We built an AI-enabled social listening tool to analyze real conversations between college instructors on r/Professors, an online community of educators discussing what's actually happening in their classrooms. The goal: find out what's working to keep students engaged (and what's not), including how AI fits into the picture, straight from instructors' own words rather than a survey.
Most research on student engagement comes from surveys or interviews, where people answer the question they're askedThese methods are tried and true, but can become even more useful when paired with social listening at scale.That makes for a more honest picture of what's really going on, and it points to what EdTech messaging and features should (and shouldn't) lead with.
What You'll Learn From This Report
- The three engagement strategies instructors use most, including one no product on the market currently supports
- What instructors value most, and why "fun" framing tends to backfire
- The number one frustration instructors share, and it has nothing to do with technology
- How AI shows up in classrooms, both as a problem and, less often, as a tool instructors actually love
- What all of this means for EdTech products trying to earn instructor trust
In Their Own Words – Real Instructor Insights
The excerpts below are a few examples demonstrating the type of direct instructor insights contained in the full report.
"Everyone is going to have a different definition of fun and fun does not mean flashing lights and music in a college class."
"I have my students make ChatGPT write an essay, then their actual assignment is to critique it. That's done more for my students seeing how truly lacking it is than any lecture I could give them."
"We can't force them to come in for exams, and when ChatGPT took off, every student got 100% on the multiple choice section. It's gone from surprisingly rewarding to soul destroying."
About Openfield Social Listening Reports
This report is the first in an ongoing series from Openfield. We built an AI-enabled process to find and analyze real, unprompted conversations happening across multiple online communities where educators and students already talk, then trained and validated the analysis the way we would any other research method. The result is a faster way to surface honest signals at scale.
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The Openfield Team
The Openfield team brings together passionate UX researchers and designers dedicated exclusively to advancing educational technology. With tens of thousands of collective hours spent annually collaborating with EdTech product teams, we've developed deep expertise across K-12, higher education, and corporate learning solutions that serve students, educators, and administrators. Our continuous engagement with the education technology landscape helps us identify emerging trends and anticipate industry challenges. Our singular focus on educational technology, combined with our breadth of experience and inherent curiosity, drives us to constantly explore what's possible in digital learning, always working toward our mission of elevating learning experiences through thoughtful, research-driven design.