What Teachers Want: How Tailoring edTech Features to Educator Workflows Boosts Product Adoption

For edTech companies, the consequences of poor UX and disconnected tools are clear: if educators can’t use your product easily, they won’t use it at all.

Teachers are gatekeepers to the classroom, and their adoption—or abandonment—can make or break your learning tool’s success.

To better understand why schools and educators adopt certain edTech products and abandon others, we surveyed 50 K-12 educators across the United States. 

We asked teachers:

• which tasks take them the most time
• which products help them accomplish tasks easily
• which products or features slow them down 

Here’s what we learned, and how your team can design more effectively with educators—not just students—in mind.

Table of Contents

1. Why designing for teachers is still tricky for edTech product teams
2. Features & capabilities that support educator workflows
3. Features & design patterns that slow educators down
4. How to improve your edTech products to better support teacher needs

Why designing for teachers is still tricky for edTech product teams

Designing learning tools that fit well into an educator’s day-to-day workflow is still a challenge for many edTech product teams.

Our research shed light on why edTech experiences are still falling short—and where educators experience the most frustration.

Working from ideal states & assumptions vs. real user data

The day-to-day workflows for educators are fast-paced and complex. 

If you’re working from ideal states and assumptions, rather than real user data or insights, your product is likely causing friction in the real world.

Even platforms like Google Classroom, which arguably has one of the most data-rich products on the market, can sometimes miscalculate what teachers really need.

Until recently, for example, Google Classroom didn’t allow educators to schedule one assignment across multiple classes.

When teachers need to repeat the same task in your platform multiple times, you’re cutting down on valuable prep time—and adding user frustration.

Ultimately, a tool with good intentions but bad UX becomes shelfware.

Discounting the administrative burden for educators

According to our survey, educators complete an extraordinary amount of administrative tasks every day.

The most time-consuming task was filling out school-wide forms, including disciplinary forms, medical forms, and behavior trackers (28%), followed by entering grades into a grade book (26%), conducting family outreach (18%) and responding to email (18%).

Administrative work often competes with instructional needs, like lesson planning, creating supplemental materials, and providing student feedback.

Our survey responses are supported by research conducted by RAND Corporation, too. 

According to their 2023 State of the American Teacher survey, “On average, teachers reported working 15 hours per week longer than required by contract. One out of every four hours that teachers worked per week, on average, was uncompensated.”

In other words, when teachers don’t have enough time to complete everything in a school day, they take on the burden of administrative and planning work at home—unpaid.

EdTech products that streamline these burdens, rather than adding to them, are far more likely to be adopted.

Atomizing educator tools doesn’t work

If your edTech company is determined to “corner the market” or create an entire product ecosystem, you could be taking a risk.

Our survey data suggest that teachers prefer holistic edTech products and platforms over using many different products to accomplish discrete tasks.

When asked about the edTech product features they wished existed to streamline their work, 16% of educators wanted unified learning platforms that consolidated multiple tools into one interface.

They pinpointed needs for streamlined:

• Grade books
• Communication tools
• Students management features
• And lesson planning features

Perhaps unsurprisingly, when asked about the tools and product features that make their work easier, Google products shot to the top of the list.

Ultimately, creating multifunctional learning tools with syncing and integration capabilities will improve your chances for school-wide adoption.

Remember: taking time to learn a new tool often falls on teachers’ personal time. Make your product versatile enough to warrant self-guided exploration. 

Features & capabilities that support teacher workflows

What supports teachers in their day-to-day work isn’t a fancy, closed-system learning platform. 

For the educators we surveyed, product adoption often hinges on two things: integration with Google products and syncing capabilities.

Here’s what we discovered:

Google Classroom integrations

Google Workspace tools like Drive, GMail, and Google Classroom consistently earned praise from the educators we spoke to. 

In fact, 62% of the educators we surveyed use Google Classroom as their Learning Management System (LMS). 

“Google Classroom integrates well with many things and presents an easy way to maintain assignments for my students.”

Canvas (22%) and Blackboard (10%) are competitors, but our survey found that they are being used at much lower rates and with mixed reviews.

 

On top of meeting their integration needs, educators favor Google Classroom for its intuitive UX and communication capabilities. 

Google Classroom’s interface clearly displays options and action buttons, rather than hiding them behind a variety of menus. This decreases user overwhelm and improves ease-of-use.

“It’s [Google Classroom] great…easy to post assignments.” 

