Creating Value for Teachers: Product Development at the Intersection of Education and Technology

Between 2011 and 2014, investment funding for education technology companies increased by an average of 40% per year (Catalano, 2015). With an expanding footprint and funding stream, education technology companies have access to more students, teachers, and resources than ever before. As a result, they have an unprecedented opportunity to impact education in the United States. In my Ed.L.D. residency, I served as Educator Engagement Director at Panorama Education, a mission-driven for-profit startup. Panorama helps schools collect and analyze feedback from students, staff, and family members and currently serves over 6,000 schools and reaches over 1.5 million students annually. As a vendor serving school systems, the vast majority of Panorama's users are teachers. In most cases, purchasing lies in the hands of administrators; teachers do not have agency in the buying process within their school systems. Thus, Panorama cannot necessarily rely on market success to validate the value created for teachers. As Educator Engagement Director, I led a strategic effort to use product development as a channel to create value for teachers while increasing appeal to system administrators. The crux of my work was the development of a new professional development product for teachers, called Playbook. The product, which I first proposed early in my residency, is now in pilot testing with several districts, including a large urban district in the Southwest. In this capstone, I present how I led and worked with a team of software developers, designers, and marketers to combine startup, lean, and non-profit business methodologies to develop a product that created value for teachers. The project's initial success, as demonstrated through teacher feedback and a successful pilot test, suggests the value of distinguishing between purchasers and users and pursuing user-defined value in education technology companies with a dual bottom line of generating profits and improving American education. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]