Why Students Expect Learning to Feel Conversational

By David Foster, Partner, Scalable Learning

Sept 10, 2025 - I was reviewing a transcript from one of our micro-cases the other day. In this one, the simulated coach was guiding a student through a tricky decision. The coach would offer a prompt, the student would type a short response, and the coach would follow up with something a little sharper or more specific. Nothing flashy. Just a steady, easy rhythm: nudge, reply, adjust.

What struck me was how natural it all read. The student wasn’t trying to “drive” the conversation. She was simply engaging the way she engages with everything else online—short messages, small steps, quick thinking. You could feel her getting pulled into the process without realizing it.

The rest of the digital world sets this pattern. Apps respond to what you do next. Search tools reshape themselves around your wording. Even entertainment adapts on the fly. Students live in a feedback loop. They’re used to systems that don’t just deliver information but react to it.

And that’s where older course materials fall behind. A PDF, a video, a set of static slides—they speak once and then fall silent. When a student tries to push back or test an idea, the format has no way to meet them. It’s not bad content. It’s just mismatched to the habits students now bring to learning.

Economics drive this shift too. Colleges need ways to support more learners with fewer hours of faculty time. A single well-designed module can carry the workload that once required dozens of repeated explanations across a department. It doesn’t replace the instructor. It just picks up the predictable, time-consuming parts.

Instructors appreciate this more than anyone. A conversational module gives them leverage. It handles the groundwork. It scales instantly. It frees their time for the sort of teaching that actually needs a human voice and judgment.

So the move toward conversational learning isn’t happening because chat interfaces are fashionable. It’s happening because the format fits both the way students learn and the way institutions now operate. It’s the path of least resistance. And in education, that’s usually the path that ends up becoming the norm.