Giving Compass' Take:

• The U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences (IES) is hosting a research competition to understand the most effective use of edtech products.

• Understanding edtech products will help educators to analyze the implementation methods and be able to move forward with more clarity as to best mitigate classroom challenges with tech. 

• Read more about the role of technology in education. 


The question of whether or not something “works” in the abstract is very different from the question of whether it might work in your district. That’s because education research has historically paid little attention to the sort of implementation variables (such as teacher buy-in, planning time, data interoperability and school culture) that can affect outcomes in the classroom.

The demand for a better understanding of “implementation science” is getting louder. Educators want to see why a program or technology works in one setting and not another. It’s not enough to know that something works in an idealized environment. They want to know if and how it can help their particular students—and what they can learn from their peers nationwide to make that happen.

This summer’s announcement by the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences (IES) responds to this demand. The agency kicked off a new research competition to better understand how technology programs that IES previously deemed effective can perform in specific but varied settings, from different geographic regions to different populations of learners, educators and schools. It will also look at how a program’s impact may differ based on intervention delivery, such as the particular rotations of students in a blended learning program or the balance of video versus face-to-face instruction.

Some difficult work lies ahead, but imagine the impact. If education decision-makers achieve consensus on how to define and track the variables that affect implementation, and share that data with their peers nationwide, they will be better able to select tools that offer actual evidence of the real-world conditions in which they thrive or struggle.

With better insight into why, where and when programs succeed and fail, school leaders can gauge what quality implementation really looks like, and make meaningful assessments about the impact of different technologies.

Read the full article about edtech revolution by Bart Epstein and David DeSchryver at EdSurge.