- Existing learning management systems are a mirror (and a victim) of the education system itself, as that's where most of the developers come from: Academic, underfunded and people-focused.
- Academica leads to overflowing complexity. In the whole system, simplicity is punished and complexity is cherished, so you end up with confusing UX.
- Underfunded is pretty self-explanatory
- People-focused is where like in any bureaucracy, nobody really wants to make anyone else replaceable. So instead of with a hard focus on users and learning tracks, you end up with an old system of classes, teachers and students, where of course you have the 10% great teachers that _should_ have run the class for everyone and the 90% that starves their class of any legit info.
From the uni and publisher sides, it's similar, but not completely equal. Both universities and book publishers would never make anything truly great because it would all cannibalize their business.
If you come from the other side and think that the whole learning system is rife for revolution with first-principle thinking, tree-trunk learning and a standard of "Intuition isn't optional" (massive props to https://betterexplained.com/articles/intuition-isnt-optional... ), then you quickly see the other side isn't interested in any fundamental change in their approach (see above for the why).
Furthermore, even if you try, those are the people in charge deciding where their (very tiny) funds go. They will go towards the solution that prioritizes system survival above quality and radical change.
So you see these people rather going towards the content publishers.
For investors, the field is mostly uninteresting for the reasons above, so you don't see any quality invest.
As a parent, I'd love to see someone really cracking edtech, but unfortunately what it would take would be a pretty massive initial investment into a seriously great solution that then proceeds to tackle funding, education system and self-reliance as well. It'd be a philantrophic invest of a few dozen million and then go for a very long road of paying back in small rates.
I'm still up for it, maybe in my next startup :)