LIMITED EVIDENCE IN EDTECH: EVERYONE AGREES – IT ISN’T THEIR FAULT
EdTech Evidence Exchange
“What works ought to drive what we put in front of our children.” – Jim Shelton, Head of Education, Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative
Motivated by this shared belief, more than 275 higher education and K-12 district leaders, researchers, entrepreneurs, philanthropists, investors, policymakers, and educators gathered on May 3-4, 2017 in Washington, D.C. to address an essential question: How might we collaborate to ensure evidence of impact, not marketing or popularity, drives edtech adoption and implementation?
Leading up the symposium, 10 working groups spent nearly a year investigating barriers to creating and making better use of efficacy research in edtech – along potential opportunities for addressing such challenges. The papers reflect a desire to improve the availability of efficacy research and the need for new policies and better data to inform the more than $13.2 billion of annual spending on education technology and ensure the technology effectively supports teaching and learning.
| The Role of Research in K-12 District Decision-Making | What reasoning and processes do district leaders use to select and deploy digital product? What, if any, types of data are used to support decision-making? |
| The Role of Research in Higher Ed Decision-Making | What factors and information sources influence decisions about educational technology acquisition and use in higher education? |
| Research Spending and the Most Popular EdTech Products | Of the most popular Educational Technology products/programs in Higher Ed and K-12, how many have been evaluated and by whom? |
| Evidence and Quality of Efficacy Research | Of the efficacy research being conducted on EdTech products, who is doing the research, what kind of research is it and what is the quality? |
| Institutional Competence in Evaluating Efficacy Research | What knowledge and competence do faculty members and leaders in educational institutions need to possess with respect to learning technologies? |
| Investors and Entrepreneurs | How do investors, developers, and established vendors define the effectiveness of products and value the evidence of such effectiveness? |
| Federal Funding for EdTech Research | How do school districts and schools make decisions for the purchase, adoption, and continued implementation of technology? |
| Education Philanthropies | What evidence are philanthropies gathering about the efficacy of education technology interventions? |
| EdTech User Voice | What role does student, teacher, parent, or other end user preferences play in technology decision-making with educational institutions? |
| Crowdsourcing Efficacy Research | What efforts are underway around the country to aggregate and share educational technology product reviews, analysis of pilots, and efficacy research? |