Recent SEGWay Issues

Evaluating the Impact of Professional Development Components of Educational Programs: Missed Opportunities

Very often educational publishers and technology providers, focused on evaluating the overall efficacy of their product, fail to give enough attention to evaluating the impact of the professional development components they often provide with the program. 

Professional Development (PD) is an increasingly critical component of program implementation. School buyers are carefully considering the PD component when selecting products and services.  So, it may make sense to set up the study design to provide efficacy data for the PD component.

Rather than setting up an experimental or quasi-experimental design with only a single treatment group (and control group), professional development can be evaluated by creating two treatment groups: one in which the treatment with the professional development component is provided and one in which the professional development component is not provided. 

The effects of the three groups can then be compared:  control, treatment without PD and treatment with PD.  This will provide information regarding the value/impact/efficacy of the professional development as well as the overall treatment.

Of course, there are some downsides to evaluating specific components of the product in this way.  First, the inclusion of additional treatment groups increases the recruitment and management burden for the project.  Second, this approach will likely increase the cost of the research.

The most important point is that publishers and technology providers looking to conduct efficacy research studies have a clear vision of the goals and requirements for the study at the outset to ensure that they are adequately addressed in the design of the study.