How to Build a Career in Educational Technology

Educational technology (EdTech) is a mixture of education and technology to improve the way individuals teach, learn, assess students and manage educational institutions. 

This isn’t necessarily you becoming a software developer, the EdTech industry is a vast field of individuals working in education, technology, content research, product development, customer support, design and business.

1. Understand the different careers within EdTech

Knowing the part of EdTech that spikes your interest is very important mainly because of how vast EdTech is. 

You could work in:

• Instructional design 
• Learning technology 
• Educational content 
• EdTech product management 
• Learning experience design
• Educational data and analytics 
• Customer success and support 
• EdTech sales and marketing 
• AI in education

Knowing exactly what suits your interests among these multiple paths stops you from assuming that an EdTech career basically means coding educational apps. 

2. Build knowledge in both education and technology

EdTech is based on two major disciplines. 

You have to be skilled enough in education to understand how different individuals learn and you also need to have enough technological knowledge to understand how different tools can help the process of learning. 

Just because you only have one of these skill for now doesn’t mean you can work in the EdTech industry, acquire knowledge where needed. 

This is very useful because it shows employers you are skilled in solving educational problems with technological skills. 

3. Develop digital skills

Developing every digital skills is really necessary, develop technical skills that are relevant to your chosen EdTech career. 

Almost every EdTech role requires basic digital literacy, and they still have there own specific qualities. You need to learn how to be comfortable when learning new software's, working with digital platforms and troubleshooting common technology problems.

4. Learn about instructional design

This a great way to access the EdTech industry especially for people with an education, teaching or training background. 

It’s majorly designing learning experiences based on learning objectives, learner needs, content, activities, assessment and feedback. 

It’s basically about developing experiences and activities that help the learning process. This shows that instructional design is more than just converting classroom materials into digital documents.

5. Learn how educational technology is actually used

Just learning the software alone isn’t enough. You need to find out the major problems that schools, universities, training organizations and learners are trying to solve.

These problems may be:

• Remote learning
• Student engagement
• Assessment 
• Teacher training
• Accessibility
• Personalized learning
• Learning management
• Educational administration
• Skills development
• Digital literacy

A good EdTech professional knows why their technology is needed, not just how to operate it. 

6. Build a portfolio

This gives employers evidence of what you can do and is very valuable in the EdTech industry. 

An EdTech portfolio should have  a digital lesson, an online course, an instructional-design project, a learning-management-system demonstration, an educational research project or another relevant piece of work.

Your portfolio should demonstrate the kind of problems you where solving, the form in which you handled it and why you handled it the way you did. 

Some people think multiple projects are the major necessities. A list of few well curated pieces can go a long way instead of having a long list of software's you’ve used. 

7. Develop AI skills

AI has become extremely relevant to education and EdTech. 

As a professional, you can use AI to :

• Produce learning materials
• Create practice questions
• Personalize learning activities
• Assess learners data
• Provide tutoring assistance
• Support your teaching 
• Automate  administrative tasks
• Develop educational content

Educational professionals also need to know that there should be a  limitation when using AI, including inaccurate information, bias, privacy concerns and the necessary use of human insight. 

Just simply knowing how to use an AI chat bot is not the only valuable skill, you need to know how to incorporate AI into learning and still maintain educational quality. 

8. Gain practical experience

Your first job doesn’t need to have EdTech in the title. 

Relevant experience can be gained by teaching, tutoring, educational content creation, online course development, school technology projects, internships, freelance work or volunteering.

These experiences should be  represented under transferable EdTech skills. 

9. Learn from the people already working in the industry

Do your own research about EdTech professionals, companies, researchers and educational organisations online.

Study the kind of problems they frequently discuss and qualities constantly required in job discriptions. 

Doing this gives you insight on the kind of technologies and capabilities that are being used in your industry instead of learning tools just because they’re popular. 

A professional community gives you full exposure to internships, projects, conferences and employment opportunities. 

10. Keep developing your skills

The world is evolving quickly, this causes education and technology to experience rapid changes. 

An app that is a main focus today might not be the same tomorrow. AI abilities, digital learning strategies and educational expectations are also constantly experiencing change. 

As an individual who wants to have an impact in the EdTech industry, you have to keep learning. 

Instead of constantly trying to learn about every new technology, build a steady foundation in the a particular area and become comfortable learning new tools that are relevant to your specific field. 

The main idea

The EdTech industry’s major purpose is to solve educational problems with technological skills. 

It’s not about knowing everything. Choose a specific area and develop skills, practical experience and a portfolio that is relevant to it. This gives you a better idea on how you want your career path to look like.