Thank you for this post, it offers a valuable perspective on the complexities of RCTs in the EdTech space. From my experience, sustainable improvement in education often comes from thoughtful, incremental changes to systems, rather than immediate, large-scale trials. The challenge lies in how we balance evidence with ongoing development. How do we ensure that we’re building on small, meaningful studies before diving into something as high-stakes as an RCT?
Thank you for your thoughtful comment and a question that gets right to the purpose of this series! I'll take your question in two parts - please let me know if this answers it, or not!
Q1: What kinds of studies are there, other than RCTs? or What does that journey/progression look like?
A1: ICEI (WiKIT) (foreduimpact.com) have many frameworks and reports on this... It would only be a slight exaggeration to say this series exists to bring their work to education founders! This is actually what I'm working on next.
Q2. How can we connect findings to what we are doing, in terms of our product and business development?
A2: This is a mindset shift from research as "testing the output" to research as part of the feedback loop that drives business decisions. This is something I'm really keen to explore through case studies and examples of companies doing this, and how others can do the same - is this something you'd be interested in?
Thank you for this post, it offers a valuable perspective on the complexities of RCTs in the EdTech space. From my experience, sustainable improvement in education often comes from thoughtful, incremental changes to systems, rather than immediate, large-scale trials. The challenge lies in how we balance evidence with ongoing development. How do we ensure that we’re building on small, meaningful studies before diving into something as high-stakes as an RCT?
Thank you for your thoughtful comment and a question that gets right to the purpose of this series! I'll take your question in two parts - please let me know if this answers it, or not!
Q1: What kinds of studies are there, other than RCTs? or What does that journey/progression look like?
A1: ICEI (WiKIT) (foreduimpact.com) have many frameworks and reports on this... It would only be a slight exaggeration to say this series exists to bring their work to education founders! This is actually what I'm working on next.
Q2. How can we connect findings to what we are doing, in terms of our product and business development?
A2: This is a mindset shift from research as "testing the output" to research as part of the feedback loop that drives business decisions. This is something I'm really keen to explore through case studies and examples of companies doing this, and how others can do the same - is this something you'd be interested in?