In today's day and age, we often walk into a classroom and spot several uses of technology. Computers, laptops, smartboards, TV's, tablets, phones, etc. But what we don't see, unless we stay for an extended period of time (i.e. longer than one class), is how often these are used, and what are the requirements to use them. I've been in classes where just like Robert Slavin says, teachers use them as a reward for good work, so the only students that get to go on there are students who know the content. I've also seen them where students who do poorly are required to do work on there. And I've even seen classes that just ignore them. What is the reason for all of this being important?
Well, we often use computer information to form evaluations and testing. The issue arises when the above information isn't taken into account when we select schools and classes to evaluate - we may pick a class because, on the programs, there is low content knowledge. However, when we evaluate the whole class, we see that it was used as a remedial course for a small percentage of students. This often skews the data, and quite frankly makes it impossible to use. The easiest way to fix this? Randomly assigning schools, just like Slavin says. "Randomly assign half to receive the computer-based program, and half to a business-as-usual control group". This is the perfect way to have an unbiased study - and anybody who took at least one Psych class would know that random assignments are always the best types of studies when you want the least biased results.
https://robertslavinsblog.wordpress.com/2018/12/13/how-computers-can-help-do-bad-research/
Slavin, R. (2018, December 13). How Computers Can Help Do Bad Research. Retrieved from https://robertslavinsblog.wordpress.com/2018/12/13/how-computers-can-help-do-bad-research/.
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