The Education Technology Industry Network (ETIN) and Empirical Education Inc. recently released the Guidelines for Conducting and Reporting EdTech Impact research in U.S. K-12 Schools. These guidelines help clarify how research is conducted and how information is presented to users of edtech products based on the changes brought by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). In “Measuring Edtech Impact in the ESSA Era,” experts delved into the details of the guidelines.
The updated guidelines take into account nearly all edtech products today in the cloud, providing more access to teacher and student usage data. They also account for the timeline for compressed development of edtech products, and standards of evidence having changed to a more developmental scale with ESSA replacing No Child Left Behind (NCLB).
Districts are more frequently asking for their own student and teacher product usage data to perform their own studies. The structure and definitions provided by these new guidelines are useful in helping them obtain what they need and figure out how to do their evaluations.…Read More