Best User Onboarding Practices For EdTech Companies

How Top EdTech Companies Approach Onboarding

Ever wondered how EdTech companies handle onboarding? Do they rely on checklists, guides, or take a different approach entirely to help users get started?

In this article, we’ll explore the various user onboarding materials EdTech companies use, identify emerging trends, and see how they measure up against practices in other sectors.

Examining the onboarding flows of EdTech companies helps uncover recurring patterns and best practices, offering insights into what works, what’s standard in the industry, and what might be missing.

Understanding how these companies introduce their products to users makes it easier to evaluate different user and product onboarding strategies and their practical applications.

Let’s get started!

360Learning’s Onboarding Experience

360Learning, a platform designed for collaborative learning, takes a structured approach to onboarding new users.

After signing up, users are immediately greeted with a short survey aimed at understanding their needs and intended use cases.

Instead of relying solely on traditional onboarding methods, 360Learning integrates its onboarding experience into the very first meaningful action within the platform—creating a course.

This way, users naturally become familiar with the platform while simultaneously making progress toward their goals.

In the course creation interface, contextual tips appear directly in the content section, eliminating the intimidation of a blank slate and guiding users through the writing process.

However, 360Learning doesn’t rely solely on embedded instructions—it also employs tooltips for additional guidance. While embedded information provides space for detailed explanations, too much of it can overwhelm users.

Tooltips, on the other hand, combine multiple instructions in a visually distinct format, drawing users’ attention without cluttering the UI, just like the example below.

Tooltips like this one serve as a more compact solution, merging smaller bits of information together in an easy-to-digest format.

They also help direct user attention more effectively by standing out against the interface’s background, ensuring that key guidance isn’t overlooked.

Beyond instructional elements, 360Learning enhances its onboarding process with gamification.

Whenever users create or complete a course—or achieve another meaningful milestone—the platform reinforces progress with celebratory pop-ups.

Additionally, users earn badges, which serve as motivation to continue engaging with the platform. The badge system includes a progress tracker, helping users see their journey and the next milestones they need to reach, like the example below.

Synthesia’s Onboarding Experience

Synthesia, an AI-driven video creation platform, follows a structured onboarding process designed to get users up and running quickly.

The process begins with a seven-question onboarding survey, which may seem extensive, but all questions are multiple-choice and easy to answer. Users provide information about their website, use case, company size, and more.

Each question appears in a separate modal, ensuring a smooth and focused experience. A progress bar is visible, but the total number of questions isn’t explicitly stated, leaving users to estimate how much is left.

After completing the survey, users are directed straight into video creation. They are asked to specify their topic, audience, and content details.

Alternatively, they can upload an existing outline instead of filling in the form manually.

Once users hit “Create video”, Synthesia generates a preview and takes them to the video editor.

Inside the editor, a four-step product tour introduces essential features, including the voice library, text editing tools, and avatars.

Unlike the survey, this guided tour includes a numbered progress indicator, making it clear how many steps are involved.

The tooltips are visually engaging and include concise text with supporting images to make the experience more intuitive.

Synthesia also utilizes overlay modals within onboarding to encourage users to upgrade.

A modal highlights the benefits of upgrading to a premium plan, displaying a clear value proposition with three key selling points. Accompanying visuals illustrate premium features, making it easier for users to grasp the advantages.

SafetyCulture’s Onboarding Experience

SafetyCulture, a workplace operations platform, simplifies onboarding to help users improve safety, quality, and efficiency through audits, inspections, and reporting.

Like other EdTech platforms, SafetyCulture begins onboarding with a brief welcome survey. Users answer questions about their industry, company size, and use case before being guided to their first “Aha!” moment—creating a training course.

If users aren’t ready to dive in immediately, they have the option to skip this step and explore the platform first.

Once inside the platform, users encounter an embedded onboarding checklist.

Unlike pop-up checklists that may be dismissed, SafetyCulture’s checklist remains visible at the top of the screen. It is large, and not buried in sidebars or hidden within settings.

The checklist also includes a progress bar that starts with a partially completed percentage, motivating users to continue.

To further support users, SafetyCulture provides interactive walkthroughs.

These step-by-step guides are designed to be short and to-the-point, displaying the total number of steps in the process and including skip buttons for users who prefer to move through the platform at their own pace.

While the tooltips used in these tutorials are relatively simple in design, they remain effective by keeping the information concise and clear.

In certain cases, SafetyCulture uses overlay modals to guide users through critical steps.

The left side of the modal displays a real-time preview, while the right side contains customization settings.

The onboarding modal approach allows users to immediately see the impact of their changes; these modals present clear instructions alongside real-time previews, making complex tasks more approachable.

For a more in-depth review, check out the full study and Miro board, which also includes insights into Articulate and Graphy’s onboarding flows.

Poor Onboarding Experiences From Major EdTech Platforms

W3Schools

W3Schools is a well-known coding and web development platform that offers tutorials, courses, and certificate programs. Let’s check its onboarding process.

Upon signing up, users are greeted with a welcome modal that features a casual, emoji-filled introduction to the platform’s key features.

The message is friendly and engaging, but the excessive use of emojis might not appeal to everyone.

Additionally, the modal immediately encourages users to invite their friends and teachers to the platform—before they’ve even had a chance to explore any features. This early request for promotion can feel off-putting, especially for new users who haven’t yet formed an opinion about the platform.

