Kahoot! – the game that’s changing education

It’s been 18 months since we last spoke to Kahoot!, the popular user-generated questions platform for schools. Since then, the company has been through some major changes. We caught up with co-founder Jamie Brooker to find out what’s been happening.

Hi Jamie. It’s been a busy 18 months for Kahoot! Can you tell us what’s been happening with the company?

Last time we spoke was only 3 months after our launch, back in late 2013. During the course of 2014, we began to grow our audience, and around a year ago, we reached 4 million unique students. Last summer, teachers around the world began to go to Teachmeets, summer camps and edtech conferences; they would stand on stage presenting Kahoot! on our behalf, but without us asking them to: this was incredible organic marketing for us – pleasing because it validated our strategy to create an experience that was so fundamentally life changing, that people would feel compelled to share.

@SchantzClass We finally were able to test out @GetKahoot. Looks like the Ss loved it! #tlap #edchat #edtechchat pic.twitter.com/Folc5ocZ2Z

— Yau-Jau Ku (@yaujauku) March 19, 2014

Today we have 13 million monthly active users and 50 million + unique students have played Kahoot!. 2.5 million + learning games have been created, 230 million questions have been asked and 2 billion + answers have been given within game. Some games have been played more than 500,000 times!

We’ve been dedicating the last 6 – 9 months to growing our team. We are mostly split between London and Oslo, but also have a new office in Austin and one in Sydney. We thought globally from the day we launched and one of the biggest reasons for our growth is that you can create games in any language, subject, ability and for any ages.

That’s an amazing achievement for a small educational startup. Can you give us some of the reasons why you’ve managed to grow so quickly?

We’ve seen huge growth because Kahoot! is fundamentally changing the way students learn, from rote individual learning to collaborative learning. We started by asking the simple question “how can you bring the student at the back of the class, to the front (for the right reasons)?”.

Our question and answer mechanic is commonly mistaken for testing and grading, yet the most powerful way to use Kahoot! is to create an inclusive learning environment: using the game mechanic of question and answer to create a learning experience where it doesn’t matter if you win or not, but one where everyone can feel success. The powerful thing that happens in class is that this requires groups of students to focus together – they initiate peer-led discussions, get personal feedback on how they’re performing and are motivated to improve and think more critically. The questions and answers are displayed at the front of the room, not on the student’s device, which merely acts as their game controller and a way of getting feedback. This means everyone gathers around the shared screen to learn together – something we call ‘the campfire moment’. It’s about learning through play and social connections, not testing!

Additionally, if students and teachers design the questions properly, they explain the core concepts which need to be taught. For example, I observed a biology lesson at United Nations school in NY. The teacher played what we call a ‘Blind kahoot’ – where students are playing with content they haven’t seen before. The first question was simple and no one got it right; the last question was complex and everyone got it right! The teacher used repetition and diagrams to build up concepts, and there was a lot of discussion between questions. She asked students who had understood why an answer was correct to explain it to the rest of the class. It was an extremely powerful learning experience.

One of the deepest ways Kahoot! is used, is when students make their own games. We call it ‘Learners to Leaders’. Often collaboratively, they’ll undertake deeper research and design their own questions, embedding found or created imagery or video into them. They then lead the class, taking on the teacher’s role and explaining core concepts to their peers. The teacher can take a back seat, join in the games and get an understanding of the student’s knowledge levels based on the quality of questions they ask and how they explain right/wrong answers. Perfect for project-based learning, for example.

How have you financed your expansion?

We have raised seed funding from the very beginning – through grants and project funding because of our global, social and pedagogical impact – but the majority of funding has come directly from the founders and management team. We’ve also been joined by some key people we really value and who believe in our ‘return on learning’ approach. We have what we call an impact-driven model, rather than a revenue-driven model. Impact for us is motivated, engaged learners around the world, who are taking learning into their own hands. Because we believe if you have impact, you will see revenue as a consequence. Our aim is to keep Kahoot! 100% free for anyone to use.

What’s happened to your competitors in the last couple of years? Have new ones emerged?

We’re one of the world’s fastest growing learning brands. There have been copycat companies as you would expect, but we differentiate ourselves through our design methodology, which focuses on the heart and creating emotional connections. Many edtech companies focus on the mind and hand – their focus is very practical, but many miss out on the empathetic aspect of design. We ask ourselves: can you create a scenario where two kids are hugging and smiling because they feel success? Typically, we’re compared to Socrative, but we are not necessarily competitors. They are more for assessment in silo. Kahoot! is about making learning fun by bringing people together – we’re complimentary. We believe learning should be available to everyone.

How have you seen the wider edtech space change in that time? Are you feeling optimistic?

I’m seeing more acceptance of the idea of play in education settings. Originally we held back from talking about play fully – but play as a concept is becoming much more accepted in classroom settings.

There is also now a complete focus on the pedagogical value of the experience from teachers. 80% of our users are from the States – and teachers there are slightly ahead in terms of acceptance of tech and play in classroom settings – as such they have embraced the pedagogy sooner. Scandinavia and Australia are also highly engaged. The UK is coming along fast.

But the biggest shift I’ve seen is that people are starting to understand that mobile and social tech can have positive impacts in pedagogical settings. I’m fed up with discussions like ‘how can we get iPads into the classroom?’ or ‘how can we digitize textbooks?’ – that isn’t thinking from the learner perspective or understanding learners today who use mobile tech every day. We can harness those social behaviours in education rather than fight against them.

What are your plans for Kahoot! next? How is your business model evolving?

We reached 50 million users on the exact day we had predicted, using just our MVP [minimum viable product]. We are investing in the evolution of Kahoot! now – from a design, brand and technical perspective. We’re creating new ways for existing content to be played, rewarding our users for the time they invest in creating content on the platform – which is ultimately focusing on varying and deepening the pedagogical impact of playing Kahoot! in the classroom, and beyond. For example, we recently launched ‘Ghost Mode’, which enables students to try and beat ghost versions of themselves from past games, showing how much they’ve learnt.