How an EdTech Effectiveness Solution Supports Evidence-based Decisions, Efficiency and Safety

We talk about edtech effectiveness… a lot. There's a reason for this: over the last few years, the COVID pandemic has exposed a need for education organizations to update their practices to reflect the current environment. Leaders at the state and local levels have opportunities to modernize their systems to better support educators and students by ensuring that the decisions they make about education technology are grounded in evidence, consider equity, promote safety and protect data privacy.

With this rapidly growing need for evidence-based decisions comes some confusion about what an edtech effectiveness system such as ours actually does. Here, we break it down.

What is an edtech effectiveness solution?

An edtech effectiveness solution is the infrastructure for organizing edtech tools for more efficient communication and management, streamlining requests and other vetting processes, and analyzing the edtech interventions used for evidence they are improving outcomes/providing value. Education organizations can customize their edtech effectiveness system to fit their needs – this includes rapid edtech evaluations to generate evidence for edtech decision making, maintenance of an approved and compliant product library, management of contracts and purchases, and requests for and collection of feedback from educators.

A comprehensive edtech effectiveness system allows education organizations to answer questions such as: 

• Can my educators, students and families easily see which tools are approved and safe for use?

• Do I have a structured system for how products are requested and teacher feedback is collected?

• Are my district’s edtech products being implemented successfully and used at the level intended?

• Is a certain product leading to student growth as measured by scores on a relevant assessment?

• Am I getting a return, financial and academic, on my investment in my highest-value edtech tools?

Does an edtech effectiveness solution help safeguard data privacy and mitigate security risk? 

Our vetting process and third-party privacy insights build privacy compliance into product review and purchasing from the very beginning. An edtech effectiveness system helps you clearly communicate which edtech tools are safe and approved to educators, students and families through approval statuses and privacy documentation. 

An edtech effectiveness system combines functionality that allows organizations to configure and automate their business processes. This supports districts in meeting their specific privacy requirements. Additionally, by providing a clear path for students, teachers and other stakeholders to see what edtech products are/are not approved for student and teacher use, the entire community becomes a part of proactive privacy and security efforts. 

How is an edtech effectiveness solution different from a data analytics platform? 

Analytics platforms offer student-level usage data and device monitoring. LearnPlatform’s edtech effectiveness system does not host and deliver instruction, nor does it manage student data that is not related to edtech usage and fidelity. 

An edtech effectiveness system focuses on a comprehensive way to continuously improve the safety, equity and effectiveness of education technology. LearnPlatform’s rapid-cycle evaluation engine, IMPACT™, brings together usage, SIS and assessment data to determine which products are actually moving the needle for students across various contexts. IMPACT generates evidence that looks not only at usage and fidelity of use for relevant student groups, but also measures the effect of an edtech intervention on student outcomes using more robust data (like assessment data). 

How is an edtech effectiveness solution different from a single sign-on platform?

Single sign-on (SSO) platforms are one part of the technology integration process, offering a technical solution that enables the ability to access multiple applications once they are authenticated. While SSOs certainly address some of the pain points associated with edtech use (such as logging in, helping with password management and communicating SIS data), an edtech effectiveness system provides more comprehensive management of your edtech library, compliance with reporting and regulatory requirements, deeper and more actionable data on product effectiveness, and more options for finding, purchasing, managing and measuring edtech. 

As the use of edtech expands, it’s even more critical to understand what is being used, how much, how often, and by whom and in which situations. We support districts and states in evidence-based evaluation and efficient management of their edtech ecosystems, thereby improving the safety, equity and effectiveness of the tools they pay for. 

Our team would love to speak with you about your goals – request a personalized demo today.