THE PROBLEM
School districts are using over 2,700 EdTech tools per year. How do we know what actually works?
How might we create an easily accessible collection of evidence of impact of EdTech products from various sources, completed in different contexts for educational professionals seeking to understand the potential impact of product use on a given student population.
Results
This project served as the cornerstone of the company’s strategic initiative to productize its evidence services. By translating a high-touch service into a scalable, user-centric product, we generated over $3.1M in annual revenue in the first year alone. The remarkable success of this launch, paired with strong performance across the broader product portfolio, contributed directly to the company’s acquisition by a respected enterprise organization, positioning the team and its offerings for even greater impact at scale.
Understanding our primary customer:
EdTech Providers
Problems to solve:
Providers need an authoritative and central stage to broadcast the effectiveness of solutions to the market
Providers need to share research results that are relevant to a variety of districts
Company-led research, or research shared on a product’s platform can be perceived as biased
Research artifacts can be dense and difficult to consume
Understanding the problems
How might we…
Effectively and clearly broadcast evidence of effectiveness of our customers’ EdTech solutions?
Gather evidence from research done by others to show effectiveness of the solution in various contexts
Visualize evidence in a way that’s consumable by all viewers
Help our customers’ existing or potential customers connect to share experiences and testimonials about using the product
Defining our plan
Adding incremental value towards final product vision
An easily accessible collection of evidence of impact of edtech products from various sources, completed in different contexts for educational professionals seeking to understand the potential impact of product use on a given student population.
Navigating the challenges of a complex cross-departmental project
Navigating the work to create a Rapid Cycle Evaluation engine and the Evidence Library required aligning multiple departments including Research, RCE Managers, Engineering, and key leadership to solve a complex problem for the most influential segment of our user base: EdTech providers. As the lead Product Manager, I coordinated across teams to define a shared vision for making RCE data more interpretable and actionable for consumers, balancing strategic priorities (like fulfilling contractual and grant obligations) with technical feasibility and design constraints. The project demanded careful scoping, incremental delivery planning, and ongoing stakeholder management, particularly as we addressed nuanced issues such as data interpretation, insights sharing, and the potential risks of miscommunication. By organizing the work into phased milestones, clearly defining must-haves versus nice-to-haves, and ensuring that sales, engineering, and leadership remained informed throughout, we built a foundation for a scalable solution that benefits all educational organizations while directly addressing the urgent needs of our state-level partners.