Due to my recent foray into the crypto education sphere while job hunting, I’ve reviewed a lot of different web3, blockchain, and crypto education materials. It’s a mountain of information. I’ve been absorbing the content as part of my personal learning process. It’s a very Learning & Development (L&D) based approach. There is so much out there. I don’t think I would ever have time to look at it all. That’s the thing. Why is there so much? Do we need another how-to-guide on “What’s a cold/hot wallet”?
As an educator, I believe we shouldn’t just be creating training to create it. We should be striving to create the right training for the right audience with the right complexity and success metrics.
But, how do we determine what’s “right”. The answer is… it depends.
I’ve seen a lot of people talk about wanting to create web3 education materials recently. Onboarding seems to be a buzzword right now. I’ve heard it in a lot of calls “we need to Onboard people to web3” I’m going to quote The Princess Bride here, “You keep using that word. I don’t think it means what you think it means”.
I, also, have been guilty of this rallying cry! “I want to create web3 education materials. Someone hire me!” See previous reddit post. Upon deeper reflection, I need to be the person that someone wants to hire. The questions I ask myself are “what distinguishes me from the rest of the anon’s trying to accomplish the same thing? Lots of people want jobs in web3. What makes me different so I stand out in the online rabble?”
Thinking about it. The same thing that I’ve made into a 10 year career. I know how to teach people. Not just people, I know how to teach adults. More to the fact, I know how to make complicated and technical topics simple for adult learners. So, I’m going to try and address the massive amount of crypto education and break it down an simplify it. After all, “the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
One of the things that I love about the Blockchain is its decentralized nature. For this thought experiment, it means there is no one person/entity/subject matter expert to ask direct questions about the project.
Remember the following are my own personal observations.
4-step Learning and Development Approach
In my professional life, as an corporate L&D expert, people came to me because I have a very particular set of skills. Skills that I can use to evaluate web3 education as a whole. I would start by assessing this like a project intake because my background is in corporate L&D. In a project intakes, there is an assumption that training is needed within a specific part of an organization submitting the intake. In this instance, blockchain/web3/crypto is the organization. No one asked my opinion but I’m going to share them anyway.
Here are the 4 steps that a Learning and Development Professional would use to determine if creating training was the appropriate solution for web3:
- Audience Analysis
- Content Review (Current State)
- Scope the Project and Define Success
- Needs or Gap Analysis
Every L&D person has different ways that they may scope a project both formally and informally. But, they usually include asking a list of pointed questions. All of these questions will help direct you through the scoping of the project. Here’s some of the pertinent ones:
- What is the objective of the training? What problem are you trying to solve?
- Who are the primary audiences and how many people are in each audience?
- What does success look like? What are the Goals? Key drivers/metrics? How will success be measured?
- What is the scalability of this training? How often will this training be utilized (one-time use, on-going, for a specified period)?
- What existing content, material, or resources can be leveraged?
1. Audience Analysis
Since web3 is the new kid in technology town, let’s assume we are going to need training to onboard people. Okay… so who are these people. Audience Analysis is always a good place to start because you can’t know what to create if you don’t know for whom you’re creating the material. We’re at the 20,000 foot view from the top. Each of these audiences can have their own caveats and microcosms, in the end, they boil down to these three groups.
- New users
- Investors
- Developers
The reason why you start with the who is because it will inform what you build. Someone who is a crypto noob isn’t going to take a bootcamp on solidity development. Investors that have been in the market since the 2017’s crypto winter don’t care to learn about the difference between L1s and L2s. They want to know about the cutting edge and the next technology that’s emerging.
2. Current State
Current state or content review. It’s the question of “What training is already out there in the ecosystem”? Lawrd where do I even begin! If you’ve been in this space a little while you already know how much training there is in web3. However, they fall within similar categories based on who the audience is.
- Onboarding’s for new users
- Content specific to a protocol, tool, DAO or a technology
- Alpha (ie: foreknowledge) on emerging tech or investment opportunities
- Bootcamps for Devs
There is an unusual amount of multi-track exploration amongst web3 explorers. People enter the space from a solidity developer bootcamp and then they may backtrack and take an intro to crypto course. There isn’t one path up the mountain, but rather many with their twists, turns and pitfalls along the way. Think about this metaphor: it’s like climbing Mount Everest. Everyone starts at Base Camp One. But, there are many different routes up the mountain.
