teachers, schools and districts deserve modern tools to make data-driven decisions,” said Karl Rectanus, co-founder and CEO of Lea(R)n.
Lea(R)n seeks to provide a guiding light with its first-in-kind enterprise management platform for EdTech software. Using the LearnPlatform, educators can find and purchase new EdTech as well as analyze its impact on student achievement within a testing group or across all schools in a district. This helps educators assess which technologies work in a matter of minutes, drastically reducing the amount of time they spend searching and researching in order to make an informed purchasing decision.
Founded in Raleigh, NC in 2014, Lea(R)n completed two EdTech-focused accelerators (AT&T Aspire and Kaplan/Techstars EdTech Accelerator) and consulted with hundreds of school teachers and administrators while developing their platform. As a result, the LearnPlatform has quickly become the most comprehensive solution for evaluating EdTech tools and software, helping schools drive positive learning outcomes while also making wiser spending decisions.
Helping Teachers, Administrators and Institutions Know Which Tech is Right for Their Classroom
The LearnPlatform was built from the ground up to be an invaluable tool for both teachers and school administrators , so it includes a variety of core features to help both groups manage EdTech software.
For the teacher looking to find the most effective and engaging EdTech to use in their classroom, the LearnPlatform offers a library of 5,000 tools and software products. Each listing includes detailed reviews and feedback from other educators on the platform, giving teachers deeper insight into a product’s potential impact for their class.
For administrators responsible for managing their school’s spending and budget, the platform includes tools for tracking what EdTech is in use and what outcomes it’s producing. This information can be used to determine a product’s cost per student and the ROI it’s delivering for the school.
The LearnPlatform can also be implemented by school districts and networks to manage EdTech usage and spending across a number of institutions, creating money-saving opportunities that are especially valuable in today’s educational landscape.
“Districts, institutions and states can save hundreds of thousands of dollars by utilizing organization-wide data to negotiate contracts at better per-student rates, rather than [on] site-based agreements that tend to vary greatly in pricing,” Rectanus said.
Building a New Future for EdTech Analysis and Management
So far, the team at Lea(R)n has been successful in demonstrating the platform’s value. Today, over 50 school districts and 100,000 educators across 43 states use the LearnPlatform, and each subscription to the service yields an average ROI of 9-15%.
Lea(R)n is also making steady progress toward growing its platform. The LearnPlatform’s user base has increased by 14x this year, and the company is backed by $1.1 million in seed funding from the Kaplan and AT&T accelerators and Edovate Capital—but the bulk of its operations are funded through sales to states, school districts and universities.
The education sector’s reputation for risk avoidance and its slowness to adopt new standards can be problematic for a disruptive technology like the LearnPlatform. According to Rectanus, proving the platform worked—and that its new methodologies weren’t incorrect methodologies—was a struggle for the team early on. However, Lea(R)n has gained considerable traction and trust among educators since then.
“Our hurdles now are similar to [those of] other high-growth organizations providing a first-to-market disruptive technology: fast followers, educating more of the market, scaling our growth without losing our edge, and continuous and rapid innovation,” Rectanus said.
Rectanus believes the inability to find, manage and evaluate EdTech solutions is one of the biggest problems in education today, placing an unfair burden on students as they struggle to keep up with the ever-increasing pace of learning. If the LearnPlatform can help solve this problem for educators, then it could foster higher student achievement at lower costs to schools—a win-win for everyone involved.
