The EdTech Grading Rubric
The LearnPlatform by Instructure EdTech Grading Rubric is designed to be a grading protocol for educators to share valuable insights on the edtech tools they encounter daily, so other educators can leverage this feedback in their own evaluation processes.
How to Use It
Educators can join LearnPlatform by Instructure, for free, where they input their grades for tools, ask questions about products to the community, and explore new edtech options for their classes. The grading rubric allows educators to objectively provide insights into their edtech tools, focusing on thirteen core focus areas.
The rubric results from significant research and field testing, making it a valid and valuable grading protocol critical in ensuring that educators provide feedback in a useful and systematic way so that educator insights can be easily interpreted and acted on.
Method & Results
The LearnPlatform by Instructure research team used a scientific approach to develop a set of feedback areas (or factors) that can be used to grade education technologies to best differentiate effective technologies from ineffective ones.
First, researchers identified the initial set of factors based on professional experience, a review of extant rating systems, and interviews and focus groups with education experts, education technology experts, and educators. We then formed construct definitions for each factor. To establish the content validity of the initial factors, a sect of subject matter experts (SMEs) rated each factor on a scale from 1 (not necessary) to 3 (essential) and also provided qualitative feedback. Based on the results, thirteen core factors were retained for the next phase.
Using the thirteen core factors, we generated items to measure each factor and built a survey that included demographic variables, covariates, controls, and outcomes. The research team sent the survey to a convenience sample of educations (N = 103). LearnPlatform by Instructure first conducted factor analyses to determine whether the measurement model and properties of the items and factors matched the underlying theory.