“It’s [Google Classroom] easy to communicate with parents and students.”

 

In addition to Google Classroom, 72% of educators we surveyed reported using GMail as their email server and prefer it for its connectivity and team-based features. 

Educators who used other popular email servers expressed frustration with UX that does not feel intuitive.

“It’s not user friendly and [it’s] hard to find what I need to do. It’s got too much going on on the screen.”

Overall, Google’s comprehensive approach to interoperability, both within the Google platform and with other products, makes it a top-choice among educators. 

EdTech products that deprioritize Google integration, or opt for closed ecosystems, will face a disadvantage in the marketplace. 

In fact, we’d go so far as to say it creates a minimum viability issue for your product!

 

Cross-platform syncs

Out of necessity, teachers are experts at utilizing every spare minute they have to prepare for the next class or the next day. 

In fact, a majority of teachers who responded to our survey (60%) cited the ability to “sync” tasks, like providing students from multiple classes the same assignment at once, as the product capability that would most streamline their workload.

 

 

When you consider how much of a teacher’s day is eaten up by administrative work, this need makes sense.

If a teacher’s prep period is 40 minutes, and they use five of those minutes to repeat the same task on an edTech platform, their frustration will build.

Instead, they could spend the time preparing a student handout, answering a parent email, picking up pencils and markers, filing a school report, or resetting interactive lesson materials.

EdTech products that prioritize time-saving, especially for repetitive administrative tasks, will speed up an educator’s workflow—instead of slowing them down.

Features & design patterns that slow educators down

Educators aren’t shy about the features that add more time into the day—or the UX design patterns they find confusing.

When it came to the most challenging features, our survey respondents identified two major culprits across multiple edTech platforms: grade book design and poor product navigation.

Grade books

When we surveyed teachers about their most time-consuming tasks, they identified entering grades into digital grade books as a major pain point.

With limited views of assignment data, lucklaster syncing abilities, and poor navigation, most grade book features are in need of a UX overhaul.

Because digital grade books illuminate student progress and help teachers plan next steps, better UX is key to:

• streamlining teacher workflow
• reducing the time educators spend managing student data
• and creating more student-teacher time

Here’s what the educators we surveyed had to say about why digital grade books are making their jobs more challenging.

Limited view of assignment data

Overall, the educators we spoke to reported they’re toggling between too many tabs.

“There isn’t enough room for all assignments to be seen at once.”

“It’d be nice to do grades for all students at once for each assignment instead of having to go into each student.” 

“I wish it displayed more than 5 columns of grades at a time.” 

“A lot of times it [is] hard to use the menus and data entry points though. It would be nice to have larger entry fields that are easier to enter data into.” 

Most educators are trying to look holistically at student progress.

Grade books with multiple tabs or a limited view of grades and assignments slow teachers down and make it harder for them to assess the progress of a student or an entire class.

Instead, find ways to show educators key student information quickly, so they can easily manage and assess student data.

 

 

Lack of syncing with other platforms

Many grade books also require teachers to use multiple edTech products just to enter grades.

For example, once a student submits work on Google Classroom, their teacher often bounces between Google Classroom and a digital grade book to evaluate and record grades for an assignment.

Now multiply that by 20 to 30 students per class. 

It adds up.

In the words of our survey respondents:

“It does not pair with Google Classroom which can be frustrating.”

“I wish it would sync with other LMS services easier and with more security for student safety.”

“It is a struggle to link outside activities or alternate activities…”

Improve your product’s integration capabilities by syncing your gradebook with common submission platforms, like Google Classroom.

This UX change alone will save teachers a lot of time—and increase the use of your learning platform.

Too many clicks

Burying grade input pages beneath a ton of menus adds layers of user frustration. 

Of their digital grade book experiences, our survey respondents said:

“It’s very clunky and you have to go between multiple pages.”

“I’m not thrilled with it because I think it’s cumbersome to use – lots of extra steps that are time consuming – but it’s what we have and I don’t have any choice in the matter. It does the job, parents can see the grades and it’s ok that way.”

Ultimately, grade book products or products that incorporate grade input capabilities should focus on intuitive UI, including bulk views and integrations with learning management systems or databases.

Poor product navigation & information architecture

While grade books are guilty of poor feature navigation, the educators we surveyed struggle with many platforms that bury information behind too many menus or provide unclear paths to essential information.

