Helping realise the potential of educational technology through better testing and design
UCL Institute of Education research, conducted with international partners, introduces a new approach to evaluating, implementing, and scaling EdTech solutions in educational settings.
Grand Challenge: Data-Empowered Societies
Educational technologies (EdTech) have the potential to transform education, yet this promise is rarely fulfilled, with innovations often falling short of what was expected. UCL Institute of Education research in collaboration with international partners has analysed why implementation tends to fail and developed a systematic process that nurtures the path of early promise into lasting educational impact. Rather than relying on anecdotal success stories or limited trials, it introduced a more rigorous, scalable, and research-informed approach to evaluating, implementing, and scaling EdTech solutions in educational settings.
This commitment to better evidenced educational innovations supports UCL’s mission to help build “Data Empowered Societies”, by bringing potentially transformative technologies and data use into harmony with the values, vulnerabilities and needs of society.
The development of testbeds to scaffold EdTech development
Seminal research by Professor Alison Clark-Wilson (UCL Knowledge Lab, Department of Culture, Communication and Media, UCL Institute of Education), funded by Jacobs Foundation, and conducted with colleagues in the UK, Belgium and the United States, identified the preconditions needed to generate lasting impact from the development of new educational technologies. She used this evidence to build a “Systemic Edtech Testbed Framework”, a practical design tool that brings the technology, the users and the context for its use into a dynamic development process.
In effect, the EdTech Testbed is an “engine” that takes a new product or service and matches it with appropriate schools to generate better and openly available evidence to improve both the product and its implementation. Using this engine, a range of different research approaches are carefully chosen to align with the maturity of the EdTech and its intended school user groups.
The research identified the key components of successful EdTech Testbed initiatives, which include a clear set of impact goals, the necessary preconditions (such as sustainable funding and supportive policies), and the detailed processes to support the EdTech to be “tested” (i.e. piloted and evaluated) in some carefully chosen “beds” (the classrooms and schools).
Central to this work is the foundational research that analysed the different models and approaches used by global Edtech Testbed initiatives such as the Swiss National EdTech Testbed Programme, Swedish Edtest and Helsinki Education Hub.
The resulting framework and its design toolkit offer a pragmatic tool for policymakers, funders and key stakeholders to develop models that best suit the country contexts and available resources. Since March 2023, over 300 people from 123 global organisations across 37 countries have participated in the online and in-person activities convened by the Global EdTech Testbed Network, which was co-founded by Professor Clark-Wilson.
Shaping the future of EdTech
The arrival of generative AI technology is accelerating the need for more agile ways to assess and evaluate EdTech, for instance adaptive learning platforms and AI tutoring systems. The EdTech Testbeds that are being devised in many countries enable participating schools and teachers to learn how to run trials, analyse results and use data to guide decision-making about what works and how. This kind of rigorous ‘on the ground’ testing will enable the potential of such new AI tools to be robustly and rapidly tested in different contexts, supporting smarter investments in EdTech to help realise better outcomes for students and teachers.
Related links
- Grand Challenge: Data-Empowered Societies
- Global approaches for the systemic piloting and trialling of school educational technologies, research project by Professor Alison Clark-Wilson
- UCL Knowledge Lab
- Jacobs Foundation
- Towards Systemic EdTech Testbeds: A Global Perspective
- Swiss National EdTech Testbed Programme
- Swedish Edtest
- Helsinki Education Hub
- Systemic Edtech Testbed Framework design toolkit
- Global EdTech Testbed Network