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Jumpstarting EdTech Effectiveness
How a Cohort of Member Districts in Massachusetts Collaborated on EdTech Analysis
K-12 leaders of districts often face the challenge of knowing how edtech products are being used by students and educators. A cohort of districts participating in the Berkshire Education Resources K12 (BERK) in Massachusetts was not the exception when it comes to this barrier. BERK wanted to identify the current state of the edtech products used on both a regional and district level, so it requested participation from a group of districts in Berkshire County for an audit of their edtech landscape. With the hope that the project would improve edtech outcomes and develop a comprehensive understanding of edtech usage with the audits, LearnPlatform created an action plan to map and analyze the landscape of the participating districts.
Cohort Goals
With edtech development and use constantly evolving, BERK was interested in managing and evaluating the efficiency of its edtech products. Berkshire Resources for Learning and Innovation (BRLI), an initiative consisting of eight school districts in the region was created to collaborate around a common learning management system and share innovative, effective practices through professional learning opportunities. The consortium aimed to deliver context-specific, but equitable learning models for remote and online learning that use edtech products. Task force and local education leaders recognized the need for informed collaborative discussions, realizing these types of budgeting and curriculum conversations were necessary for this effort to be most effective.
As part of these audits, the districts used some of the following questions as a guide:
- Are we spending resources in the most effective ways possible?
- How can we increase the value of a product for our teachers and students?
- Do we have any products that perform similar functions?
- In what ways can the districts collaborate and share best practices for implementing more effective edtech ecosystems?
While we are doing a lot of things with technology, we need to be more intentional in what we use and how we use it. The audits created good conversation points to have for our task force and superintendent meetings with district leaders. This helped to further the dialogue with principals and teachers in their respective districts.
Brendan Sheran
BRLI Project Coordinator
LearnPlatform provided the necessary tools to examine data provided by the districts, helping them optimize their edtech investments and effectively communicate results and recommendations to district stakeholders.
Staying true to BRLI’s core focus, each district collaborated and followed the same process, including these two main priorities:
- Edtech landscape analysis: districts worked with the LearnPlatform team to determine the current state of their edtech usage. This was done by deploying browser extensions for both educators and students, helping discover edtech trends, uncover unapproved edtech and discover potential areas for cost savings.
- Targeted product analysis: after taking stock of what was in use, leaders conducted targeted product analyses on two top-performing products based on the highest monthly usage. Analyses used context-specific metrics to determine how these products worked for the districts’ students, teachers and budgets. In addition, the analysis evaluated the impact of the use of resources and budgets allocations.
District Highlights
Hoosac Valley Regional School District
Hoosac Valley Regional School District in Cheshire, MA wanted to better understand how students were using top-performing products, evaluating two high-value literacy products for the targeted product analyses. The first analysis evaluated how many students were meeting the recommended usage goal, revealing that 38% of all licenses met or exceeded the goal of 30 minutes or more per week.
The second product analysis measured the average number of monthly users finding that, on average, nearly half of students used the product monthly.
We are really looking to triangulate the data we have to determine the impact on student learning. This is something we haven't had in the past. It's something I want to continue tracking moving forward, to make sure that the right tools are getting used the most.
Aaron Dean
Superintendent at Hoosac Valley School District
Based on the evidence found from both product analyses, Hoosac Valley discovered potential savings opportunities and underutilized areas for reinvestment. The patterns in the product usage allowed the district to understand and further explore how to best implement efficient edtech practices. The district plans to tweak implementations to some products and will continue to track product usage to guide informed discussions.
North Adams Public Schools
North Adams Public Schools in North Adams, MA lacked a central location to manage and review usage of edtech tools. By providing a centralized platform, district leaders can track edtech usage data to better understand educators’ experiences with the products and begin to make more informed decisions.
The district discovered that approximately 50% of licenses met or exceeded the average goal set of 30 minutes per week for their learning management tool. It was also able to see that nearly 32% of student licenses reached at least 60% content progress. The district leadership can now have evidence-based discussions regarding effective use of technology in instruction, improving student achievement, and allocation and sustainability of resources that directly impact student learning.
North Adams’ new Inventory Dashboard offered district leaders valuable insight on usage metrics without the cumbersome task of tracking it across many platforms. Moving forward, the leadership team will continue to track edtech usage and discuss how tools are being used.
Recently, we have had to invest in software to support student learning at a very rapid pace. Technology initiatives normally take three to five years before becoming sustainable, making measuring the impact to student learning a summative exercise. The dashboard provides the district leadership the opportunity to gather real-time data on its technology investments ensuring that students benefit from these resources.
Dr. Barbara Malkas
Superintendent of North Adams Public Schools
Pittsfield Public Schools
Pittsfield Public Schools in Pittsfield, MA wanted to know what they could discover about what products were being used, but lacked the platform to efficiently identify and understand the fidelity of tool usage. Using the LearnPlatform Inventory Dashboard, the district reviewed usage of licensed and free edtech products, looking for gaps in fidelity of use as well as identifying multiples of tools that were designed to meet similar needs.
By seeing which purchased and free tools are being used to fidelity, the district can now decide whether to continue to implement and support all products, and for which student groups. An edtech landscape analysis showed that 62% of students utilized their accounts for a certain learning management tool at least one time during a spring semester.
The pandemic provided an opportunity to bring an aspiration to reality. Providing all students with a device and connectivity was done in swift pace with the reality that we needed to support the deployment with software tools to engage students in meaningful ways. The dashboard provides real-time data on use ensuring that teachers and students benefit from our financial investments.
Joseph Curtis
Superintendent of the Pittsfield Public Schools
As for the math product reviewed, 9% of student licenses reached at least 60% content progress during the 2020-2021 school year. Context is key, and leaders at Pittsfield will build on these usage trends and dig into contextual evidence that will support more informed decision-making. Next steps for the district could include discovering which tools may perform similar functions in order to make better-informed budgeting decisions.
Next Steps
BERK’s partnership with LearnPlatform promotes data-informed dialogue so member districts can continue working together to improve professional development, conduct collaborative purchasing and choose the most effective, curriculum-aligned edtech tools. Already, BRLI district champions, edtech leaders working together across districts, have begun using LearnPlatform’s research-based edtech grading rubric that allows educators to facilitate conversations that turn contextual feedback into action. Districts may also choose to start evaluating the efficacy of edtech tools as they correlate their usage data patterns with student assessment data – something they’d be able to do using a rapid-cycle evaluation tool like IMPACT™.
Although the initiatives were created as a response to the pandemic, edtech as a support to teachers and students will continue to evolve. These evaluations will equip leaders in Massachusetts and around the U.S. with the evidence needed to make sure digital tools truly support educators, students, curriculum goals and budgets.
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