When it comes to navigating popular edTech products, educators reported the following: 

“It sorts the information in ways it’s not always easy to find what you need.”

“It can be hard to navigate to different student information pages.”

“It’s very hard to work. It has all the info but you have to go multiple places to find it.”

If your product navigation is unclear or too demanding, teachers will miss useful features—or abandon your product altogether.

How to improve your edTech products to better support teacher needs

In order to support product adoption, edTech product designs must reflect classroom realities.

Educators have limited time, varying levels of comfort with technology, and are typically multitasking to make it through the day.

From planning for key integrations and syncing capabilities to improving information architecture, here are four tips to improve your learning platform and support teacher needs:

Reduce cognitive overload

Teachers are being asked to juggle too many digital tools, often with little to no training.

This results in partial use of many different products, contributing to cognitive overload and burnout.

According to the Medical College of Wisconsin, “Cognitive overload occurs when the combination of intrinsic, extraneous, and germane loads becomes overwhelming for the learner. Even the most intelligent person can only process so much information at once.” 

When there’s too much information to process, decision making becomes overwhelming for both teachers and students. “They may fail at a task that should be manageable given their knowledge and experience,” the report continues.

Questions to ask your product team to reduce educator cognitive overload

• Is this product or user flow intuitive to use? 
• Does this product require extensive training to use? 
• Is this product easy to use while multitasking?
• How will it affect an educator’s workflow?
• How can we verify whether this user flow will add to an educator’s administrative burden or make it easier?

Features, capabilities, & UX patterns that reduce cognitive overload

• Cross-platform syncing
• Bulk edits
• Supplemental resource banks
• Reusable resource templates
• SSO integration
• Multifunctional tools

Improve product navigation

Product teams that improve information architecture, design logical menus, and streamline user flows will simplify educator workflows and improve overall user productivity.

Capabilities & UX patterns that support intuitive navigation

• Reflecting product purpose or pedagogical goals in navigation menus
• Providing quick links to popular pages after log-in
• Limiting number of clicks required in user flows
• Improving educators’ abilities to toggle between data input pages for different classes
• Supporting cross-product integration with grade book platforms and learning management systems

Streamline repetitive administrative tasks

Educators balance a variety of tasks at once: teaching, managing student behavior, lesson planning, grading, family outreach, and administrative work. 

Each of these add to the complexity of their workloads in digital tools.

This is especially true for time-intensive tasks like grading. 

Teachers, especially in secondary and higher education, spend a lot of time adding actionable feedback to assignments to help students progress academically. 

Over time, the same comments can often be used across the grading of a single assignment. For example, “Put quotation marks around direct textual evidence,” or, “Good use of paragraphing.” 

Providing the option of customizable feedback banks streamlines grading tasks, helps educators be more efficient, and opens up more time for teachers to provide direct instruction or small-group planning.

Capabilities & UX patterns that streamline administrative tasks

• Batch assignments
• Batch grades
• Bulk messaging & family communication
• Customizable feedback banks
• Cross-product integration with grade book platforms
• Cross-product integration with learning management systems

 

 

Support further customization needs

Customization options in edTech platforms makes tailoring instruction and supporting student growth that much easier.

After all, not all students or classes are the same. 

Some students or classes might require more support than others, and product customization can support needs for differentiated instruction, too.

Teachers appreciate tools that can adapt to individual or specific class needs. 

For example, elementary teachers are responsible for a variety of subject content all day, and it is common for secondary teachers to teach a variety of grades within the same subject or different leveled classes in the same grade. 

Customization options in edTech platforms makes tailoring instruction and supporting student growth within one learning platform that much easier.

Capabilities & learning content that support customization needs

• Differentiated and adaptive learning content
• Content leveling
  

Final Thoughts

Overall, our research suggests that edTech product owners should focus on integration over reinvention.

By testing your products with real educators, learning about their daily workflows, and reflecting your findings in UX improvements, you’ll build better learning tools and increase product adoption.

Because the best edTech tools don’t just get the job done—they fit into the rhythm of a teacher’s day. 

They anticipate needs, reduce repetitive tasks, and integrate seamlessly with the platforms teachers already trust.

Most of all, your product’s success depends on respecting the time, insight, and experiences of the educators who use them most often. 

Build with teachers in mind—and they’ll become your strongest advocates.

Need expert insight into the teachers and learners who use your edTech products? Contact us below about our UX research services!