Studying Robust-Design Strategies for Developing Innovations Effective and Scalable in Challenging Classroom Settings

Harvard University, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Abstract

This project studies the extent to which a technology-based curricular innovation developed through "robust-design" strategies is effective in increasing students' educational outcomes across a range of challenging classroom settings. Evolving an intervention for extreme scalability - even into contexts in which some of its conditions for success are attenuated or lacking - requires "ruggedizing" its efficacy when parts of its intended enactment are absent. Developing an innovation capable of adaptation into most school sites involves designing interventions that retain a substantial proportion of their effectiveness despite relatively barren settings, such as many urban districts, in which some of the innovation's important conditions for success are missing or attenuated. Under these circumstances, major aspects of an innovation's design will not be enacted as intended by developers, so evolving robust-design strategies and studying the efficacy under inhospitable conditions of interventions produced using these ruggedized strategies is important. This project will assess such a strategy for extreme scalability This project will assess such a strategy for extreme scalability through design-based research on large-scale implementations of a multi-user virtual environment (MUVE) curriculum across a spectrum of contexts. Each year, robust-design methods will draw on the prior implementation's results to develop and study a further ruggedized version with increased effectiveness in extreme conditions. Through this research, the project will develop and validate sophisticated methodologies for determining the sensitivity of the MUVE's impact to four selected, varying contextual conditions (extent of teacher professional development involvement, class size, student previous achievement, and student engagement) and for assessing the MUVE's overall effectiveness. The project will also generate 1) robust-design heuristics for increasing the ruggedness and scalability of technology-based educational innovations, and 2) extreme-implementation strategies for aiding with the enactment of technology-based educational innovations under attenuated or absent conditions of success.