EdTech Product Challenges: Beyond Engagement Metrics

The Engagement Trap

Consumer apps trained us to chase engagement. More sessions. Longer sessions. Higher retention. And EdTech products adopted these metrics wholesale.

But engagement and learning aren't the same thing. A student can spend hours on an app without retaining anything. A gamified experience can drive daily opens without building real skills. We've become very good at making learning feel productive without it actually being productive.

The Buyer Isn't the User

Unlike e-commerce (did they buy?) or SaaS (did they complete the workflow?), learning outcomes are hard to measure in real-time. Did the student understand the concept? Can they apply it? Will they remember it next week? These questions don't have easy metrics.

In consumer apps, users choose to engage because they want to. In EdTech, especially K-12 and corporate training, learners often don't want to be there. Building products for reluctant users requires completely different design thinking than building for enthusiastic early adopters.

Schools and corporations buy EdTech. Students and employees use it. These groups have different needs, different success metrics, and different power dynamics. Selling features that look good in demos but don't help actual learners is a constant temptation.

What Better Looks Like

The EdTech products I admire share common traits:

The Opportunity

EdTech that genuinely improves learning outcomes—that can prove it—has enormous potential. Education is one of the largest sectors globally, and much of it is still delivered ineffectively.

The products that figure out how to deliver and measure real learning will win. Not the ones with the best gamification loops.

The Takeaway

If you're building in EdTech, resist the pull of engagement metrics. Ask harder questions: Is this person learning? How do we know? How do we improve it?

The answers are harder. But they're the right questions.