Grounding EdTech

05/05/2026

Online teaching is not the same as teaching.

The sooner we design for that reality, the sooner our students actually learn.

📖 The Architecture of Online Learning is live on Grounding EdTech Magazine. And it's the most research-grounded piece we've published on lesson planning for digital educators.

Here's what's inside:

✅ Why learning objectives must come first, every single time (Bloom & Mager)
✅ How to build 21st-century skills into your lesson structure, not as an afterthought (P21 Framework & Vygotsky)
✅ Why less is more when selecting online resources (Mayer's Multimedia Learning Theory)
✅ How to sequence a digital lesson for the way memory actually works (Gagné's Nine Events)
✅ Why formative assessment is your highest-yield teaching strategy, backed by data (Black & Wiliam)
✅ What separates online classwork that builds skill from classwork that just fills time (Ericsson & Harasim)
✅ How to design homework that promotes real transfer, not just repetition (Perkins & Salomon)

This is not a listicle.
This is a referenced, practitioner-written guide rooted in 60+ years of learning science.

Written for the educators who know that digital teaching deserves better than a repurposed PowerPoint.

🔗 Read the full article https://groundingedtech.fayedu.com/2026/05/05/the-architecture-of-online-learning-a-research-grounded-guide-to-lesson-planning-for-digital-educators/

♻️ Share with your PLN. Every online educator deserves access to this.

Seven Research-Grounded Components That Transform How Digital Educators Plan, Deliver, and Assess Online Learning.

04/05/2026

Most teachers aren't choosing between inquiry, problem, and project-based learning.

They're already blending all three, just not always on purpose.

In the latest issue of Grounding EdTech Magazine, Danielle Thomas makes a case that might reshape how you think about your next unit plan:

The most powerful classrooms don't pick a pedagogy and commit to it. They remix.

Her piece walks through:

→ What genuinely separates IBL, PBL, and PrBL (they're not synonyms)
→ What the research actually shows about each framework
→ A practical 3–4 week unit sequence you can adapt tomorrow
→ The honest conversation about what intentional design actually requires from teachers

Danielle's writing always starts in the classroom, not in theory. This one is no different.

"The question is not which framework to choose. It is whether you have been given enough time to design thoughtfully with any of them."

Read the full article https://groundingedtech.fayedu.com/2026/05/04/stop-choosing-between-inquiry-problem-and-project-based-learning-start-remixing-them/

30/04/2026

What if we've been categorising EdTech wrong this whole time?

Here's what we know:

Pedagogically designed AI tools work. General-purpose AI tools don't, or worse, actively harm learning. Most schools, especially under-resourced ones, are using general-purpose tools.

This is not because educators are uninformed. It's because pedagogically designed tools cost more to build, cost more to license, and exist in a market with no structural incentive to close that gap.

The solution the market won't produce on its own is the solution learning science says we need.

Stanford's 2026 AI in Education Review, the most rigorous causal analysis of AI in K-12 education to date, confirms this with uncomfortable precision. Students using general-purpose AI chatbots performed worse on independent assessments than peers who used a textbook. Students writing essays with AI couldn't recall their own arguments afterward. The gains AI produces disappear the moment you remove access to it.

Meanwhile, pedagogically designed AI tools that scaffold, hint, guide, and preserve the cognitive work of the learner, produced meaningfully better outcomes. The design of the tool was not a secondary variable. It was the decisive one.

So why aren't schools buying the right tools?

Because the right tools cost more. And education budgets, particularly in under-resourced schools, cannot absorb that gap. The schools with the greatest instructional need are the most likely to end up with the least effective tools. Not because of ignorance. Because of the price.

This is a market failure. And market failures require structural solutions, not better purchasing decisions.

Our argument: pedagogically designed AI EdTech should be treated as educational infrastructure. Regulated. Funded. Accessible. The way education itself is.

Faith Mundia makes that full case in our latest editorial on Grounding EdTech Magazine, including what it means for Africa and the Global South, where the stakes are highest, and the evidence base is most absent.