Learning about web3/blockchain/crypto is the same way. Most people in the industry will move in between these route as they learn. They might like a meandering path with its stunning vistas or seek out the direct path with zero stops along the way. Thinking about the opportunities for education in crypto space is vast and daunting, just like climbing a mountain.
3. What does success look like?
Success looks different to different people. One person’s success might just be to see the mountain, another might want to make it past a certain elevation, while someone else might want to find a whole new route up the mountain. Setting your destination before you even step foot on the mountain is part of determining your success. Similarly in education, the success metrics change based on the needs of a training. When it comes to the web3 education space I’d like to ask the same thing. It’s an important question to ask “What does success look like for a web3 educator?
How often will this training be utilized (one-time use, on-going, for a specified period)? If you’re creating cutting edge training be prepared for it to go stale quickly. It’s happened to me a ton when I was working on something that was part of an ongoing training documentation. Say, I’ve created a video walk-though or a step-by-step guide and the team changes the UI, I either have to start over or scrap the training. But, if it was a one-time use and the training is complete. The change to the UI won’t matter. I may already consider this training a success.
For me, one of the key metrics of success is that people use the materials I create. If I’m going to spend time and effort on something, it’s with the intention of someone taking it. My level of effort will be commiserate with answers to the questions: “How often will the training be utilized? Is there even an audience for the training I’m creating?”.
What is the scalability of this training? Did I create something that was boutique to a particular audience or hardware. Is it scalable to other audiences or tools? It’s okay if the answer is no. Not everything needs to be scalable. It’s like the type of gear you would need on the mountain; it’ll never be a top seller for The North Face. It’s too niche, but they make it anyway.
Don’t expect 1,000 people to take your eLearning module or attend you training session when the audience/people that are interested number in the 100s. This is the equivalent of yelling into a vacuum hoping someone will hear you. Is this an effective use of your time? It could be, if you’re creating the material to demonstrate a new skill or signal knowledge on a particular topic. But, again knowing how you are planning to measuring success will set you up for success.
4. Web3 Gap Analysis
Like I said before, you shouldn’t create a training just to do it. If you were on the mountain and a crevasse opened up people would have to find a way around it or over it. People would problem solve until they found a solution. Web3 education needs an objective or a problem to solve. It needs to fill a need or a knowledge gap. The Gap Analysis can get to the core of a training need. People are feeling that there is still a need within the crypto education space. So, they are rushing in to answer the call. That’s why there are so many trainings being created and recreated.
If you reflect on the sheer amount of new user onboardings, dev boot camps or different protocols “learn” offerings. The basics are covered.
The “basic” trainings or onboarding are like reaching Base Camp One on Mount Everest. Everyone starts here. This may also be their final destination. But, if you yearn to learn more and dive deeper into the ecosystem you may start to explore a deeper knowledge or higher-level education. The next step would be to ascend to Base Camp Two or even Base Camp Three and onto the summit. Everything past Base Camp One is where things start to get difficult: crevasses, wind storms, avalanches, faulty equipment or losing your guide. Next level education materials are what’s missing in crypto education.
Someone might argue with this point, but hear me out. Granted there is a ton of information out there in the “Alpha” spheres that could be included in this higher-level category. None of this material is curated in a digestible way. It’s usually a podcast, a twitter thread, or a Coindesk article. For this type of educational material, I’m thinking of a comparison of two protocols for staking, how to file your crypto taxes, explaining liquidity mining. From my perspective, this is where the true gap in crypto education lies. I know that things change often and quickly in the space. But, that is why you have to ask yourself the next question.
This is the education gap. This is the need. The trail has been blazed up the mountain; we need a map or a guide to get us to the trail.
TLDR: Based on my analysis of the space, we don’t need to be creating more web3 education. There are a ton of training and education materials out there. But, we need to be mindful of who our audience are and what we deem as successful. We need to be curating from the current material and creating new materials on niche topics.