Our approach to edtech design and impact research

Technology has the potential to transform the classroom experience by offering real-time data on students’ learning, providing individualized feedback on student problem-solving steps, and strengthening teachers’ capability to shape lesson plans or monitor student progress. The idea of these products is not to replace teachers but to support them in their efforts to facilitate learning in the classroom.

However, while tech companies are brimming with great ideas, effective and useful products that can be easily adopted in real-world classrooms are less common. Flexible application to classroom formats remains a persistent bottleneck in the success of tech tools. Teachers and students can’t use what they can’t figure out and they don’t have time to use what isn’t relevant or intuitive. Moreover, classrooms, teachers, and students vary, and products need to be responsive to this variability if they are to impact a range of real-world situations. Great ideas can be stifled by a failure to understand the classroom context.

This is where EdTech@WestEd comes in.

WestEd is supporting EdTech startup efforts by using our research and development expertise to help develop practical, high-quality products. WestEd provides startup partners with the learning science, content, and classroom practice expertise they need to transform ideas into effective, research-based education improvement tools. These are just a sample of the research studies and services that WestEd provides to EdTech companies. WestEd will work with you to customize these services to meet your needs and achieve your research goals.