Inside EdTech Week 2025: How LearnOps and AI Are Redefining the Future of Learning

The Pulse of EdTech Week 2025: Human-Centered Innovation in an AI World

EdTech Week 2025 wasn’t just about technology—it was about balance. The week’s sessions made it clear that the future of education depends on integrating AI and human ingenuity in ways that amplify access, equity, and impact.

From “The Pedagogical Shift is Here: Leveraging AI Fluency for Growth” to “Can AI Make Humans More Human?”, speakers explored how educators, policymakers, and technology providers can partner to ensure AI augments rather than replaces the human experience.

Across all tracks, three major themes emerged:

1. AI as a Force Multiplier for Learning

   • Sessions like “Beyond the Chatbot: The Role of AI in High-Impact Teaching” and “Generation AI: Preparing Students for an Augmented Tomorrow” showed how AI tools are being applied to personalize instruction, close skill gaps, and simulate real-world learning environments.

   • The takeaway? The most successful learning organizations are those that embed AI directly into their operational workflows, not just their content delivery.

2. Operational Excellence as the Next Frontier

   • Whether in K–12 districts or Fortune 500 enterprises, leaders discussed how operational maturity—standardizing how learning is planned, executed, and measured—is the key to scaling impact.

   • This theme was reflected throughout the Workforce Learning track, culminating in Cognota’s session on AI Operators and LearnOps®, which connected the dots between technology infrastructure and business outcomes.

3. Partnerships as Catalysts for Change

   • Dozens of panels showcased collaborations between learning institutions, corporate partners, and startups. Sessions like “Scaling Innovation Through Strategic Partnerships” and “Building Impact-Centered Organizations” emphasized that transformation doesn’t happen in silos—it happens through connected ecosystems.

Ryan Austin at EdTech Week: The Future of L&D and the Rise of LearnOps®

Monday, October 20: The Future of L&D—Harnessing AI Operators Through Mature Learning Operations

As organizations face mounting pressure to demonstrate learning’s business value, this session—moderated by Alan Todd (Executive Chair, Cognota)—brought together an all-star panel featuring Ryan Austin (Cognota), Joe Olszewski (Cornerstone OnDemand), and Joshua Meredith (Deloitte).

The discussion centered on how AI Operators—automation-driven systems that support planning, scheduling, and decision-making—are redefining the L&D operating model. The panel introduced a practical roadmap for how teams can evolve along the LearnOps Maturity Model, moving from reactive to adaptive learning operations.

Key Insights:

• AI Operators as Enablers: Rather than replacing L&D professionals, AI Operators empower teams to make faster, data-informed decisions by automating repetitive tasks like intake management, resource allocation, and ROI tracking.

• The Unified Stack: With voices from both an LMS provider (Cornerstone) and a strategy advisor (Deloitte), the panel highlighted the importance of integrating systems across the learning ecosystem—connecting technology, process, and governance.

• From Efficiency to Impact: Mature operations don’t just run smoother—they unlock measurable business outcomes. As Ryan noted in his framework, operational maturity is the foundation for aligning learning investments with strategic goals.

This session captured one of the conference’s most recurring ideas: L&D must run like a business to deliver value like one. The LearnOps conversation struck a chord with both corporate and EdTech audiences, illustrating how structured operations enable innovation, agility, and sustainability.

Tuesday, October 21: The New Learning Advantage—Building L&D Ecosystems That Deliver Value

The following day, Ryan joined a powerhouse lineup—Jessica Beidelman (BCG), Milena Gashkevich (Prudential), and Megan O’Connor (Chegg)—to explore how high-performing organizations are building connected learning ecosystems that drive measurable business value.

This panel expanded the lens from technology to strategy and culture, focusing on how learning teams can act as growth engines within the enterprise.

Key Themes:

• Alignment is Everything: The panel emphasized that every learning initiative should map back to a core business objective—whether improving performance, retention, or innovation capacity.

• Ecosystem Thinking: Gone are the days of one-size-fits-all learning stacks. The new advantage lies in building interoperable systems that connect LMS, LCMS, content providers, and operations platforms like LearnOps.

