Introduction
Hi there! I'm Dr. Rachel Baker, and I'm delighted to share a little bit about myself. As a passionate educational product and content developer, my career revolves around making learning experiences more effective by bridging education research and practice. With a background in both research and teaching, I strive to improve people’s learning and teaching experiences.
Academic Journey
My early academic journey began by wondering how people and machines process and learn languages. I began with a BA in Cognitive Science, followed by an MSc in Speech and Language Processing. I received my PhD in Linguistics from Northwestern University. During this time I got hands-on teaching experience in France, the UK, and the US. My research focused on English learners’ acquisition of speaking, listening, and communication skills. After I joined EF as Director of Applied Linguistics, I continued this vein of research through EF’s university partnerships, such as the Education First Research Lab at Cambridge. I’ve helped to develop two corpora of learner language that help researchers around the world.
Educational Product Development
I have 13 years of experience leading academic teams for educational products. I have guided both content and product development for several language learning products, including EF Class, an English learning product used by over 300,000 students in secondary schools across Europe, and Astrid, an app focused on improving learners' English speaking and listening skills through video lessons, ASR, and tutor feedback.
These roles have given me experience in:
Using the latest scientific literature to guide product and content decisions
Conducting market, user, and competitor research
Testing the impact and efficacy of educational products with real learners
Consulting
As a consultant, I have worked with both industry-leading companies and small start-ups. I am excited about supporting people and teams who are building the next generation of education products. I believe we can build products better and faster by making evidence-based decisions. I also believe we have a responsibility to our learners to continuously assess the impact of our products in order to improve them.
