Guideline #16: In the Marketing Literature for a Product, Accurately Describe its Impact in Non-technical Language
If you’re a K-12 educator or edtech provider, how can you make sure an edtech product will work in a specific school or community? Here’s one of 16 key guidelines for conducting and reporting edtech impact research that might help.
Edtech Research Guideline 16: In the marketing literature for a product, accurately describe its impact in non-technical language
This Guideline addresses the translation and communication of research findings to other parties. Although educators with little formal training in research methods may be the primary audience, many school systems have staff trained in research methods who will want to compare an intervention’s marketing claims to what is found in the full report. It is important that reporting the research does not overstate what has been established through rigorous analyses. Otherwise, research and marketing claims will lose credibility over time.
This guideline comes from the fourth section of the report, “Reporting the Results,” which focuses on good practices in reporting results from the research study. The need for evidence on quickly evolving products and the availability of non-traditional repositories is changing the landscape of reporting. We also address the question of risk to the edtech provider in supporting research that shows a negative (or not sufficiently robust) effect of the product.
A preview of other guidelines in this section include:
14. Make the research report easily accessible and invite external review
15. Make all findings from product evaluations available, as a general rule
For all audiences, the Guidelines not only provide approaches to practice, but also seek to advance the field by helping to identify an appropriate balance among the rigor, practicality, timeliness, and usefulness of evaluation studies of K-12 edtech products
This post is one in a series based on excerpts from the Edtech Guidelines published by Empirical Education and ETIN. For more information, you may access the full set of guidelines, here.
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