Beyond that, the title of the modal—“What’s New?“—can be confusing.

A new user might expect a welcome message or an introduction to the platform, but instead, the wording makes it unclear whether this is a feature update, a promotional message, or something else entirely.

This lack of clarity sets the tone for the rest of the onboarding experience, which is similarly vague and unstructured.

Once inside the platform, users will find that in-app guidance is very limited.

W3Schools does not provide a product tour, an onboarding checklist, or even tooltips to help users understand where key features are located or how they function.

This lack of direction continues when navigating to the My Learning page, where users are left entirely on their own, with no hotspots, no prompts, and no in-app explanations.

For instance, when attempting to create a learning path, users are met with a blank screen that offers no guidance on how to structure their learning journey.

The platform could have provided recommendations on skill progression, a suggested order for completing lessons, or even a few tips on setting realistic learning goals. Instead, users must rely on trial and error to figure out how to make the most of the feature.

Interestingly, W3Schools does include tooltips and modals—but only after users have already managed to complete certain tasks on their own.

Here’s an example.

This approach means that those who struggle to navigate the UI or set up a learning path may never receive the necessary guidance at all.

For example, after a user successfully starts a tutorial, a modal (like the one above) appears to introduce key navigation buttons and a progress bar.

The modal also references a feature called the “Pathfinder Navigator”, which is supposedly designed to help users track their learning journey.

However, the explanation lacks clarity—the modal does not indicate which button represents the Pathfinder Navigator or explain what it actually does. This vague messaging leaves users with more questions than answers.

Overall, W3Schools’ onboarding process is minimal and unstructured, leaving new users to figure out the platform largely on their own. When guidance is provided, it often lacks the necessary detail to be truly helpful.

Instead of offering a clear, supportive onboarding experience, the platform assumes that users will be able to navigate and understand its features without assistance—an assumption that may lead to frustration and drop-offs.

Key Insights On EdTech Onboarding Strategies

Segmentation Drives The Need For More Onboarding Materials

User segmentation plays a crucial role in shaping how EdTech companies structure their onboarding experiences. Companies with highly segmented user bases tend to incorporate more interactive elements such as checklists, guides, and hotspots.

This makes sense—personalized experiences are more effective at encouraging product adoption.

By segmenting users, companies can ensure that the right onboarding materials reach the right users at the right time.

This approach is especially critical for EdTech platforms that serve both students and teachers, as their needs, available features, and even interface layouts can vary significantly.

For a platform to be successfully adopted, both groups must feel comfortable navigating it and clearly understand its value. That’s why delivering tailored onboarding materials for teachers and students is essential in driving long-term engagement.

EdTech Companies Prioritize Structured In-App Learning

A noticeable trend among EdTech companies is their preference for organizing onboarding resources in a systematic way. The use of onboarding checklists and resource centers is particularly prevalent, with checklist adoption nearing 50% and resource centers exceeding that mark. In contrast, hotspot usage is slightly lower, hovering around 40%.

This suggests that the way information is structured and made accessible to users is just as critical as the quality of the content itself.

Rather than relying solely on scattered tooltips or pop-ups, EdTech companies focus on building structured resource centers, ensuring that users can easily find the information they need when they need it.

Best Practices In EdTech Onboarding Are…

Personalizing the user experience through onboarding surveys and maintaining engagement with visual elements and gamification techniques.

Many EdTech companies gather insights about new users at the beginning of their journey, allowing them to tailor the onboarding flow to individual needs.

Even platforms that do not rely heavily on tooltips, hotspots, or product walkthroughs still prioritize onboarding surveys as a way to understand their users and provide relevant guidance.

While onboarding surveys are not necessarily more important than tooltips or interactive guides, they often serve as the foundation of an effective onboarding experience—especially for EdTech products.

After all, without a clear understanding of user needs, it’s nearly impossible to provide meaningful support.

Another trend among EdTech platforms is the use of visual elements and gamification to keep users engaged.

High-contrast tooltips, brightly colored buttons, and visually distinct call-to-action prompts help draw attention to key onboarding steps.

Many companies also include engaging visuals such as GIFs and screenshots to make onboarding more intuitive.

Some platforms take engagement a step further by adding animations and gamified elements, such as celebratory confetti effects, achievement badges, and scoreboards.

These elements make the onboarding process feel more interactive and rewarding, encouraging users to stay engaged with the product.

To Sum Up…

Certain user onboarding and product adoption strategies, such as onboarding checklists and user segmentation, have become standard practices among EdTech companies to improve both the teaching and learning experience. These approaches help ensure that students and educators can easily navigate platform features and engage with tools that best support their needs.

At the same time, methods like in-app surveys and hotspots, which provide real-time feedback and context-sensitive guidance, are still evolving as companies refine their onboarding experiences.

By implementing these strategies with the help of user onboarding software or in-house methods, EdTech platforms can gain deeper insights into the unique goals, challenges, and preferences of both students and educators. This allows them to create personalized learning paths, study plans, and tailored feature recommendations that enhance user engagement and retention.

As the industry continues to develop, more EdTech companies are likely to adopt these approaches, refining their onboarding experiences to meet evolving user expectations and industry standards.

Article originally written by Ceren Kurban.