📖 Read it https://groundingedtech.fayedu.com/2026/04/30/the-stanford-2026-ai-in-education-review-is-clear-pedagogical-design-beats-general-purpose-ai-so-why-are-schools-buying-the-wrong-tools/

Eight hundred studies. Twenty with real causal evidence. What Stanford's most rigorous review of AI in education actually reveals is not a technology problem;

29/04/2026

A Nairobi-based EdTech platform. A European university partnership. Three months in, and a letter from a data protection authority arrives.

The partnership is suspended.

This scenario is playing out across the continent. And most African EdTech platforms aren't ready for it.

In our latest feature, Scott Portico breaks down the compliance stack that is quietly reshaping who gets to operate in global EdTech, and who gets left out of the partnerships, tenders, and institutional contracts that define serious international growth.

What's covered:

→ GDPR, the EU AI Act (full force: August 2026), and data localisation rules: what they actually mean for platforms built in Africa
→ Why hyperscaler data centres landing on the continent change the regulatory equation entirely
→ The gap in African national EdTech policy that no one is talking about
→ What Kazakhstan's 'algorithmic sovereignty' law signals for where this is heading
→ A practical compliance checklist for founders and platform builders
→ Why compliance, done right, is a competitive moat — not a cost centre

This piece is for EdTech founders, instructional designers, policymakers, institutional buyers, and anyone building or advising on digital education products that cross borders.

📖🔗 Link to the full article https://groundingedtech.fayedu.com/2026/04/29/compliance-without-borders-what-african-edtech-platforms-must-know-before-going-global/

This is not a hypothetical. It is the shape of a challenge that is landing on the desks of African EdTech founders right now, often before they have had any

28/04/2026

There is a lot of money on the table right now for EdTech educators, researchers, and founders.

Most of the people who deserve it have no idea it exists.

Not because the opportunities are hidden, but because tracking them while also building, teaching, and running a platform is exhausting.

So our Opportunities writer Janet Mwaura did the work for you.

In her latest piece for Grounding EdTech Magazine, she cuts through the noise and surfaces 19 live grants, fellowships, accelerators, and consultancy opportunities, filtered specifically for the education and AI community globally.

From:

→ The African Union's $50,000 IEA grant (deadline: today)
→ UNESCO's AI & Learning Cities consultancy
→ The Mastercard Foundation EdTech Fellowship
→ Blue Ridge Labs Founder Fellowship ($20K stipend, no prototype required)
→ a16z Speedrun — $500K for global AI founders
→ UNICEF's Global Education Consultancy framework
→ ...and 13 more

Every entry comes with the amount, deadline, eligibility, and a direct apply link.

The article also includes a free downloadable tracker: a ready-to-use Excel file with all 19 opportunities, a personalised application log, and a deadline calendar you can start using today.

Three things Janet says consistently separate successful applications from the rest:

1. Evidence of real impact: numbers, not intentions
2. A credible organisation behind the work
3. The right frame for the right funder

Good work deserves good funding. This piece will help you find it.

🔗 Read the full article + download the free tracker at the link below.
https://groundingedtech.fayedu.com/2026/04/28/the-edtech-funding-guide-you-actually-need-right-now-grants-fellowships-and-accelerators-open-globally/

Filtered for educators, researchers, and EdTech founders who are doing real work.

27/04/2026

Someone recorded a lecture.
Added a PDF of slides.
Attached a five-question quiz.

And called it an online course.

This happens thousands of times a day: across schools, universities, and corporate training departments. The content exists. The platform exists. The learner shows up.

And very little actual learning happens.

This is the most expensive mistake in digital education right now. Not expensive in money. Expensive in something harder to recover: learner trust.

Instructional design exists to prevent exactly this. And at a moment when digital learning has moved from fringe practice to mainstream expectation: in classrooms, boardrooms, and universities across the world, it has never mattered more.

The problem? Almost nobody is being taught to do it properly.

In our latest piece for Grounding EdTech, John Gitonga goes into the craft that most digital learning skips entirely:

→ Why content delivery is not the same as course design
→ How ADDIE, SAM, and Bloom's work together, not against each other
→ What outcome mapping, interaction design, and assessment alignment actually look like in practice
→ Which tools serve design decisions, and which ones replace them with false confidence
→ Why the convergence between teaching and instructional design is the most important shift in EdTech right now

This piece also continues the conversation Danielle Thomas started on Competency-Based Education. If you read that one, this is where the pedagogy meets the architecture.

