How to Evaluate and Select the Right Edtech Products [Infographic]

Today’s education leaders have unprecedented access to edtech products, but there’s no clear way to determine a product’s quality or effectiveness for learning. How can decision-makers know if a product meets learning standards and drives student achievement without a shared definition of what makes a product usable, valuable and effective?

Rooted in extensive user research and pilot testing, the Teacher Ready Edtech Product Evaluation Guide helps educators and decision-makers reliably evaluate edtech products, ensuring they select effective, high-quality solutions that lead to the best teaching and learning experiences.

The Research Behind Teacher Ready

ISTE takes research and development seriously. In creating the Teacher Ready Framework and Evaluation Tool, we completed several research activities to make sure that the tool was firmly rooted in both professional scholarship as well as the lived experience of teachers and edtech decision makers. To this end, we:

• Completed a review of academic and professional literature about edtech usability and user experience design.
• Completed “think-aloud” observations, watching teachers use edtech they knew well and had never used before.
• Convened an advisory group of experts in user experience design, learning design, equity and justice, and edtech product evaluation.
• Pilot-tested the framework multiple times with teachers, edtech decision-makers, professional edtech product reviewers and product providers.
• Completed psychometric analysis of pilot data and analysis of qualitative feedback from pilot testers, including both practitioners and product providers.

The result of that research is a tool that reflects what matters most to teachers and education leaders when it comes to edtech usability.