Exploring New Formats for Knowledge Exchange
As part of the EdTech Strategy Lab, we’re not just hosting events; we’re redefining how collaboration happens in EdTech.
Our mission is simple yet ambitious: to bring together a diverse group of voices to tackle big questions around trust and evidence. The goal of these exchanges is to foster collaboration and build a shared understanding of the diversity of needs and motivations that exist within the ecosystem to empower evidence-informed decision-making in the future.
Through innovative and interactive formats like Clarifying Challenges and Plurality of Perspectives, we spark conversations that break down existing silos within the EdTech ecosystem.
Our 3 Key Goals
Our knowledge exchange initiatives seek to achieve three key goals:
Strengthening collaboration
By convening a wide range of stakeholders, including EdTech developers, educators, policymakers, and researchers and others, the EdTech Strategy Lab facilitates the exchange of ideas, experiences, and best practices around the topics of trust and evidence. This collaborative environment helps to break down real and imagined boundaries, draw out connections across the ecosystem, and lay the foundations for new partnerships.
Building shared understanding
Our various knowledge exchange formats enable participants to develop a deeper, shared understanding of the challenges, opportunities, and emerging trends relating to trust and evidence in EdTech. This shared understanding is crucial for aligning efforts and developing more effective strategies for the future.
Focusing on trust and evidence
A central focus of the knowledge exchange formats within the EdTech Strategy Lab is to lay the groundwork necessary to deeply engage with the topics of evidence and trust across all stakeholders in the ecosystem. This ensures that new initiatives and investments are grounded in a solid evidence base, building trust and providing the best learning outcomes for learners.
Guided by these three goals, the knowledge exchange formats designed and deployed by the Strategy Lab team enhance the conversations taking place within the EdTech ecosystem. By promoting collaboration, fostering shared understanding, and focusing on trust and evidence, our efforts create a more interconnected and trustworthy educational landscape in Europe–and beyond.
Examples of Our Knowledge Exchange Formats
Format 1: Clarifying Challenges
One of the most effective formats we use to foster shared understanding and collaboration on topics of evidence and trust is an interactive ideation exercise called Clarifying Challenges. This format, deployed at almost a dozen events since March 2024, is designed to help participants develop a clear and common understanding of key challenges facing the EdTech ecosystem related to the topics of trust, evidence, and partnerships.
The Clarifying Challenges format is a collaborative workshop design created to foster diverse stakeholder engagement and knowledge exchange. It typically unfolds in two parts: an initial 60-minute group discussion session followed by a networking break and a plenary insights-sharing segment. Groups, comprising 4 to 15 participants, focus on guided themes, which are questions or topics presented to prompt discussions from varied perspectives. Participants self-select their groups, with facilitators ensuring even distribution if needed. These discussions encourage collaborative ideation while addressing specific stakeholder needs or high-level concepts.
Clarifying Challenges groups discuss their table topics and ideate solutions
Key to the format's success are Table Leads, experienced facilitators who guide discussions, synthesize ideas, and present key insights. The session begins with a 20-minute context-setting keynote to introduce the format and outline group themes. Participants then spend 20 minutes brainstorming challenges on post-it notes from their organizational, professional, or personal viewpoints. In the next 15 minutes, they group and condense these notes by themes, facilitated by Table Leads who prepare summaries for the plenary session. The collaborative process emphasizes clarity, inclusivity, and actionable insights.
The concluding insight-sharing session brings all participants together to hear summaries from each group, with Table Leads presenting condensed findings in 3-minute slots. Depending on the group size, this segment lasts 20 to 45 minutes. Insights are documented through notetaking or recording tools for future reference. Collecting and summarizing sticky notes ensures a comprehensive record of discussions, informing topics for subsequent workshops or events.
Format 2: Consensus and Divergence
The primary purpose of these sessions is to bring together two unlikely discussion partners to share their diverse perspectives on a topic. Through a series of pre-circulated questions, the participants first share their thoughts on broader topics, then dive into their specific experiences. The goal is to uncover the motivations behind key questions facing the evidence ecosystem.
Adding another layer of interaction, audience members contribute their thoughts through Mentimeter. This tool allows everyone present to gauge areas of consensus and divergence in real-time, fostering a sense of community and shared discovery.
Word cloud of responses from audience during Convergence / Divergence session
Format 3: Stakeholder Considerations
The goal of this format is to illuminate a diversity of perspectives among different stakeholder groups, inviting experts from different segments of the EdTech community to come forward and share their needs and motivations, the foundations of their frameworks, and the outputs in short 2-5 minute intervals.
During this session, several ‘off the record’ quotes can be shared to provoke critical thought and encourage participants to dig deeper into the themes and sentiments expressed during the dialogues that we captured as part of the Listening Sessions the Strategy Lab team has conducted as part of this project.
The goal of these sessions is to highlight the richness of the dialogues we have conducted prior, while also actively drawing connections between and engaging with perspectives from across the spectrum of EdTech experiences. In the context of the event we hosted in Paris last week, this included hearing from representatives from the research community, the public and private sector, as well as from practitioners.
One of our Plurality of Perspectives speakers Lukas Peh presents
This format aims to showcase the plurality of perspectives across all stakeholders in attendance by drawing on the experience and expertise of leaders within the EdTech ecosystem. As a core component of this session, after each subset of four speakers, the audience has the opportunity to engage via a facilitated Q&A period.
Looking Ahead
Through our work with the EdTech Strategy Lab, we aim to inspire innovative engagement with essential questions shaping the future of EdTech, and each of these formats has provided significant insights that enrich our research and understanding of trust and evidence.
We encourage stakeholders to consider adapting and developing these approaches within their own contexts. By fostering such collaboration, we are not only exchanging perspectives and ideas but also paving the way for new policies and evaluation practices that will reshape how educational technology is evaluated and implemented.
Interested in learning more? Stay connected with the EdTech Strategy Lab for updates on future events and initiatives here >