EduTech Platforms Need to Build their Own Dev Network

Today's dev network is little more than a fledgling decentralised institution that provides informal yet indispensable support to people who wish to build a career in the technology industry. Just as it takes a whole village to raise a child, building a productive and sustainable career involves a lot more than just individual competence and effort. While this is true for most fields, it is particularly so in the fast-changing technology sector. This proverbial 'village' is called a developmental network (dev network), an informally knit group of learners, teachers, mentors, peers and role models, an idea that is more than two decades old now.

However, with the arrival and spectacular growth of the edtech industry over the last decade, the pressure on the larger tech industry to meet the growing demand for dev networks has revealed deep fissures within the sector itself.

For starters, good quality dev networks are scarce because, by their very nature, premium engineering institutions (colleges and universities) corner a good number of these for their students and alumni. This needs a little explaining. Dev networks are organic institutions that are spun out of peer groups within universities and colleges. This strong affiliation creates small coteries of dev networks that cannot be accessed by students and early-career engineers from non-premium institutions, particularly in smaller cities and towns in a country like India. When we juxtapose this challenge with the growth in the edtech industry, we can see the demand for a good quality dev network going through the roof.

The good news is that leaders in the tech sector (and edtech) are aware of this challenge, and there is a growing consensus to create dev networks that are germane to the edtech sector.

Although the initial conception of developmental networks is for inter-organisational mentorship, it is also a powerful framework for analysing edtech platforms (or any learning system, really). Modern-day edtech platforms, at least those which are serious and responsible for their learners, are built on three cardinal principles -

1. Great Learning: The learning content is of utmost quality, regularly updated and expertly delivered;
2. Great Benefit: There should be a very tangible post-learning benefit, whether it is employment opportunities in a dream company or some other objective improvement; and
3. Great Relationships: There should be a chance to build lifelong relationships with one's peers, coaches, mentors, and role models.

It is in the last aspect (great relationships) that most edtech platforms are severely limited. Only learner-driven self-measures drive some form of peer-group interactions, but these cannot measure up to a built-in developmental framework. In this context, incorporating a developmental network framework into an edtech learning ecosystem is essential for the long-term success of ambitious learners.

A key challenge then would be developing a platform that can deliver such a large-scale network to strongly self-motivated individuals who lack any innate social or institutional support. However, efforts by most edtech companies, often regarded as the front runners to democratise technical learning, are faltering.

While different edtech platforms have developed different guidance and network-building opportunities, they also suffer unique challenges.

1. Too much focus on 'credentialism' rather than personalisation, meaning university or the college with which the platform partners and the resultant certificate is accorded more importance than the learning/guidance itself.
2. Inconsistent batch strength to foster genuine relationships - A dev network is individual and cannot be developed en masse, i.e., one cannot expect to build a good dev network for a batch of 1,000 online learners who signed up for the same course.
3. No baseline for entry - In ideal learning ecosystems, democratisation only works well when compounded with baseline meritocracy, without which serious individuals can get mired in distractions and missed opportunities.

What we see today is that edtech companies are providing mentoring opportunities for their students by onboarding industry experts and senior leaders willing to help their younger colleagues navigate through the career path more successfully.

Although the importance of one-to-one periodic guidance cannot be emphasised enough, the need for a more holistic approach to career development is long overdue. And this is exactly where the idea of building a dev network rather than a single-mentor relationship yields good results. Simply put, there is an urgent need to scale up dev networks that can specifically meet the unique demand within the edtech sector.

The role of tech companies and their senior leadership here is quite significant. By sending their best leaders to provide long term and personalised mentorship, tech companies can help fulfill an enormous gap in the current edtech ecosystem - lack of a sufficient number of mentors (along with role models). Such a partnership between leading tech companies and edtech firms is essential to create a complete and functional dev network.

Completing the 'circuit' by doing so, tech companies will not only help learners but also in creating a network of prospective high-quality talent they can tap into to fuel their growth.

--By Naren Krishna, Business Unit Head of Careers, Scaler

Read more IT news here