• Measurement as a Mindset: The conversation reinforced that learning impact isn’t just about completion rates or satisfaction—it’s about performance metrics that matter to executives, such as productivity, cost savings, and skill readiness.

Together, these sessions positioned Cognota’s LearnOps platform as an essential enabler for organizations seeking to operationalize their learning strategies and fully leverage AI’s potential.

Emerging Themes from Across the Conference

While AI dominated discussions across all three days, EdTech Week 2025 also revealed deeper undercurrents shaping the future of learning.

1. The Convergence of K–12, Higher Ed, and Workforce Learning

For the first time, EdTech Week’s agenda blurred traditional boundaries between educational sectors. Sessions like “Modernizing Career-Connected Learning” and “Training Transformed: The Digital Ecosystem Reshaping Workforce Training” highlighted how career readiness now begins in the classroom and continues throughout the employee lifecycle.

Panelists emphasized building a continuum of learning—from early education to workforce upskilling—powered by data interoperability and cross-sector collaboration.

2. Responsible AI and the Ethics of Automation

With sessions such as “AI, Education, and Privacy: What EdTech and ChildTech Companies Need to Get Right” and “AI & Ethics in Education: Designing Safe, Smart, and Student-Centered Tools,” leaders acknowledged that the same technology driving efficiency must also be designed for equity, transparency, and trust.

Organizations across K–12 and enterprise settings are building governance frameworks to ensure ethical AI adoption, echoing the principles of Cognota’s own LearnOps approach—where AI is used responsibly to enhance human performance, not replace it.

3. The Shift Toward Outcomes-Based Partnerships

From “Beyond Buzz: The Real Challenges of Outcomes-Based Contracts” to “The ROI Reality: How School Districts Actually Perceive Value from EdTech,” participants made it clear that success is no longer defined by adoption—it’s defined by results.

Learning teams, investors, and vendors alike are being held accountable for measurable impact, fueling the rise of data-driven contracting models and integrated analytics solutions that tie learning outcomes directly to performance metrics.

Highlights from Around the Conference

Beyond Cognota’s panels, several standout sessions captured the industry’s imagination and reinforced broader trends:

• “Flight Simulators for People Care” showcased how AI-powered simulations are transforming healthcare training—demonstrating the convergence of learning science and real-world performance.

• “Building Impact-Centered Organizations” explored how aligning mission and metrics drives outperforming results, a theme echoed in Cognota’s emphasis on measurable ROI.

• “The Great Disintermediation” unpacked how foundation models like GPT and Claude are reshaping the $146B EdTech industry by lowering barriers to entry and democratizing innovation.

• “Future-Proof: Building Talent for an AI-Driven Economy” connected directly to Cognota’s LearnOps message: learning agility is now a business imperative.

Each of these sessions underscored that education and enterprise learning are no longer separate conversations—they’re converging around a shared vision of continuous, connected, AI-enhanced learning.

Why LearnOps Stood Out at EdTech Week

Amidst hundreds of ideas and innovations, LearnOps emerged as a critical bridge between vision and execution.

While many sessions explored new pedagogical approaches or AI capabilities, Ryan Austin’s panels tackled a pressing question: How do we operationalize these ideas at scale?

By reframing Learning & Development as an operational discipline, LearnOps provides a structure for teams to:

• Map learning strategy to business outcomes

• Automate administrative processes through AI Operators

• Centralize planning, budgeting, and reporting

• Improve visibility into resource utilization and capacity

In a conference overflowing with new technologies, this operational focus offered something unique—a way to make innovation sustainable.

Final Thoughts

From K–12 classrooms to global enterprises, the message from EdTech Week 2025 was clear: the age of Operational Learning is here.

Innovation will continue to evolve, but the organizations that thrive will be those that can:

• Balance AI automation with human creativity

• Connect systems to insights

• And transform learning from a cost center into a strategic engine for growth

As Ryan Austin shared throughout the week, “Technology alone isn’t transformation—it’s the operational discipline behind it that makes learning work.”

Discover how Cognota helps learning teams operationalize intent—connecting strategy, budgets, and impact in one platform.

Book a customized consultation to see how LearnOps® can transform how your team plans, executes, and measures learning.