Read the full article https://groundingedtech.fayedu.com/2026/04/27/the-invisible-architecture-why-instructional-design-is-the-most-important-skill-nobody-is-teaching-properly/

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Picture a course. Forty-five minutes of recorded lecture. A PDF of slides. A five-question quiz at the end. Published on an LMS and called online learning.

26/04/2026

Welcome to the Grounding EdTech Magazine page. 👋

If you work in education, training, or learning design, and you care about technology actually working in the classroom and not just looking good in a pitch deck, you're in the right place.

We're a publication by the Fay Institute, based in Nairobi, Kenya. We cover:

→ AI in learning and instructional design
→ eLearning tools and what they're actually good for
→ Building effective digital learning in African and global classrooms
→ The practice of learning design: frameworks, methods, real talk

Our readers are educators, L&D professionals, instructional designers, curriculum developers, and EdTech founders who want substance over hype.

We publish regularly, and this page is where we'll share every new piece, plus discussions, insights, and the occasional opinion that might make you think twice.

Follow the page. Share it with a colleague who gets it.

And if you want the full experience, our articles are at 👉
https://groundingedtech.fayedu.com/

— Faith Mundia, Editor & Founder, Grounding EdTech Magazine.

— For any queries, contact us at [email protected]

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26/04/2026

A student scores 58% and moves on.

Six months later, she is lost. Not because she couldn't do the work, but because the system never asked whether she actually learned it.
This is the quiet logic of time-based education. And it is exactly the problem that Competency-Based Education was designed to fix.

But here is what most CBE posts won't tell you: the philosophy is sound, and the implementation is hard. Evidence shows mastery-based models can produce the equivalent of five months' additional learning progress in a year, but only when the system is built right. Self-paced without structure is not CBE. It is just flexibility without accountability.

In our latest piece, Danielle Thomas goes beyond the slogans to ask the question that matters:
→ Are we willing to build the systems that genuine competency-based education actually demands?

She unpacks what the research really says, makes a fair case for traditional education (yes, really), and gives teachers a three-question design frame they can use this week.

Read the full article

Picture a classroom. A student sits an exam, scores 58 per cent, and moves on. Six months later, in the next unit, she is lost. Not because she is incapable,

17/04/2025

I have been looking at AI assistants as a way to nurture student communities, and it’s interesting how they have a concierge quality that can make students feel more comfortable asking questions or even testing out new ideas without fear of embarrassment.

It made me reflect on something I recently came across about what truly defines a community:
• Membership – feeling like you belong
• Influence – knowing your voice matters
• Fulfillment of needs – feeling supported
• Shared emotional connection – having common experiences

What’s fascinating is how AI, when designed with care, can support all four.

A well-trained assistant can:
1️⃣ Welcome new students with personalized tips and resources, helping them feel a sense of belonging.
2️⃣ Prompt learners to share ideas and vote on what matters to them, giving them a sense of influence.
3️⃣ Recommend relevant materials, groups, or peers when they’re stuck, fulfilling needs.
4️⃣ Even gently encourage reflection and storytelling to build emotional connection.

AI doesn’t replace the human layer, it enhances it. It gives students a nonjudgmental space to explore, try, and even fail quietly before stepping into public conversations.

I’m excited ✨ about how this could reshape our online learning communities into spaces that feel alive and connected.

Have you seen AI used this way in a learning space? Would love to hear how others are thinking.

16/03/2025

Growing up, I knew a few people with disabilities. Friends, classmates, and family members.

Most of the time, I didn’t even think of them as disabled. They were just people I cared about, who were smart, capable, and had the same ambitions as everyone else.

But every so often, something would remind me that we experienced the world differently.

Like when their shoes didn’t fit quite right, and there weren’t affordable options made for them. Or when they loved stories but couldn’t find braille books to read. Or when watching TV was frustrating because the dialogue wasn’t easy to lip-read.

Those moments weren’t about ability, they were about access. And I see the same thing happening in digital learning.

Students aren’t held back by their disability but by systems that don’t support them.

In this document, I have put together simple information to show how small design changes can make digital learning accessible for everyone.

Let’s build better.