Disappointing results for digital feedback in primary math (Best Evidence in Brief)

There is a new Best Evidence in Brief  and this time everything seems to be relevant, but I chose this new evaluation:

The Education Endowment Foundation in the UK has published an evaluation of Digital Feedback in Primary Maths, a program that aims to improve primary school teachers’ feedback to students.
The intervention uses a tablet application called Explain Everything, diagnostic assessments, and training on effective feedback. The app allows teachers to provide students with digitally recorded feedback on a tablet, rather than written feedback. Students have the opportunity to review their feedback and develop their work further. By improving teachers’ diagnostic and feedback skills when teaching math in primary schools, the intervention aims to ultimately improve student outcomes in math.
To estimate the impact of Digital Feedback on math achievement, the evaluation used a randomized controlled trial involving 2,564 students in 108 classes across 34 English primary schools. While the intervention took place in each school, classrooms were randomly assigned to the treatment or control group, which carried on with business-as-usual teaching.
The results of the evaluation found no evidence that students taking part in the program made more progress in math, on average (effect size = -0.04), than a similar group of students who did not.

 

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